Science Daily - Fossils

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Paleontology and fossil records. Read about fossil finds over the last 10 years starting with the most recent research. Full text, photos.
Updated: 6 hours 5 min ago

Scientists ID burned bodies using technique used for extracting DNA from woolly mammoths, Neanderthals

Thu, 02/29/2024 - 17:29
A technique originally devised to extract DNA from woolly mammoths and other ancient archaeological specimens can be used to potentially identify badly burned human remains, according to research.
Categories: Fossils

Slimming down a colossal fossil whale

Thu, 02/29/2024 - 11:45
A 30 million year-old fossil whale may not be the heaviest animal of all time after all, according to a new analysis by paleontologists. The new analysis puts Perucetus colossus back in the same weight range as modern whales and smaller than the largest blue whales ever recorded.
Categories: Fossils

High resolution techniques reveal clues in 3.5 billion-year-old biomass

Wed, 02/21/2024 - 20:38
To learn about the first organisms on our planet, researchers have to analyze the rocks of the early Earth. These can only be found in a few places on the surface of the Earth. The Pilbara Craton in Western Australia is one of these rare sites: there are rocks there that are around 3.5 billion years old containing traces of the microorganisms that lived at that time. A research team has now found new clues about the formation and composition of this ancient biomass, providing insights into the earliest ecosystems on Earth.
Categories: Fossils

Panama Canal expansion rewrites history of world's most ecologically diverse bats

Tue, 02/20/2024 - 13:44
In a new study, paleontologists describe the oldest-known leaf-nosed bat fossils, which were found along the banks of the Panama Canal. They're also the oldest bat fossils from Central America, preserved 20-million years ago when Panama and the rest of North America were separated from southern landmass by a seaway at least 120 miles wide.
Categories: Fossils

Ancient DNA reveals Down syndrome in past human societies

Tue, 02/20/2024 - 13:43
By analysing ancient DNA, an international team of researchers have uncovered cases of chromosomal disorders, including what could be the first case of Edwards syndrome ever identified from prehistoric remains.
Categories: Fossils

Why two prehistoric sharks found in Ohio got new names

Mon, 02/19/2024 - 12:07
Until recently, Orthacanthus gracilis could have been considered the 'John Smith' of prehistoric shark names, given how common it was. Three different species of sharks from the late Paleozoic Era -- about 310 million years ago -- were mistakenly given that same name, causing lots of grief to paleontologists who studied and wrote about the sharks through the years and had trouble keeping them apart. But now a professor has finished the arduous task of renaming two of the three sharks -- and in the process rediscovered a wealth of fossil fishes that had been stored at a museum for years but had been largely forgotten.
Categories: Fossils

Mystery solved: The oldest fossil reptile from the alps is an historical forgery

Fri, 02/16/2024 - 12:58
Palaeontological analysis shows that a renowned fossil thought to show soft tissue preservation is in fact just paint. The fossil discovered in 1931 was thought to be an important specimen for understanding early reptile evolution. While not all of the celebrated fossil is a forgery, scientists urge caution in how the fossil is utilized in future.
Categories: Fossils

Searching for clues in the history book of the ocean

Thu, 02/15/2024 - 15:06
New research has shown that the tropical subsurface ocean gained oxygen during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (commonly referred to as PETM). During this short-lived interval of time in Earth s history that occurred 56 million years ago the average temperatures rose by up to six degrees within a few thousand years.
Categories: Fossils

A lighthouse in the Gobi desert

Wed, 02/14/2024 - 19:33
A new study explores the weight great fossil sites have on our understanding of evolutionary relationships between fossil groups and quantified the power these sites have on our understanding of evolutionary history. Surprisingly, the authors discovered that the wind-swept sand deposits of the Late Cretaceous Gobi Desert's extraordinarily diverse and well-preserved fossil lizard record shapes our understanding of their evolutionary history more than any other site on the planet.
Categories: Fossils

The hidden rule for flight feathers -- and how it could reveal which dinosaurs could fly

Mon, 02/12/2024 - 14:33
Scientists examined hundreds of birds in museum collections and discovered a suite of feather characteristics that all flying birds have in common. These 'rules' provide clues as to how the dinosaur ancestors of modern birds first evolved the ability to fly, and which dinosaurs were capable of flight.
Categories: Fossils

