1+ hour, 19+ min ago  (146+ words) Analyzing 1. 75-billion-year-old microfossils from ancient Australian seabeds, paleontologists say ancient eukaryotes -- the ancestors of every plant, animal and fungus -- huddled in oxygenated seafloor patches for over a billion years before breaking free into open water....

1+ day, 23+ hour ago  (179+ words) Paleontologists in Canada say they have recovered a dinosaur tail vertebra from 75- to 80-million-year-old marine rocks on a small island off the coast of British Columbia, providing the clearest evidence yet that bird-like ornithomimosaurs once roamed the ancient Pacific coastline…...

2+ day, 2+ hour ago  (262+ words) A single female specimen, collected 1, 773 m below the surface near Darwin Island, has been described as a new species of deep-sea octopus, and it doesn't fit neatly into the Megaleledonidae family it belongs to, forcing a revision of the textbook…...

5+ day, 44+ min ago  (587+ words) Paleontologists have identified a new genus and species of pan-shinisaur lizard from a partial upper jaw discovered in southern France, pushing the presence of its lineage in Europe back by at least 30 million years. Paleoartistic reconstruction of Acutodon villeveyracensis, the…...

1+ week, 5+ hour ago  (549+ words) A reconstruction of the Late Cretaceous paleoenvironment of Alaska. Image credit: James Havens. Roughly in the size range between mice and rats, multituberculates were the longest-lived group of mammals known in Earth's history. These creatures persisted for more than 100 million…...

1+ week, 23+ hour ago  (462+ words) Paleontologists have described a new genus and species of early monofenestratan pterosaur based on a nearly complete and well-preserved fossil skeleton discovered in Bavaria, Germany. The holotype specimen of Laueropterus vitriolus seen under natural light. Image credit: D. W. E. Hone, doi: 10. 7717/peerj....

1+ week, 4+ day ago  (458+ words) A large tyrannosaurid dinosaur may have stalked the floodplains of what is now New Mexico nearly 74 million years ago, according to a team of paleontologists from the University of Bath, Montana State University and the New Mexico Museum of Natural…...

1+ week, 6+ day ago  (47+ words) Paleontologists have identified a new genus and species of somphospondylan titanosauriform dinosaur -- the largest ever found in Southeast Asia -- from the fossilized bones found in Thailand, offering fresh evidence that the region was home to a surprisingly diverse group of…...

1+ week, 6+ day ago  (493+ words) Fossils of a giant tortoise, a ground sloth, a lion-sized armadillo relative called pampathere, scimitar-toothed cats, horses, camels and mastodons found in Bender's Cave on the Edwards Plateau of Texas may reveal a previously unknown warm period in the region…...

2+ week, 1+ day ago  (545+ words) Fossils unearthed on a remote Argentine ranch belong to a new genus and species of macronarian sauropod dinosaur, according to an international team of paleontologists led by the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit't M'nchen. The newly-described sauropod species lived on the southern supercontinent Gondwana…...