Paleontology News

Sep 8, 2025 by News Staff

Several new species of coelacanths that lived at the end of the Triassic period, some 200 million years ago, have been identified from museum specimens unearthed over 150 years ago in the United Kingdom. An artist’s reconstruction of a large mawsoniid coelacanth from the British Rhaetian. Image credit: Daniel Phillips. Coelacanths are evolutionarily unique lobe-finned fishes that first appeared in the fossil record in the Early Devonian epoch, around...

Sep 5, 2025 by News Staff

Paleontologists at the University of Leicester have examined the 150-million-year-old fossilized skeletons of two highly immature Pterodactylus antiquus...

Sep 4, 2025 by News Staff

In a new study, scientists analyzed ancient microbial DNA from 483 mammoth remains spanning over 1 million years, including 440 newly-sequenced and unpublished...

Sep 2, 2025 by News Staff

Arthropod appendages are specialized for diverse roles including feeding, walking, and mating. Fossils from the Cambrian period (539 to 487 million years...

Sep 1, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists have announced the discovery of a new genus and species of early eusauropod dinosaur from the Jurassic period of China. Mamenchisaurus...

Aug 29, 2025 by Sergio Prostak

Horseshoe crabs are an ancient lineage with an evolutionary history stretching back 450 million years (Ordovician period) and are generally considered...

Aug 28, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists have unearthed a beautifully preserved skull and jaws as well as part of the postcranial skeleton of a previously unknown peirosaur species...

Aug 27, 2025 by News Staff

The armored ankylosaurian dinosaurs are best known from Late Cretaceous northern hemisphere ecosystems, but their early evolution in the Early-Middle Jurassic...

Aug 26, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

A team of paleontologists from New Zealand and Australia has described a new extinct shelduck species from Holocene fossil bone deposits on the Rēkohu...

Aug 26, 2025 by News Staff

The atmosphere of Earth during the Mesozoic era, between 252 and 66 million years ago, contained far more carbon dioxide than it does today and total photosynthesis...

Aug 26, 2025 by News Staff

Around 390 million years ago (Devonian period), marine animals began colonizing depths previously uninhabited. New research led by scientists from Duke...

Aug 25, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists have described a new genus and species of stem-chelydrid turtle using complete fossilized shells and associated material found in the Early...

Aug 22, 2025 by News Staff

A new genus and species of sail-backed iguanodontian dinosaur has been identified from a partial skeleton found in the Wessex Formation of the Isle of...

Aug 19, 2025 by News Staff

Paleontologists have found the fossilized remains of the extinct deer species Eocoileus gentryorum at the Early Pliocene Gray Fossil Site of northeastern...

Aug 18, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

Named Cordualadensa acorni, the new dragonfly species from Alberta’s Dinosaur Provincial Park represents the only Mesozoic dragonfly for Canada and fills...

Aug 14, 2025 by News Staff

Tiny, toothed mammalodontids were among the strangest of all whales. If alive today, they would be as iconically Australian as kangaroos. In a new paper...

Aug 14, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists in Australia have discovered the fossilized remains of a new species in the extinct kangaroo genus Dorcopsoides. The greater forest-wallaby...

Aug 12, 2025 by News Staff

Textbooks often portray primates as originating, evolving, and dispersing exclusively within warm tropical forests. This tends to come from fossil evidence...

Aug 11, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists have identified a new species of dromaeosaurid dinosaur from an almost complete and articulated skeleton found in the 2000s in Mongolia. Life...

Aug 11, 2025 by News Staff

Paleontologists have identified the myriad of animals — saber-toothed predators, burrowing foragers and a large, salamander-like creature —...