Paleontology

Exeter, UK — The ancestors of many animal species alive today may have lived in a delta in what is now China, new research suggests. The Cambrian Explosion, more than 500 million years ago, saw the rapid spread of bilaterian species – symmetrical along a central line, like most of today’s animals (including humans). The […]

Columbia, MO — An international team of scientists from the United States and Australia, led by Sarah Jacquet at the University of Missouri, has documented the discovery of two new species of fossilized armoured worms in Australia — Lepidocoleus caliburnus and Lepidocoleus shurikenus — dating from about 400 million years ago. Then, using the micro-CT […]

Cambridge, MA — Fossils trapped in amber provide a unique snapshot of the anatomy, biology, and ecology of extinct organisms. The most common fossils found in amber, which is formed from resin exuded from tree bark, are land-dwelling animals, mainly insects. But on very rare occasions scientists discover amber housing an aquatic organism. In a […]

Durham, NC – Sixty-three percent. That’s the proportion of mammal species that vanished from Africa and the Arabian Peninsula around 30 million years ago, after Earth’s climate shifted from swampy to icy. But we are only finding out about it now. Compiling decades of work, a new study published this week in the journal Communications […]

Bonn, Germany — The intervertebral discs connect the vertebrae and give the spine its mobility. The disc consists of a cartilaginous fibrous ring and a gelatinous core as a buffer. It has always been assumed that only humans and other mammals have discs. A misconception, as a research team under the leadership of the University […]

Denver, CO — Pinnacle Point, a series of archaeological sites that overlook a now-submerged section of South Africa’s coastline and one of the world’s most important localities for the study of modern human origins, was as much of an Eden for animals as it was for early humans. Dr. Jamie Hodgkins, assistant professor of anthropology […]

Leipzig, Germany — Information on what our ancestors ate is based mainly on carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses of the structural protein collagen in bones and dentin. Nitrogen isotope analysis, in particular, helps scientists determine whether animal or plant food was consumed. Since collagen, like proteins in general, is not easily conservable, this method cannot […]

Salt Lake City, UT — A remarkable new species of meat-eating dinosaur has been unveiled at the Natural History Museum of Utah. Paleontologists unearthed the first specimen in early 1990s in Dinosaur National Monument in northeastern Utah. The huge carnivore inhabited the flood plains of western North America during the Late Jurassic Period, between 157-152 […]

Columbia, MO — A 550 million-year-old fossilized digestive tract found in the Nevada desert could be a key find in understanding the early history of animals on Earth. Over a half-billion years ago, life on Earth was comprised of simple ocean organisms unlike anything living in today’s oceans. Then, beginning about 540 million years ago, […]