News
This Ancient Crocodile Ancestor Learned to Walk on Two Legs
2+ day, 11+ hour ago (231+ words) It was a childhood crawler before it walked upright 10:44 AM CDT on March 9, 2026 Artwork by Gabriel Ugueto The forest-dwelling S. cedrus was only 25 inches tall (about the height of a Canada goose) and had the typical characteristics of shuvosaurids, but a…...
The Dainty Dinosaur That’s Rewriting Evolutionary History
6+ day, 5+ hour ago (330+ words) New alvarezsaur fossil offers a Cretaceous missing link 5:30 PM CST on March 5, 2026 Alvarezsaurs were strange, small dinosaurs adapted to feed on ants and termites. Their stubby arms, powered by big chest muscles, ended in single thumb claws, suggesting a digging…...
Paleontologists Solve the Mystery of a Twisted Jawbone With Sideways Teeth
1+ week, 1+ day ago (242+ words) The Tanyka was a little like a platypus The jawbone, the team determined, belonged to a tetrapod species that they dubbed Tanyka amnicola, a living fossil even in its own day 275 million years ago. Many stem tetrapods died out after…...
When Scientists Are Dinosaurs
1+ week, 1+ day ago (330+ words) At the paleontology conference, her new theory was shouted down I wasn't fazed one bit as the tequila hit the table for the third time in an hour. You see, while I wore the name tag Matt Kaplan, Science Correspondent…...
This Football-Shaped Creature Was an Early Terrestrial Plant-Eater
1+ mon, 1+ day ago (255+ words) The newly discovered specimen shows how early herbivory evolved Pantylids were among the early pioneers in land colonization. Known as "stem amniotes" they were closely related to the first vertebrates that developed eggs capable of surviving on land without drying…...
The Monstrous Appetite of Japanese Giant Salamanders
1+ mon, 5+ day ago (198+ words) Body size pushes these river monsters to become apex predators There are monsters lurking in the rivers of southern Japan'giant salamanders that can grow up to five feet long. Second only to their Chinese cousins, these wet-skinned leviathans are some…...
Inside the Mouth of Earth’s Oldest Bird
1+ mon, 6+ day ago (472+ words) A new look at an Archaeopteryx skull reveals some familiar and fascinating structures If you've ever had the misfortune of staring down the gullet of a screaming goose, you know it contains the stuff of nightmares'a thick, barbed tongue surrounded…...
Baby Sauropods Were the Potato Chips of the Jurassic Era
1+ mon, 1+ week ago (241+ words) Life was cheap in this ecosystem" The closest thing we have to a real-life Jurassic Park is the Morrison Formation, a sprawling deposit of fossil-rich sedimentary rock dating back to the Jurassic Period spanning several Southwestern states. While the dinosaurs…...
How Giant Kangaroos Moved Across Ancient Australia
1+ mon, 2+ week ago (180+ words) Structure of fossil foot and ankle bones was robust enough for occasional hopping The full Nautilus archive " eBooks & Special Editions " Ad-free reading After all, Pleistocene giant kangaroos faced hyper-carnivore predators like "marsupial lions(Thylacoleo carnifex), whose tooth marks have been…...
Tyrannosaurids Took Their Time Growing to 17,000 Pounds
1+ mon, 3+ week ago (383+ words) Science at the Ballot Box Women in Science & Engineering Forty-year growth periods may have given them a leg up in dominating their ecosystems The full Nautilus archive " eBooks & Special Editions " Ad-free reading How long did it take for a Tyrannosaurus…...