1+ hour, 14+ min ago   (1341+ words) Micro-CT scans uncovered how six shark species carry spinal designs tuned to their distinct swimming styles. (CREDIT: Shutterstock) A shark’s spine looks simple from the outside. Inside, however, it carries a carefully arranged network of mineral plates and branches. That…...

2+ week, 3+ day ago   (972+ words) Fossils of Spriggina floundersi from South Australia. Because the fossils preserve mirror-image impressions of the animals, a leftward bend in the rock indicates the animal turned right in life. (CREDIT: Scott Evans / AMNH) Spriggina floundersi was only a few centimeters…...

2+ week, 5+ day ago   (990+ words) Fossils of Spriggina suggest the oldest known right-turning bias in animals, dating back about 550 million years. (CREDIT: Wikimedia / AI-Generated / CC BY-SA 4.0) Spriggina floundersi was no bigger than a few centimeters, lived on ancient seafloors in what is now South Australia,…...

3+ week, 4+ day ago   (904+ words) Artist’s impression of Urokodia. 518-million-year-old fossil from China may preserve the earliest known precursors to spiders’ fangs. (CREDIT: Xiaodong Wang) Spiders are famous for the business end of their bodies, the sharp mouthparts that seize prey and help explain their…...

1+ mon, 1+ hour ago   (1073+ words) A new Triassic fossil reveals a two-legged, beaked reptile that evolved along the crocodile lineage. (CREDIT: Jorge Gonzalez, NHMLAC Dinosaur Institute) More than 200 million years ago, life on Earth was experimenting with new forms. The Triassic period gave rise to…...

1+ mon, 5+ day ago   (1074+ words) Study finds published pterosaur wing reconstructions may miss much of the group’s true shape and flight diversity. (CREDIT: Mark P Witton) Pterosaurs ruled the air long before birds did, and over more than 100 million years they grew into everything from…...

1+ mon, 1+ week ago   (823+ words) New fossil evidence from crocodile-like early tetrapods known as embolomeres suggests they grew without undergoing amphibian-style metamorphosis. The finding challenges the long-held idea that the ancestors of amphibians, reptiles, and mammals all passed through a tadpole-like stage. (CREDIT: Berit Goding)…...

1+ mon, 3+ week ago   (1156+ words) The new microraptor dinosaur Jian changmaensis (left) attacks the early bird Gansus yumenensis (right) in what is now the Changma Basin of northwestern China approximately 120 million years ago. (CREDIT: illustration by Lewis LaRosa, colorized by Jão Canola) A fossil bed…...

1+ mon, 3+ week ago   (958+ words) A female mammoth with her calf in a glacial landscape during the Last Glacial Maximum. Reconstruction by R. Bakker/Rotterdam for the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen in Mannheim. (CREDIT: R. Bakker, K. Schwerdt und W. Rosendahl, Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen Mannheim) “The mammoth’s tusk and bones were exceptionally well-preserved due…...

1+ mon, 3+ week ago   (763+ words) Tiny honeycomb-like colonies from southern China have opened a long-running gap in the story of animal life. For decades, bryozoans seemed oddly absent from the Cambrian explosion, the burst of diversification that filled ancient seas with most major animal groups....