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News
These mammal ancestors birthed live young far earlier than thought
5+ hour, 11+ min ago (539+ words) New fossil pushes a shift from egg laying to live birth back by 90 million years A life reconstruction of the cynodont Chiniquodon theotonicus, which lived about 236 million years ago, portraying a pregnant female (illustrated, left) and a female nursing a…...
A rare 3-D snake fossil is ssspilling sssecrets of its unusual lifestyle
3+ week, 18+ hour ago (451+ words) A newfound species of ancient snake, named Tametara mirim (illustrated), would have lived alongside ancient birds and sauropod dinosaurs 85 million years ago in what is now Brazil. Most snake fossils are two-dimensional. Sandwiched within rocks, the pressure of millions of…...
Bone marks hint this hobbit wasn’t a hunter
1+ mon, 6+ day ago (348+ words) The miniature hominids don't appear to have slain island elephant kin nor used fire “Hobbits” (Homo floresiensis), shown in this reconstruction of the head of the now-extinct hominid, lived on what is now the island of Flores in Indonesia. New…...
Ancient flowering plants may have used dinosaurs to spread their seeds
1+ mon, 2+ week ago (252+ words) Fossils upend a long-held theory about angiosperm evolution Extinct rodentlike mammals and dinosaurs may have been some of the vertebrates lured by flowering plants' fleshy fruits over 74 million years ago. Fruit salad may have been on the menu for some…...
A new dino fossil may solve an ancient murder mystery
1+ mon, 2+ week ago (181+ words) A newly described microraptor species may explain the avian carnage at a Chinese fossil site In this illustration, the newly-described dinosaur, Jian changmaensis, ambushes an early Cretaceous bird, Gansus yumenensus. How capable this gliding predator was at snagging prey in…...
A textbook assumption about early land vertebrates may be wrong
1+ mon, 3+ week ago (475+ words) The shift from water to land didn’t require amphibian-like metamorphosis, fossils reveal Early vertebrates that made the transition from water to land were born looking like smaller versions of their parents, as this illustration of crocodile-like embolomeres shows. “We kind…...
Frozen squirrel poop hints at sights and smells of Ice Age ecosystems
2+ mon, 3+ day ago (671+ words) The tiny frozen pellets are storehouses of DNA from the rodents’ diverse diets Paleogenomics researcher Danielle Grant, suited up to avoid contaminating ancient poo with any modern genes, loads fecal samples into a centrifuge to extract ancient DNA fragments. Ancient…...
Some pterosaurs may have boasted bold iridescence
2+ mon, 4+ day ago (518+ words) Microscopic structures in a fossil suggest the animal had colors that shift with viewing angle Artists have long imagined pterosaurs in vivid hues. A new fossil analysis suggests at least one species really did shimmer in iridescent greens and magentas....
Crabs' sideways walk may have evolved just once
2+ mon, 4+ week ago (288+ words) A study of 50 crab species in Japan traces the iconic sideways walk to a single ancestor, suggesting the trait drove the group's remarkable diversity....
If wings came before flight, what were they for?
3+ mon, 4+ day ago (585+ words) Simulated dinosaurs suggest early wings helped hunt prey An artist’s reconstruction shows dinosaurs displaying their feathers and tails to flush insects out into the open. Simulated versions of the dinosaurs hint that the feathers were for show before they were…...