New research published today in the journal Science Advances overturns more than a century of thought about the source of turquoise used by ancient civilizations in Mesoamerica, the vast region that extends from Central Mexico to Central America. For more than 150 years, scholars have argued that the Aztec and Mixtec civilizations, which revered the precious, blue-green…
Research Team Uncovers Lost Images From the 19th Century
Art curators will be able to recover images on daguerreotypes, the earliest form of photography that used silver plates, after a team of scientists led by Western University learned how to use light to see through degradation that has occurred over time. Research published today in Scientific Reports includes two images from the National Gallery…
Scientists Discover New Species of Ancient Marine Lizard
University of Alberta paleontologists discovered a new species of marine lizard that lived 70 to 75 million years ago, with its muscle and skin remarkably well preserved. The fossil is a dolichosaur, a marine lizard related to snakes and mosasaurs. Called Primitivus manduriensis, it was found in Puglia, Italy, and named after the local Manduria…
Fossils Show Ancient Primates Had Grooming Claws As Well As Nails
Humans and other primates are outliers among mammals for having nails instead of claws. But how, when and why we transitioned from claws to nails has been an evolutionary head-scratcher. Now, new fossil evidence shows that ancient primates – including one of the oldest known, Teilhardina brandti – had specialized grooming claws as well as…
New Technique Provides Accurate Dating of Ancient Skeletons
Oldest Bubonic Plague Genome Decoded
An international team of researchers led by the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History has analyzed two 3,800-year-old Y. pestis genomes that suggest a Bronze Age origin for bubonic plague. The strain identified by the researchers was recovered from individuals in a double burial in the Samara region of Russia, who both had the…
Tiny Paragliding Beetle That Lived With Dinosaurs Discovered in Amber, Named ‘Jason’
Featherwing beetles are smaller than the period at the end of this sentence. They get their name from the feathery fringe on their wings that enables them to catch the air and float like dandelion seeds. And, it turns out, they go way back– scientists discovered a 99-million-year-old featherwing beetle preserved in amber, and they…
Researchers Report the Earliest Fossil Footprints
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong put the first human footprint on the moon. But when did animals leave the first footprint on Earth? Recently, an international research team reported discovering fossil footprints for animal appendages in the Ediacaran Period (about 635-541 million years ago) in China. This is considered the earliest animal fossil footprint record. The…
Study Finds Two Ancient Ancestries ‘Reconverged’ With Settling of South America
Even a Shark’s Electrical ‘Sixth Sense’ may be Tuned to Attack
Archaeologists Discover a 1,000-Year-Old Mummy in Peru
A team from the Université libre de Bruxelles’s centre for archaeological research (CReA-Patrimoine) has completed a significant excavation in Pachacamac, Peru, where they have discovered an intact mummy in especially good condition. Pachacamac’s status as a Pre-Colombian pilgrimage site under the Inca empire. is confirmed by further evidence. Peter Eeckhout and his team’s latest campaign…
Major Fossil Study Sheds New Light on Emergence of Early Animal Life 540 Million Years Ago
All the major groups of animals appear in the fossil record for the first time around 540-500 million years ago—an event known as the Cambrian Explosion—but new research from the University of Oxford in collaboration with the University of Lausanne suggests that for most animals this ‘explosion’ was in fact a more gradual process. The…
Genome Structure of Dinosaurs Discovered by Bird-Turtle Comparisons
A discovery by scientists at the University of Kent has provided significant insight into the overall genome structure of dinosaurs. By comparing the genomes of different species, chiefly birds and turtles, the Kent team were able to determine how the overall genome structure (i.e. the chromosomes) of many people’s favourite dinosaur species – like Velociraptor…
Jurassic Fossil Tail Tells of Missing Link in Crocodile Family Tree
A 180 million-year-old fossil has shed light on how some ancient crocodiles evolved into dolphin-like animals. The specimen – featuring a large portion of backbone – represents a missing link in the family tree of crocodiles, and was one of the largest coastal predators of the Jurassic Period, researchers say. The newly discovered species was…
Can Chimpanzee Vocalizations Reveal the Origins of Human Language?
25 Years of Fossil Collecting Yields Clearest Picture of Extinct 12-Foot Aquatic Predator
After 25 years of collecting fossils at a Pennsylvania site, scientists at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University now have a much better picture of an ancient, extinct 12-foot fish and the world in which it lived. Although Hyneria lindae was initially described in 1968, it was done without a lot of fossil…
New Species of Ancient Whale Identified and Named by Otago Paleontologists
University of Otago palaeontologists are rewriting the history of New Zealand’s ancient whales by describing a previously unknown genus of baleen whale, alive more than 27.5 million years ago and found in the Hakataramea Valley. The new genus and species of extinct baleen whale is based on a skull and associated bones unearthed from the…
The Blue Whale Genome Reveals the Animals’ Extraordinary Evolutionary History
Fossils Highlight Canada-Russia Connection 53 Million Years Ago
A new 53 million-year-old insect fossil called a scorpionfly discovered at B.C.’s McAbee fossil bed site bears a striking resemblance to fossils of the same age from Pacific-coastal Russia, giving further evidence of an ancient Canada-Russia connection. “We’ve seen this connection before through fossil plants and animals, but these insects show this in a beautiful…
Decade-Long Study Provides New Insight into Age of the Dinosaurs
A multi-institution, 10-year plus study across the globe has shed light on the emergence of dinosaurs during the early Triassic period. A team led by paleontologists and geologists at the University of Washington has uncovered new fossils in Zambia and Tanzania, examined previously collected fossils, and analyzed specimens in museums around the world to better…
New Technology Reveals Secrets of Famous Neandertal Skeleton La Ferrassie 1
Ash From Dinosaur-Era Volcanoes Linked with Shale Oil, Gas
Nutrient-rich ash from an enormous flare-up of volcanic eruptions toward the end of the dinosaurs’ reign kicked off a chain of events that led to the formation of shale gas and oil fields from Texas to Montana. That’s the conclusion of a new study by Rice University geologists that appears this week in Nature Publishing’s…
Modern Humans Flourished Through Ancient Supervolcano Eruption 74,000 Years Ago
Imagine a year in Africa that summer never arrives. The sky takes on a gray hue during the day and glows red at night. Flowers do not bloom. Trees die in the winter. Large mammals like antelope become thin, starve and provide little fat to the predators (carnivores and human hunters) that depend on them.…
Bird Fossil Could Shed New Light on Dinosaur Era
A newly discovered bird fossil could lead to a better understanding on the birds that existed while the dinosaurs roamed the land. Researchers from the University of Manchester have discovered a small fossil of a prehistoric baby bird from the Enantiornithes group that could help explain how early avians came into the world during the…