Paleontology News

Shortly after the end-Cretaceous mass extinction, the earliest known primates, such as Purgatorius mckeeveri shown in the foreground, quickly set themselves apart from their competition -- like the archaic ungulate mammal on the forest floor -- by specializing in an omnivorous diet including fruit found up in the trees. Image credit: Andrey Atuchin.

65-Million-Year-Old Primate Fossils Uncovered in Montana

Mar 1, 2021 by News Staff

Paleontologists in the United States have discovered and analyzed the fossilized remains from two species of Purgatorius, the oldest genus in a group of...

Ninjatitan zapatai. Image credit: Jorge González.

Paleontologists Discover Oldest Known Titanosaur

Mar 1, 2021 by Enrico de Lazaro

Ninjatitan zapatai lived approximately 140 million years ago (Early Cretaceous epoch) in what is now Patagonia, Argentina. Ninjatitan zapatai. Image credit:...

This painting depicts an asteroid slamming into tropical, shallow seas of the sulfur-rich Yucatan Peninsula in what is today southeast Mexico. The aftermath of this immense asteroid collision, which occurred approximately 65 million years ago, is believed to have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs and many other species on Earth. Shown in this painting are pterodactyls, flying reptiles with wingspans of up to 50 feet, gliding above low tropical clouds. Image credit: Donald E. Davis / NASA.

Geologists Find Asteroid Dust inside Chicxulub Impact Crater

Feb 25, 2021 by News Staff

Geologists believe they have closed the case of what killed non-avian dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period. This painting depicts an asteroid...

Reconstruction of the cave bear (Ursus spelaeus). Image credit: Sergio de la Larosa / CC BY-SA 3.0.

360,000-Year-Old DNA Sheds New Light on Evolutionary History of Cave Bears

Feb 25, 2021 by News Staff

An international team of researchers has extracted and sequenced DNA from a 360,000-year-old petrous bone of the extinct cave bear Ursus kudarensis found...

Canadian Eskimo dogs. Illustration by John James Audubon and John Bachman (1845-1848).

Researchers Sequence Mitochondrial Genome of Early Dog from Alaska

Feb 24, 2021 by News Staff

Scientists have extracted and sequenced mitochondrial DNA from a partial femur of an ancient dog that lived in Alaska 10,150 years ago. Their results,...

The ossified coelacanth lung from Morocco and its likely position as the anterior chamber in a mawsoniid coelacanth. Image credit: University of Portsmouth.

Cretaceous-Era Coelacanths Grew As Big As Great White Sharks

Feb 22, 2021 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists in Morocco have unearthed a crushed ossified lung of an enormous marine coelacanth that lived during the Late Cretaceous epoch, about 66...

Barite associated with originally sulfidic stromatolites in the Dresser mine in Western Australia. Image credit: Mißbach et al., doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-21323-z.

Researchers Find Ingredients for Microbial Life in 3.5-Billion-Year-Old Rocks

Feb 19, 2021 by Enrico de Lazaro

A team of geobiologists from Germany has found biologically-relevant primordial organic molecules and gases in fluid inclusions trapped in 3.5-billion-year-old...

The swamp skink (Lissolepis coventryi), which is probably the living lizard most similar to Proegernia mikebulli. Image credit: Mark Hutchinson, South Australian Museum & Flinders University.

Fossils of New Skink Species Unearthed in Australia

Feb 18, 2021 by News Staff

A new species of extinct skink that lived during the Oligocene epoch has been identified from the fossilized remains found in South Australia. The swamp...

Life reconstruction of the steppe mammoth (Mammuthus trogontherii). Image credit: Beth Zaiken / Centre for Palaeogenetics.

Researchers Sequence 1.2-Million-Year-Old Mammoth DNA

Feb 17, 2021 by News Staff

An international team of scientists has sequenced and analyzed DNA from three mammoth specimens, two of which are more than one million years old. The...

