Paleontology News

Aug 20, 2024 by News Staff

Multiple studies have demonstrated that European colonization of the Americas led to the extinction of nearly all North American dog mitochondrial lineages and replacement with European ones sometime between 1492 and the present day. Historical records indicate that colonists imported dogs from Europe to North America, where they became objects of interest and exchange as early as the 17th century. However, it is not clear whether the earliest archaeological...

Aug 19, 2024 by Natali Anderson

Paleontologists have found the fossilized bones from a new species of the parrot genus Agapornis at three localities of the UNESCO World Heritage site...

Aug 16, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

A new species of ancient lungfish from the Triassic period has been identified from fossilized tooth plate material found in the Mid-Zambezi Basin, Zimbabwe. Life...

Aug 15, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists have unearthed three large (up to 7.2 cm in length) seeds and 43 fossil leaves of an ancient legume species in the Wahana Baratama coal...

Aug 14, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists from Japan, Belgium and the United States have identified a new species of the extinct genus Ontocetus from a nearly complete pair of fossilized...

Aug 9, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists have described a new genus and species of metriorhynchid crocodylomorph from the Stadthagen Formation of north-western Germany. An artist’s...

Aug 7, 2024 by News Staff

In new research, paleontologists used synchrotron X-ray tomography of annual growth increments in the dental cementum of fossil mammals from three faunas...

Aug 7, 2024 by News Staff

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....

Aug 5, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

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

Aug 5, 2024 by News Staff

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

Aug 2, 2024 by News Staff

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...

Aug 1, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

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

Aug 1, 2024 by News Staff

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)...

Jul 31, 2024 by News Staff

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

Jul 31, 2024 by News Staff

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

Jul 29, 2024 by Simon Braddy

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

Jul 29, 2024 by News Staff

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,...

Jul 26, 2024 by Simon Braddy

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

Jul 26, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

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

Jul 25, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

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