Paleontology News

Take-off is a vital part of powered flight which likely constrains the size of birds, yet extinct pterosaurs are known to have reached far larger sizes....

Paleontologists have announced the discovery of a new genus and species of troodontid theropod dinosaur, based on the fossilized remains found in Japan. Life...

Named Youti yuanshi, the newly-identified euarthropod species fills an important gap in our understanding of how the arthropod body plan originated and...

About 66 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period, a 10-km-wide asteroid crashed into Earth near the site of the town of Chicxulub in what...

A new genus and species of monofenestratan pterosaur being named Propterodacylus frankerlae documents the transition from the more ancient rhamphorhynchoid...

Pakudyptes hakataramea would have been similar in body size to the living little blue penguin (Eudyptula minor), which is around 40-45 cm (15.7-17.7 inches)...

Until now, scientists broadly accepted complex life forms first emerged on Earth around 635 million years ago (Ediacaran period). But an international...

Twinning has been around longer than we thought, according to new research led by Western Washington University. Jack H. McBride & Tesla A. Monson...

Sea scorpions (eurypterids), extinct giant aquatic arthropods, were apex predators. New research suggests that early species of the scorpion-like carcinosomatoid...

Parapontoporia, an extinct genus of long-snouted dolphins that lived off the Pacific coast of North America from the Late Miocene epoch until the Pliocene,...

The evolution of the first animals on land, 500 million years ago, has been revealed. The ancestors of millipedes, called euthycarcinoids, evolved in warm...

Paleontologists have discovered the remains of a deep-snouted tyrannosaurid dinosaur named Asiatyrannus xui in southeastern China. The fossil remains of...

Characterized by a finless torpedo-shaped body, Nuucichthys rhynchocephalus is the first soft-bodied vertebrate known from the American Great Basin. Nuucichthys...

Mandibulates are an example of evolutionary success, representing over half of all current species on Earth. Today, mandibulates are everywhere: from sea-dwelling...

Human settlement of islands across the Pacific Ocean was followed by waves of faunal extinctions that occurred so rapidly that their dynamics are difficult...

Eastern Africa preserves the most complete record of human evolution anywhere in the world but scientists have little knowledge of how long-term biogeographic...

Paleontologists have described a new species of snake from the Early Oligocene of Wyoming based on four nearly complete and articulated specimens found...

Paleontologists have found the remains of a previously unknown species of lizard in a piece of mid-Cretaceous amber excavated in northern Myanmar. Life...

Harenadraco prima is the first species of troodontid dinosaur ever found in the Late Cretaceous Baruungoyot Formation of Mongolia. Life reconstruction...