An exceptionally-preserved fossil from the Alps in eastern Switzerland has revealed the best look so far at an armoured reptile from the Middle Triassic named Eusaurosphargis dalsassoi. The fossil is extremely rare in that it contains the animal’s complete skeleton, giving an Anglo-Swiss research team a very clear idea of its detailed anatomy and probable…
Scientists Study 3,000-Year-Old Prosthesis
It is likely to be one of the oldest prosthetic devices in human history: Together with other experts, Egyptologists from the University of Basel have reexamined an artificial wooden big toe. The find is almost 3000 years old and was discovered in a female burial from the necropolis of Sheikh ´Abd el-Qurna close to Luxor.…
New Insight into the Evolution of Fish
A closer look at a ancient fossil has scientists rethinking the evolution of fish. An international team of researchers, led by the University of Calgary, have discovered new insight into Lethiscus stocki—an early snake-like animal that has them challenging a longstanding theory about the early evolution of tetrapods—four-limbed animals with backbones. “It forces a radical…
Ancient DNA Reveals Origins of Cat Domestication
DNA found at archaeological sites reveals that the origins of our domestic cat are in the Near East and ancient Egypt. Cats were domesticated by the first farmers some 10,000 years ago. They later spread across Europe and other parts of the world via trade hub Egypt. The DNA analysis also revealed that most of…
Ancient Skulls Give Insight into Roman Empire
Researchers are using skeletal evidence to shed light on the migration patterns that led to the Roman Republic conquering most of the Mediterranean world. Anthropologists from North Carolina State University and California State University, Sacramento have examined skulls dating from the first and third centuries A.D. from three imperial Roman cemeteries. Using new-age forensic techniques…
Study Shows How Neanderthals Transitioned to Modern Humans
A team of archaeologists have shed light on the ancient human’s transition into modern humans. Archaeologists from The Australian National University and the University of Sydney have completed an archaeological dig of a cave in the Moravian region of the Czech Republic that has provided a more conclusive timeline of modern human ancestry. “We’ve found…
Researchers Find Glass Eels Use Internal Compass to Find Their Way Home
Scientists are closer to unraveling the long-standing mystery of how tiny glass eel larvae, which begin their lives as hatchlings in the Sargasso Sea, know when and where to “hop off” the Gulf Stream toward European coastlines to live out their adult lives in coastal estuaries. In a new study by the University of Miami…
Curvature Could Give Fish Fins Their Strength
Newly Discovered Bones Push Origin of Mankind Back 100,000 Years
The discovery of uncovered fossil bones has pushed the date of the first ancient Homo sapiens back another 100,000 years. An international research team— led by Jean-Jacques Hublin of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany and Abdelouahed Ben-Ncer of the National Institute for Archeology and Heritage in Morocco— have discovered skulls, teeth…
New Species of Squirrel Takes Flight
Genetic Study Shakes Up the Elephant Family Tree
New research reveals that a species of giant elephant that lived 1.5 million to 100,000 years ago – ranging across Eurasia before it went extinct – is more closely related to today’s African forest elephant than the forest elephant is to its nearest living relative, the African savanna elephant. The study challenges a long-held assumption…
Fossil Skeleton Confirms Earliest Primates Were Tree Dwellers
Earth’s earliest primates dwelled in treetops, not on the ground, according to an analysis of a 62-million-year-old partial skeleton discovered in New Mexico — the oldest-known primate skeleton. The skeleton was discovered in the San Juan Basin by Thomas Williamson, Curator of Paleontology at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science, and his twin sons,…
Genetic Analysis of New World Birds Confirms Untested Evolutionary Assumption
Paleobiologists Make Intriguing New Discoveries About Dinosaurs’ Ancestors
New Theory on How First Land Animals Evolved
A new study shows that animal life on land began with a few short bursts of marine creatures searching for dryer land. Researchers from the University of Portsmouth have traced fossils to show how the colonization of land initially took place, the first time a pattern has been identified using trace fossils to track the…
How do Blind Cavefish Find Their Way? The Answer Could be in Their Bones
Imagine living in perpetual darkness in an alien world where you have to find food quickly by touch or starve for months at a time. The limestone caverns of Mexico’s Sierra del Abra Tanchipa rainforest contain deep cisterns cloaked in utter blackness. This is where researchers at the University of Cincinnati traveled to find a…
Scientists Uncover How Butterflies Form Iridescent Wings
3.3 Million-Year-Old Fossil Reveals the Antiquity of the Human Spine
For more than 3 million years, Selam lay silent and still. Eager to tell her story, the almost perfect fossil skeleton of a 2 1/2 year-old toddler was discovered at Dikika, Ethiopia — and she had a lot to say. An international research team slowly chipped away at the sandstone surrounding Selam at the National…
Wild Orangutan Teeth Provide Insight Into Human Breast-Feeding Evolution
Researchers Find T. Rex Could Crush 8,000 Pounds
Homo Naledi’s Surprisingly Young Age Opens Up More Questions on Where we Come From
Scientists today announced that the Rising Star Cave system has revealed yet more important discoveries, only a year and a half after it was announced that the richest fossil hominin site in Africa had been discovered, and that it contained a new hominin species named Homo naledi by the scientists who described it. The age of the…
World’s Oldest Fossil Might Be Algae
600-million-year old algae may represent the world’s oldest fossil and could shed light on the marine life during the interval in which molecular clocks predicting animal groups were still evolving. A team, led by researchers from the University of Bristol in the U.K., has discovered that ancient fossils discovered in South China that are considered…
35-Year South Carolina Alligator Study Uncovers Mysteries About Growth and Reproduction
Research by wildlife biologists from Clemson University and the Tom Yawkey Wildlife Center near Georgetown is shattering conventional scientific understanding about American alligator growth and reproduction. For years, it was believed that American alligators continued growing in length until they died, what is called “indeterminate growth.” But a 35-year study of a protected alligator population…
What Roundworms Can Teach Us About Human Growth
Human beings and the roundworm C. elegans have more in common than you’d expect. Thanks to a common ancestor more than 700 million years ago humans and roundworms have a similar hormone to drive and regulate growth. By activating or deactivating this hormone scientists can stimulate or stunt the growth of the worms. This is shown by…
New Species of Dinosaur Discovered
Researchers have identified a new species of dinosaur that roamed present day Wyoming about 150 million years ago. Researchers from Italy and Portugal have discovered Galeamopus pabsti, a Jurassic creature similar to Diplodocus but with more massive legs and a particularly high and triangular neck close to its head. This discovery represents the second species…