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4+ hour, 36+ min ago (194+ words) Hyderabad: After discovering a 230-million-year-old wood fossil in Bopparam of Mancherial district, the heritage department is set to look for dinosaur eggs in the area. The three-day exploration will shortly begin in Sompeta in the district. The exploration will be conducted by the team of technical officers, including deputy director P. Nagaraju, assistant director Mallu Naik and three officials from the heritage department. The "dinasourium" at the G.P. Birla Archaeological museum hosts a fossil of the kotasaurus, dating back to the lower Jurassic age about 160 million years ago. It was excavated from Yamanpalli in undivided Adilabad district. There have been reports of dinosaur bone fragments, tortoise and animal footprints from the Jurassic period found in Yamanapalli. "A meeting has been conducted under the guidance of department director Prof. K. Arjun Rao to find dinosaur eggs. If found, they will be kept in the…...

6+ hour, 58+ min ago (578+ words) Look in the mirror. See that bony bump jutting out from your lower jaw? That's your chin'and it's one of the strangest things about being human. Not because it's particularly useful or anything, but because we humans are the only creature on planet Earth who has one. Scientists have spent decades trying to crack the code of why we have chins, and the answer remains frustratingly elusive." Biomechanical studies have hammered the final nail in the functional coffin: chins provide zero structural advantage for chewing, biting, or handling jaw stress. It's essentially decorative bone, an architectural flourish that serves no apparent purpose. For more fascinating mysteries about our anatomy, check out our list of human body parts that baffle evolutionary scientists. Scientists love a good mystery, and the chin has spawned multiple competing theories'none of which have won universal acceptance....

8+ hour, 40+ min ago (438+ words) The mosasaur may have occupied a similar niche to modern-day saltwater crocodiles A giant ocean predator that terrorised the seas during the time of the dinosaurs may have also hunted in rivers, a tooth fossil discovered in North Dakota suggests. The extinct lizard-like reptile grew up to 12 metres (40 ft) in length and may have occupied a similar niche to modern-day saltwater crocodiles, say researchers from Uppsala University in Sweden. Until now, these terrifying giant aquatic reptiles with a bulky skull and powerful jaws were thought to be sea-dwelling predators, exclusively hunting in the oceans. Now, a 66-million-year-old mosasaur tooth fossil has been found in the Hell Creek Formation in North Dakota that bears signs of exposure to river water. Researchers dub the species the "King of the Riverside" in the new study published in the journal BMC Zoology. In the…...

8+ hour, 41+ min ago (333+ words) A dinosaur was misidentified for 100 years, and it's more jaw-dropping than you can imagine! A dinosaur fossil that has been sitting in storage for over a century has just been reclassified as an entirely new species. Tuebingosaurus maierfritzorum, discovered in Germany, was long thought to be a type of Plateosaurus. But after reexamining the bones, researchers from the University of T'bingen have revealed it's a completely different genus. The fossil, first unearthed in 1922, was stored in a collection for years, left largely forgotten. But sometimes, old bones have a way of offering up new secrets when looked at with fresh eyes. What they found was surprising. The bones that were once thought to belong to a two-legged dinosaur actually showed signs of a four-legged creature. According to the experts: "This is unlike the'Plateosauridae, which although resembling the long-necked sauropods from…...

10+ hour, 35+ min ago (648+ words) Vertebrae of the giant were found on coastline near Darwin in Australia's far north A monstrous shark, predating whales, great whites, or even the bus-sized megalodon, once prowled the waters off what is now northern Australia during the Cretaceous period. Researchers, studying huge vertebrae discovered near Darwin, have identified this creature as the earliest known mega-predator of the modern shark lineage. It lived an astonishing 15 million years earlier than any enormous sharks previously found. This ancestor of today's 6-metre (20-foot) great white shark was thought to be about 8 metres (26 feet) long, according to a paper published in Communications Biology. "Cardabiodontids were ancient, mega-predatory sharks that are very, very common from the later part of the Cretaceous, after 100 million years ago," said Benjamin Kear, the senior curator in paleobiology at the Swedish Museum of Natural History and one of the study's…...

