News
How Ancient Is Being Right-Handed? First Evidence of "Right-Handedness" Discovered in a 550-Million-Year-Old Fossil
3+ hour, 48+ min ago (588+ words) A study documents that the species Spriggina floundersi showed a systematic preference for curving to the right, placing the origin of lateralized behavior in animals much earlier than previously thought. Scientists from the American Museum of Natural History, Florida State…...
Fossil footprints found in Italy reveal the earliest evidence of when and where dinosaurs rose to dominate the planet
3+ week, 6+ day ago (560+ words) A study reviews the Lerici site and concludes that the first global radiation of sauropods occurred in the Carnian, earlier than previously thought. About 230 million years ago, during a geological period known as the Carnian (within the Late Triassic), Earth…...
The Largest Whale Necropolis in the World Discovered in the Indian Ocean, with Millions of Fossils and Remains from 5. 3 Million Years Ago to the Present
4+ week, 1+ day ago (656+ words) Whale falls occur when the carcasses of these marine mammals sink to the ocean floor, creating local concentrations of biodiversity in the abyssal depths. Beyond their role in long-term carbon sequestration, these phenomena allow scientists to trace the evolution and…...
The Moment We Saw the Light: Fossil Tracks Reveal When and How the First Animals Began to Perceive the World
1+ mon, 6+ day ago (609+ words) An animal with better senses does something else. It detects something'a microbial mat, a shelter, maybe a conspecific (an individual that belongs to the same species as another)'and changes direction toward it. Its paths curve, cross, form loops. The…...
A fossil found in Canada solves the paleontological enigma of the "Furongian gap," a 12-million-year period with no fossils
1+ mon, 1+ week ago (585+ words) An international study published in BMC Biology provides new clues to solve one of the most persistent paleontological enigmas of the Paleozoic: the so-called Furongian gap, a time interval roughly between 497 and 485 million years ago during which specialists had recorded…...
The fascinating history of Ha'eg, an ancient island in the middle of Europe where all the dinosaurs were dwarfs
1+ mon, 2+ week ago (1211+ words) Seventy million years ago, in the middle of the Tethys Sea, there was an island where evolution followed its own rules. There, dinosaurs shrank, pterosaurs became giants, and a Hungarian baron revolutionized paleontology with a theory that today is law....
A 400, 000-Year-Old Tooth Found in China Links Homo erectus with Denisovans and Modern Humans
1+ mon, 4+ week ago (436+ words) A team of scientists from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has successfully extracted molecular information from six fossil teeth of Homo erectus from three Chinese sites, using a new micro-destructive sampling…...
The Most Extensive Site of Dinosaur Footprints and Swimming Traces in the World Discovered in Bolivia, with More Than 16, 000 Identified Ichnites
7+ mon, 1+ week ago (202+ words) The ground of Carreras Pampa, in Torotoro National Park, is not simply soil and rock. It is a giant palimpsest, a monumental page of natural history where the footsteps of countless dinosaurs were superimposed again and again, creating a movement…...
Neanderthal children hunted pond turtles in Central Europe 125, 000 years ago, but not to eat them
3+ mon, 3+ day ago (504+ words) Our data provide the first evidence that Neanderthals also hunted and processed turtles north of the Alps, beyond the Mediterranean region, Gaudzinski-Windheuser explained in the statement released by the university. The significance of the discovery does not lie solely in…...
Jirahgorgon discovered: remains of a new prehistoric predator found in South Africa that challenge the history of early mammals
3+ mon, 1+ week ago (982+ words) A fossil found in South Africa reveals that large carnivores dominated ecosystems much earlier than previously believed The specimen, discovered in 2019 on the Wilgerbos farm, in the Western Cape province, belongs to the group of gorgonopsians, distant relatives of mammals…...