Paleontology News

Hirmoneura messelense preserves pollen from at least four plant families in its crop. Image credit: Wedmann et al., doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.02.025.

Pollen-Feeding Flies Pollinated Flowers 47 Million Years Ago

Mar 17, 2021 by News Staff

Hirmoneura messelense, a newly described species of nemestrinid fly that lived approximately 47.5 million years ago (Eocene period), pollinated flowers...

Understanding the history of the Greenland Ice Sheet is critical for predicting its response to future climate warming and contribution to sea-level rise. Image credit: Rolf Johansson.

Geologists Find Million-Year-Old Plant Fossils Deep Beneath Greenland Ice Sheet

Mar 16, 2021 by News Staff

The deep ice at Camp Century in northwestern Greenland entirely melted at least once within the last million years and was covered with vegetation, including...

Life reconstruction of Vilevolodon diplomylos showing a parent and offspring. Image credit: Sarah Shelley.

Jurassic Gliding Mammal Relative Sheds New Light on Evolution of Mammalian Middle Ear

Mar 16, 2021 by News Staff

Paleontologists from the United States and China have examined the middle ear bones (ossicles) of Vilevolodon diplomylos, a gliding haramiyidan that lived...

Life reconstruction of an aristonectine plesiosaur. Image credit: Nobu Tamura, http://spinops.blogspot.com / CC BY-SA 4.0.

New Elasmosaurid Plesiosaur Unearthed in Chile

Mar 15, 2021 by Enrico de Lazaro

A new genus and species of aristonectine elasmosaurid plesiosaur has been described from a partial skeleton found in central Chile. Life reconstruction...

This reconstruction of the Late Devonian estuarine lake at Waterloo Farm in South Africa captures the life history of an ancient lamprey species called Priscomyzon riniensis. Three individuals representing different ontogenetic stages take a shelter in the meadow of charophyte algae Octochara crassa. Clockwise from right: a yolk-sac-carrying hatchling tucked in the charophyte; a juvenile attached to the substrate in the foreground, and an adult looming over the other individuals and showing its feeding apparatus. In the background, a school of the coelacanth Serenichthys kowiensis swims by. Image credit: Kristen Tietjen.

Devonian Lamprey Hatchling-to-Adult Growth Series Sheds New Light on Vertebrate Origins

Mar 12, 2021 by News Staff

Paleontologists from Canada, the United States and South Africa have unearthed the fossilized remains of larval and juvenile forms of four lamprey species...

Reconstruction of the aerial parts of Paratingia wuhaia from the early Permian of China. Image credit: Yugao Ren / Sijia Tang.

Permian Tree Fossil Sheds Light on Ancient Evolutionary Race

Mar 10, 2021 by News Staff

Noeggerathiales are enigmatic plants that existed during Carboniferous and Permian times, 323 to 252 million years ago. Although their diversity and distribution...

An attentive oviraptorid theropod dinosaur broods its nest of blue-green eggs while its mate looks on in what is now Jiangxi Province of southern China some 70 million years ago. Image credit: Zhao Chuang.

Paleontologists Find Remains of Oviraptorid Dinosaur and Embryo-Bearing Egg Clutch

Mar 10, 2021 by News Staff

Paleontologists in China have discovered what they say is the first non-avialan dinosaur fossil known to preserve an adult skeleton atop an egg clutch...

Life reconstruction of Tamarro insperatus (adults were 1.5-2 m in length and had a mass of 20 kg). Image credit: Oscar Sanisidro / Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont / Museu de la Conca Dellà.

New Bird-Like Dinosaur Identified in Spain

Mar 8, 2021 by Enrico de Lazaro

A new genus and species of troodontid dinosaur that lived 66 million years ago at the very end of the Cretaceous period has been identified from an isolated...

The woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) at the Royal BC Museum, Victoria, British Columbia. Image credit: Tracy O / CC BY-SA 2.0.

Mammoths Co-Existed with Early Americans in New England, Study Suggests

Mar 4, 2021 by News Staff

The so-called Mount Holly mammoth (Mammuthus sp.) lived approximately 12,800 years ago in what is now New England, a region comprising six states in the...

Life reconstruction of Dzharatitanis kingi. Image credit: Alexander Averianov.

New Sauropod Dinosaur Discovered in Uzbekistan

Mar 2, 2021 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists have identified a new genus and species of rebbachisaurid dinosaur from a fossil uncovered in Uzbekistan. Life reconstruction of Dzharatitanis...

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...