12+ hour, 23+ min ago (178+ words) Home " News " Why This Tiny Mammal May Be the Oldest Living Fossil Living fossils often represent the last surviving members of once-diverse lineages, having somehow persisted through mass extinctions and environmental changes that eliminated their relatives. Classic examples include the horseshoe crab, coelacanth fish, and nautilus " and now, the monito del monte joins this exclusive evolutionary club as potentially the oldest mammalian representative. While most South American marsupials evolved from North American ancestors that arrived after the formation of the Panama land bridge, the monito del monte represents a different, much older lineage. It stands as a living testament to a time when Australia, Antarctica, and South America were still connected, making it a genuine Gondwanan relict " a tiny window into Earth's ancient past. The persistence of the monito del monte through millions of years, including multiple mass extinction events,…...

12+ hour, 44+ min ago (555+ words) Studio Wildcard and Snail Games have revealed the first major update for the ARK: Lost Colony expansion, as they showed off the Mythic Aureliax Dragon. One of the many new creatures added to the pass, Aureliax is a telekinetic serpentine dragon that demands players prove their worth, as you'll go through a series of trials [] Confront the demons of Arat Prime " birthplace of the ARKs " in ASA's first massive canonical expansion pack, ARK: Lost Colony! Starring Michelle Yeoh as Mei Yin in cinematic anime sequences by legendary Japanese studio MAPPA, the epic new story of ARK: Lost Colony bridges the gap from ARK Extinction to ARK Genesis and into the world of ARK 2. As you follow in Mei Yin's footsteps through an intense journey into the heart of darkness, you'll unlock powerful "Lost" character ability trees, befriend exotic tames, craft…...

17+ hour, 26+ min ago (681+ words) Researchers have dated vertebrae from a massive prehistoric shark thought to have ruled the waves off northern Australia back to further in the Cretaceous period than was previously known WELLINGTON, New Zealand -- In the age of dinosaurs " before whales, great whites or the bus-sized megalodon " a monstrous shark prowled the waters off what's now northern Australia, among the sea monsters of the Cretaceous period. Researchers studying huge vertebrae discovered on a beach near the city of Darwin say the creature is now the earliest known mega-predator of the modern shark lineage, living 15 million years earlier than enormous sharks found before. And it was huge. The ancestor of today's 6-meter (20-foot) great white shark was thought to be about 8 meters (26 feet) long, the authors of a paper published in the journal Communications Biology said. "Cardabiodontids were ancient, mega-predatory sharks that are…...

19+ hour, 56+ min ago (823+ words) Dec. 13, 2025: Our weekly roundup of the latest science in the news, as well as a few fascinating articles to keep you entertained over the weekend. It has been an exciting week in science news, with our understanding of human evolution and animal behavior taking interesting turns. But before we dip into matters on Earth, let's look to the skies and see what we've discovered in space. Finally, in a bit of out-of-this-world holiday news, Jupiter will be big and bright in the skies this month, making some wonder if it could have been the Star of Bethlehem described in the story of Jesus' birth. We'll never know for sure, but it's unlikely. And closer to home, a particle detector buried deep underground in South Dakota has found no hints of elusive dark matter. The particle accelerator was searching for a…...

1+ day, 6+ hour ago (240+ words) Published Dec 12, 2025 1:35 PM EST A remarkably well-preserved dinosaur fossil has arrived at the Smithsonian's National Museum of National History. According to the institution's announcement, the nearly complete skull of a Pachycephalosaurus is set to make its public debut on December 22 in the FossiLab'the museum's working specimen preparation laboratory. "This skull is by far the most spectacular specimen of this type of dinosaur that we have at the museum," said Matthew Carrano, a paleontologist and the museum's Dinosauria curator. "We almost never get to see the animal's face or the teeth or other parts of the head because they usually have broken away." The largely intact skull is a relatively recent discovery. In 2024, paleontologists unearthed the specimen in South Dakota at the Hell Creek Formation. The region is famous for a diverse fossil array spanning the 1.5 million years leading up to…...