4+ hour, 32+ min ago  (554+ words) Lystrosaurus represents a major group of primarily herbivorous vertebrates that were common during the Permian and Triassic periods. This ancient creature was between 1. 8 and 2. 4 m (6-8 feet) in length, had no teeth, but bore a pair of tusks in the upper…...

2+ day, 2+ hour ago  (470+ words) Paleontologists have examined 289-million-year-old specimens of the early reptile Captorhinus aguti that preserve a covering of three-dimensional skin, a complete shoulder girdle and ribcage with cartilages, and " most astonishingly " protein remnants that predate the previous oldest-known example by nearly 100 million…...

2+ day, 3+ hour ago  (470+ words) New evidence from Germany suggests Neanderthals captured European pond turtles (Emys orbicularis) around 125, 000 years ago, likely valuing their shells as tools rather than their modest meat yield. The European pond turtle (Emys orbicularis) next to the foot of the straight-tusked…...

2+ day, 7+ hour ago  (437+ words) Pohlsepia mazonensis, a cephalopod species first described in 2000 from a 300-million-year-old specimen and featured in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's oldest octopus, has been reclassified as a distant relative of nautiluses, reshaping paleontologists' timeline for when octopuses…...

4+ day, 2+ hour ago  (574+ words) An assemblage of more than 700 Ediacaran fossils from the end of the Ediacaran period indicates that key animal groups " including early relatives of vertebrates " were already diversifying millions of years earlier than long believed. Reconstruction of the Jiangchuan Biota. Image…...

1+ week, 2+ hour ago  (378+ words) Deep inside a limestone cave in western Cuba, paleontologists have found the most complete ichthyosaur skeleton yet found on the island. Ophthalmosaurid ichthyosaurs. Image credit: Dmitry Bogdanov / CC BY 3. 0. The ichthyosaur skeleton was discovered in 2023 in a fluvial cave in…...

1+ week, 1+ day ago  (473+ words) In a paper published online March 18 in the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, paleontologists described a new species of harvestman found in two pieces of Eocene-aged amber from Ukraine and the Baltic region. The newly-identified harvestman is the first known member…...

1+ week, 2+ day ago  (485+ words) Paleontologists at Harvard University have described a large predatory arthropod from the Middle Cambrian of Utah featuring massive three-segmented chelicerae. Named Megachelicerax cousteaui, this soft-bodied animal represents the earliest known member of the chelicerates, pushing back the origins of spiders,…...

1+ week, 4+ day ago  (510+ words) Long thought to be fueled by increased atmospheric oxygen concentration, enormous griffinflies from the Carboniferous period, 300 million years ago, may have grown large for other reasons, according to new research led by University of Pretoria paleontologist Edward Snelling. Gigantic griffinfly…...

1+ week, 4+ day ago  (467+ words) An analysis of two 240-million-year-old coelacanth fossils suggests a bizarre sensory adaptation: an ossified lung that transmitted sound to the inner ear, offering new clues to how early vertebrates perceived their environment. Reconstruction of a Triassic coelacanth schematically showing the…...