Surprisingly vibrant color of 12-million-year-old snail shells

Fri, 02/09/2024 - 15:34
Snail shells are often colorful and strikingly patterned. This is due to pigments that are produced in special cells of the snail and stored in the shell in varying concentrations. Fossil shells, on the other hand, are usually pale and inconspicuous because the pigments are very sensitive and have already decomposed. Residues of ancient color patterns are therefore very rare. This makes a new discovery all the more astonishing: researchers found pigments in twelve-million-year-old fossilized snail shells.
Categories: Fossils

New fossil site of worldwide importance uncovered in southern France

Fri, 02/09/2024 - 12:41
Nearly 400 exceptionally well-preserved fossils dating back 470 million years have been discovered in the south of France by two amateur paleontologists. The discovery provides unprecedented information on the polar ecosystems of the Ordovician period.
Categories: Fossils

Ancient Australian air-breathing fish from 380 million years ago

Tue, 02/06/2024 - 14:14
The rivers of Australia, which once flowed across its now dry interior, used to host a range of bizarre animals -- including a sleek predatory lobe-finned fish with large fangs and bony scales. The newly described fossil fish discovered in remote fossil fields west of Alice Springs has been named Harajicadectes zhumini by palaeontologists.
Categories: Fossils

Rare 3D fossils show that some early trees had forms unlike any you've ever seen

Fri, 02/02/2024 - 10:47
In the fossil record, trees typically are preserved with only their trunks. They don't usually include any leaves to show what their canopies and overall forms may have looked like. In a new study, researchers describe fossilized trees from New Brunswick, Canada with a surprising and unique three-dimensional crown shape.
Categories: Fossils

Did dementia exist in ancient Greek and Rome?

Wed, 01/31/2024 - 17:35
Did the ancient Greeks and Romans experience Alzheimer's? Medical texts from 2,500 years ago rarely mention severe memory loss, suggesting today's widespread dementia stems from modern environments and lifestyles, a new analysis shows.
Categories: Fossils

Scientists pinpoint growth of brain's cerebellum as key to evolution of bird flight

Tue, 01/30/2024 - 16:28
Evolutionary biologists report they have combined PET scans of modern pigeons along with studies of dinosaur fossils to help answer an enduring question in biology: How did the brains of birds evolve to enable them to fly?
Categories: Fossils

How did humans learn to walk? New evolutionary study offers an earful

Mon, 01/29/2024 - 11:25
A new study, which centers on evidence from skulls of a 6-million-year-old fossil ape, Lufengpithecus, offers important clues about the origins of bipedal locomotion courtesy of a novel method: analyzing its bony inner ear region using three-dimensional CT-scanning. The inner ear appears to provide a unique record of the evolutionary history of ape locomotion.
Categories: Fossils

DNA from preserved feces reveals ancient Japanese gut environment

Wed, 01/24/2024 - 15:45
DNA from ancient feces can offer archaeologists new clues about the life and health of Japanese people who lived thousands of years ago, according to a new study.
Categories: Fossils

Ancient brown bear genomes sheds light on Ice Age losses and survival

Wed, 01/24/2024 - 12:28
The brown bear is one of the largest living terrestrial carnivores, and is widely distributed across the Northern Hemisphere. Unlike many other large carnivores that went extinct at the end of the last Ice Age (cave bear, sabretoothed cats, cave hyena), the brown bear is one of the lucky survivors that made it through to the present. The question has puzzled biologists for close to a century -- how was this so?
Categories: Fossils

New pieces in the puzzle of first life on Earth

Wed, 01/24/2024 - 12:27
Microorganisms were the first forms of life on our planet. The clues are written in 3.5 billion-year-old rocks by geochemical and morphological traces, such as chemical compounds or structures that these organisms left behind. However, it is still not clear when and where life originated on Earth and when a diversity of species developed in these early microbial communities. Evidence is scarce and often disputed. Now, researchers have uncovered key findings about the earliest forms of life. In rock samples from South Africa, they found evidence dating to around 3.42 billion years ago of an unprecedentedly diverse carbon cycle involving various microorganisms. This research shows that complex microbial communities already existed in the ecosystems during the Palaeoarchaean period.
Categories: Fossils

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