News
Proto-mammals laid eggs, paleontologists finally confirm
2+ hour, 1+ min ago (249+ words) Published Apr 9, 2026 4: 33 PM EDT Paleontologists discovered the specimen in question almost 17 years ago during an excavation in South Africa's Karoo Basin. The arid region located over 200 miles northeast of Cape Town is particularly well known for its vast troves of…...
500-million-year-old spider relative has claws where it shouldn't
1+ week, 1+ day ago (482+ words) " Amazon Big Spring Sale: 100+ editor-approved deals worth buying right now " Published Apr 1, 2026 11: 00 AM EDT The fossil was completely unremarkable. That's what Harvard University paleontologist Rudy Lerosey-Aubril initially thought while examining an arthropod fossil dating back to the Cambrian period (538. 8 million…...
What "Jurassic Park" got wrong about venomous dinosaurs
2+ week, 6+ day ago (1825+ words) Published Mar 20, 2026 4: 01 PM EDT Now, imagine one of those big bad dinos had venom. That'd be the last thing we need, but it very well could've been a reality. In a new episode of Popular Science's Ask Us Anything podcast,…...
Unusually large" tyrannosaur leg bone points to 10, 000-pound behemoth
4+ week, 6+ hour ago (341+ words) Published Mar 12, 2026 12: 00 PM EDT The sheer size of the tyrannosaur's leg bone caught the team by surprise, but so did its placement among the rocks. "That it is a very large tyrannosaur for its time, and much older geologically than…...
Bizarro salamander ancestor was an evolutionary oddball
1+ mon, 5+ day ago (477+ words) Published Mar 3, 2026 7: 05 PM EST It was also an extremely strange creature. So strange, in fact, that paleontologists initially thought they were looking at an ancient aberration when they discovered the first jawbone of this salamander-esque creature in a dry riverbed…...
New dinosaur discovered in Sahara desert was a horned "hell heron"
1+ mon, 2+ week ago (135+ words) Published Feb 19, 2026 2: 00 PM EST "This find was so sudden and amazing, it was really emotional for our team," said study co-author Paul Serano. "I envision this dinosaur as a kind of "hell heron" that had no problem wading on its…...
A Tyrannosaurus tooth embedded in dinosaur skull tells a violent story
1+ mon, 2+ week ago (360+ words) Published Feb 18, 2026 4: 00 PM EST A rare dinosaur fossil on display at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana, tells a gory story. The skull from a large plant-eating Edmontosaurus has a tooth lodged into it, indicating that it may…...
Prehistoric Japan was home to cave lions'not tigers
1+ mon, 2+ week ago (471+ words) Popular Science Present-day Japan may see its fair share of bears, but the islands" big cat populations are long gone. Between 129, 000 and 11, 700 years ago, temporary land bridges allowed the ancient predators to migrate between mainland Asia and the islands. Paleobiologists…...
Ancient sharks once swam in this landlocked state
1+ mon, 3+ week ago (467+ words) Andrew Paul is Popular Science's staff writer focused primarily on tech, AI, physics, and culture news. He was previously a regular contributor to The A. V. Club and Input, and has been featured by Rolling Stone, Fangoria, GQ, Slate, NBC, Mc Sweeney's…...
Weird bird mouths go all the way back to the first avian dinosaur
2+ mon, 6+ day ago (258+ words) Published Feb 2, 2026 4: 15 PM EST "For a long time, there have been very few things that we could say really characterize the transition from terrestrial dinosaurs to flying bird dinosaurs," explained Jingmai O'Connor, the associate curator of fossil reptiles at Chicago's…...