Science Daily - Paleontology

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Paleontology News and Research. Read about the latest discoveries in the fossil record including theories on why the dinosaurs went extinct and more.
Updated: 19 hours 13 min ago

First fossil evidence of endangered tropical tree discovered

Fri, 05/09/2025 - 12:22
Scientists have discovered fossil evidence of an endangered, living tropical tree species. The unprecedented find was made in Brunei, a country on the large island of Borneo, and reveals a critical piece of the ancient history of Asia's rainforests, highlighting the urgent need for conservation in the region, according to researchers.
Categories: Fossils

New ancient fish species earliest known salmon ancestor

Fri, 05/09/2025 - 11:21
The Arctic landscape during the Cretaceous Period may have been dominated by the dinosaurs, but the rivers and streams held something more familiar. Alaska's fresh waters 73 million years ago were teeming with the ancient relatives of today's salmon, pike and other northern fish. A new article has named three new species of fish from that time period, including a salmonid, dubbed Sivulliusalmo alaskensis.
Categories: Fossils

Triassic fossil reveals nature's best jaw for hunting fast fish

Wed, 05/07/2025 - 11:59
Newly discovered species of extinct fish shows striking similarities to unrelated modern-day predators, suggesting certain traits have emerged multiple times and remained consistent over hundreds of millions of years.
Categories: Fossils

T. rex's direct ancestor crossed from Asia to North America

Tue, 05/06/2025 - 21:44
Tyrannosaurus rex evolved in North America, but its direct ancestor came from Asia, crossing a land bridge connecting the continents more than 70 million years ago, according to a new study.
Categories: Fossils

New drone-assisted 3D model offers a more accurate way to date dinosaur fossils

Tue, 05/06/2025 - 16:09
A new study is reshaping how scientists date dinosaur fossils in Alberta's Dinosaur Provincial Park (DPP). Using advanced drone-assisted 3D mapping, researchers have uncovered significant variations in a key geological marker, challenging long-standing methods of determining the ages of dinosaur fossils.
Categories: Fossils

How mid-Cretaceous events affected marine top predators

Fri, 05/02/2025 - 12:39
The highest trophic niches in Mesozoic oceans were filled by diverse marine reptiles, including ichthyosaurians, plesiosaurians, and thalattosuchians, dominating food webs during the Jurassic and Early Cretaceous. Yet during the mid-Cretaceous, ichthyosaurs, thalattosuchians, and pliosaurids vanished, replaced by mosasaurs, xenopsarian plesiosaurians, and new groups like sharks, fish, turtles, and birds. This shift restructured marine ecosystems.
Categories: Fossils

Why did some ancient animals fossilize while others vanished?

Thu, 05/01/2025 - 11:25
Why do some ancient animals become fossils while others disappear without a trace? A new study reveals that part of the answer lies in the body itself. The research shows that an animal's size and chemical makeup can play an important role in determining whether it's preserved for millions of years -- or lost to time.
Categories: Fossils

Ptero firma: Footprints pinpoint when ancient flying reptiles conquered the ground

Thu, 05/01/2025 - 11:20
A new study links fossilized flying reptile tracks to animals that made them. Fossilized footprints reveal a 160-million-year-old invasion as pterosaurs came down from the trees and onto the ground. Tracks of giant ground-stalkers, comb-jawed coastal waders, and specialized shell crushers, shed light on how pterosaurs lived, moved, and evolved.
Categories: Fossils

Geobiology: Iron, sulfur, heat -- and first life

Wed, 04/30/2025 - 13:22
The very first cells obtained their energy from geochemical reactions. Researchers have now managed to recreate this ancient metabolic process in their laboratory.
Categories: Fossils

One of Earth's ancient volcanic mysteries solved

Wed, 04/30/2025 - 13:20
A new study traces a 120-million-year-old 'super-eruption' to its source, offering new insights into Earth's complex geological history.
Categories: Fossils

Giant croclike carnivore fossils found in the Caribbean

Tue, 04/29/2025 - 18:53
Imagine a crocodile built like a greyhound -- that's a sebecid. Standing tall, with some species reaching 20 feet in length, they dominated South American landscapes after the extinction of dinosaurs until about 11 million years ago. Or at least, that's what paleontologists thought. A new study shows the Caribbean Islands were a refuge for the last sebecid populations at least 5 million years after they went extinct everywhere else.
Categories: Fossils

Elephant instead of wild boar? What could have been in Europe

Mon, 04/28/2025 - 21:19
Even under today's climatic conditions, the long-extinct straight-tusked elephant could still live in Europe. This is the conclusion of a recent study. For this finding, the research group combined fossil finds with reconstructions of past climates.
Categories: Fossils

'Extremely rare event': bone analysis suggests ancient echidnas lived in water

Mon, 04/28/2025 - 21:04
New research questions the evolutionary history of some of our most peculiar mammals.
Categories: Fossils

The oldest ant ever discovered found fossilized in Brazil

Thu, 04/24/2025 - 11:07
A 113-million-year-old hell ant that once lived in northeastern Brazil is now the oldest ant specimen known to science, finds a new report. The hell ant, which was preserved in limestone, is a member of Haidomyrmecinae -- an extinct subfamily that only lived during the Cretaceous period. These ants had highly specialized, scythe-like jaws that they likely used to pin or impale prey.
Categories: Fossils

How activity in Earth's mantle led the ancient ancestors of elephants, giraffes, and humans into Asia and Africa

Mon, 04/21/2025 - 15:32
What roils beneath the Earth's surface may feel a world away, but the activity can help forge land masses that dictate ocean circulation, climate patterns, and even animal activity and evolution. In fact, scientists believe that a plume of hot rocks that burst from the Earth's mantle millions of years ago could be an important part in the story of human evolution.
Categories: Fossils

Secret to crocodylian longevity

Wed, 04/16/2025 - 12:59
Researchers examined teeth and skulls of 99 extinct crocodylomorph species and 20 living crocodylian species to reconstruct their dietary ecology and identify characteristics that helped some groups persist through two mass extinctions. They discovered that one secret tocrocodylian longevity is their remarkably flexible lifestyles, both in what they eat and the habitat in which they get it.
Categories: Fossils

Footprints of tail-clubbed armored dinosaurs found for the first time

Mon, 04/14/2025 - 11:44
Footprints of armored dinosaurs with tail clubs have been identified, following discoveries made in the Canadian Rockies. The 100-million-year-old fossilized footprints were found at sites at both Tumbler Ridge, BC, and northwestern Alberta.
Categories: Fossils

Prehistoric rhinos lived in super-herds

Wed, 04/09/2025 - 14:48
Rhinos that flourished across much of North America 12 million years ago gathered in huge herds, according to a new study.
Categories: Fossils

Mediterranean hunter gatherers navigated long-distance sea journeys well before the first farmers

Wed, 04/09/2025 - 10:47
Evidence shows that hunter-gatherers were crossing at least 100 kilometers (km) of open water to reach the Mediterranean island of Malta 8,500 years ago, a thousand years before the arrival of the first farmers.
Categories: Fossils

Mammoth genetic diversity throughout the last million years

Wed, 04/09/2025 - 10:47
A new genomic study has uncovered long-lost genetic diversity in mammoth lineages spanning over a million years, providing new insights into the evolutionary history of these animals.
Categories: Fossils

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