The Chicxulub asteroid hit Earth at an angle of about 60 degrees, which is among the worst-case scenarios for the lethality of the impact by the production of climate-changing gases. Image credit: Chase Stone.

Novel Theory Explains Possible Origin of Dinosaur-Killing Chicxulub Impactor

Feb 16, 2021 by News Staff

At the end of the Cretaceous period, about 66 million years ago, a 10-km impactor crashed into Earth near the site of the small town of Chicxulub in what...

Life reconstruction of Yezoceras elegans. Image credit: Daisuke Aiba.

Cretaceous-Period Ammonite Had Bizarre Shell

Feb 15, 2021 by Enrico de Lazaro

A new species of nostoceratid ammonite that lived during the Coniacian stage of the Cretaceous period has been identified from fossils found in Japan. Life...

Valviloculus pleristaminis, flower in lateral view. Image credit: Poinar, Jr. et al., doi: 10.17348/jbrit.v14.i2.1014.

Study: First Flowering Plants Appeared in Jurassic Period or Even Earlier

Feb 9, 2021 by News Staff

Flowering plants (angiosperms) are the most diverse of all land plants, becoming abundant in the Cretaceous period (145 to 66 million years ago) and achieving...

Life reconstruction of Megatherium. Image credit: Sebastián Rozadilla.

Paleontologists Find 3.58-Million-Year-Old Ground Sloth Fossil

Feb 3, 2021 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists in Argentina have discovered what they say is one of the oldest-known fossils of the ground sloth Megatherium. Life reconstruction of Megatherium....

Artistic rendering of Brindabellaspis stensioi (foreground) with a range of other Devonian fossil fishes; the white shark and human diver in the upper right corner represent modern jawed vertebrates. Image credit: Hongyu Yang / Qiuyang Zheng.

Devonian Fish’s Inner Ear Sheds Light on Earliest Evolution of Jawed Vertebrates

Feb 1, 2021 by News Staff

Paleontologists have found that Brindabellaspis stensioi, a species of long-beaked placoderm fish that lived 400 million years ago (Early Devonian epoch),...

The 635-million-year-old fungus-like filamentous microfossils from the Doushantuo Formation in China. Image credit: Andrew Czaja, University of Cincinnati.

Paleontologists Find 635-Million-Year-Old Land Fungus-Like Fossils

Jan 28, 2021 by Enrico de Lazaro

The 635-million-year-old pyritized fungus-like microfossils found in the Ediacaran-period Doushantuo Formation in China provide direct fossil evidence...

The first people to reach and disperse across the Americas did so in tandem with their dogs. Image credit: Ettore Mazza.

First People to Settle in Americas were Accompanied by Their Dogs

Jan 27, 2021 by News Staff

A new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that dogs were domesticated in Siberia by 23,000 years ago, possibly...

A group of Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus being confronted by a tyrannosaurid in the subtropical forests of New Mexico 75 million years ago. Image credit: Andrey Atuchin.

Paleontologists Find Well-Preserved Skull of Tube-Crested Dinosaur

Jan 27, 2021 by News Staff

The exquisite preservation of a new, partial skull of Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus, a species of duck-billed dinosaur that lived during the Cretaceous...

Capable of capturing both aquatic and terrestrial prey, and perhaps an opportunistic scavenger, adult Spinosaurus likely took aquatic prey by standing in shallow water or at the margins of water bodies. Image credit: Robert Nicholls.

Spinosaurus Wasn’t Aquatic Pursuit Predator, New Research Shows

Jan 27, 2021 by News Staff

The giant dinosaur Spinosaurus acted like modern herons or storks, taking fish and other aquatic prey from the edges of water or in shallow water, but...

Kramadolops maximus, the youngest known species of polydolopid marsupial. Image credit: Gabriel Lío.

Three New Species of Extinct Marsupials Identified

Jan 26, 2021 by Enrico de Lazaro

Dr. Laura Chornogubsky, a paleontologist in the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales ‘Bernardino Rivadavia’ and CONICET, has described one new genus...