Paleontology News

May 30, 2025 by News Staff

Polar ecosystems are structured and enriched by birds, which nest there seasonally and serve as keystone ecosystem members. Despite the ecological importance of polar birds, the origins of high-latitude nesting remain obscured by a sparse fossil record. In new research, paleontologists examined an extreme-latitude assemblage of bird fossils from the Late Cretaceous Prince Creek Formation of Alaska. An illustration of Cretaceous period birds with other...

May 26, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

A new genus and species of eusauropod dinosaur has been identified from a fossilized partial skeleton with a nearly complete skull found in the Chinese...

May 26, 2025 by News Staff

In a study published today in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, paleontologists analyzed the ratio of two different zinc isotopes in the...

May 23, 2025 by News Staff

Today, there are only two sloth species, but historically, there were dozens of them, including one with a bottle-nosed snout that ate ants and another...

May 23, 2025 by News Staff

Traskasaura sandrae, a 12-m-long elasmosaur (a type of plesiosaur) that lived in the Cretaceous seas, 85 million years ago, had a strange mix of primitive...

May 21, 2025 by News Staff

Long dinosaur trackways provide valuable records of trackmaker behavior, yet their study is often hindered by logistical challenges in documentation and...

May 20, 2025 by News Staff

Large amber deposits discovered in northern Japan were likely swept out from a forest to the ocean by one or more tsunamis between 116 and 114 million...

May 20, 2025 by News Staff

Australopithecus sediba — a small hominin species that lived about 2 million years ago — had a mix of ape-like and human-like features, while...

May 19, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists have announced the discovery of a new genus and species of baracromian ichthyosaur, based on the fossilized skull found in the Água de...

May 16, 2025 by Simon Braddy

Trilobites were a diverse group of ancient marine arthropods. Many trilobites lived on the seafloor but some occupied open water. New research has resolved...

May 15, 2025 by News Staff

Dubbed the Chicago Archaeopteryx, the new fossil is the 14th known specimen of this iconic Jurassic species. The Chicago Archaeopteryx. Image credit: Delaney...

May 15, 2025 by News Staff

Paleontologists have discovered fossilized tracks of a reptile-like animal — securely dated to the early Tournaisian age of the Carboniferous period,...

May 14, 2025 by News Staff

Mosura fentoni lived in what is now Canada during the Cambrian period, approximately 506 million years ago. Life reconstruction of Mosura fentoni. Image...

May 13, 2025 by News Staff

The fossils of the giant rainforest tree Dryobalanops rappa found in Brunei (officially Brunei Darussalam), a country on the large island of Borneo, are...

May 12, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

The newly-identified species fills a temporal gap between South American herrerasaurid dinosaurs and their younger relatives from North America. Life reconstruction...

May 9, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

Cicadidae is one of the most species-rich insect families today. However, compared to the number of living species, fossil records of Cicadidae are extremely...

May 9, 2025 by News Staff

Paleontologists have found the fossils of three new fish species — including the earliest known salmonid fish, Sivulliusalmo alaskensis — at...

May 8, 2025 by News Staff

Initially interpreted as a primitive Cambrian mollusk, Shishania aculeata — a 500-million-year-old spine-covered fossil found in China’s Yunnan...

May 7, 2025 by News Staff

Distal regulation — the ability to control genes from far away, over many tens of thousands of DNA letters — appeared at the very dawn of animal...

May 7, 2025 by News Staff

The genus Tyrannosaurus most likely arose in North America, although its direct ancestors migrated over from Asia more than 70 million years ago, according...