10+ hour, 48+ min ago  (555+ words) On the ocean floor near the Galapagos Islands, a submersible controlled by scientists came across a mysterious octopus as blue as the ocean and no bigger than a golf ball. "He's tiny! It's blue!" one excited scientist was recorded as…...

3+ day, 8+ hour ago  (842+ words) A prehistoric predator to rival the most fearsome giant of them all has just been discovered lurking half-forgotten in a museum collection. No name is associated with Cretaceous terror as much as Tyrannosaurus rex; now, paleontologists have found a mosasaur…...

4+ day, 10+ hour ago  (715+ words) You probably wouldn't say it to its face, but the famously fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex has long been the butt of tiny arm jokes. But new research could explain their hilarious hands, though it offers no guarantee it will stifle the…...

1+ mon, 2+ day ago  (572+ words) Paleontologists have pieced together a startling story from fossil footprints in South Korea: that of a large, flying reptile galloping across the ground, apparently hunting a small animal. The brief encounter has been imprinted in a slab of rock for…...

1+ mon, 2+ day ago  (839+ words) Long before Megalodon ruled the seas, something just as unsettling may have lurked in the depths " giant octopuses the size of whales. A new analysis of more than two dozen Late Cretaceous-era fossils reveals octopuses that may have reaching lengths…...

1+ mon, 1+ week ago  (539+ words) Harvestmen are some of the weirdest-looking arachnids to roam this Earth, and they've been doing so for millions of years. A particularly wacky new species has now been found in two separate 35-million-year-old amber specimens from Ukraine and the Baltic…...

1+ mon, 1+ week ago  (676+ words) For more than 180 years, scientists have hypothesized that the ancestors of mammals laid eggs, but haven't found any fossils to prove it. Now, paleontologists finally have some tantalizing evidence to back up those long-held suspicions. Around 250 million years ago, a…...

1+ mon, 1+ week ago  (937+ words) Those who venture into Foul Air Cave, below Buchan township in eastern Victoria, quickly realize how it got its ominous name. In its deepest chambers, bacteria consume oxygen and excrete organic gases to produce a toxic stench. The cave is…...

2+ mon, 14+ hour ago  (702+ words) Around 7 million years ago, a little creature braved wildcats and hyenas to cross the floodplains of Bulgaria " and she may have done so on two legs. A recently described fossil femur offers evidence that this extinct ape, estimated to have…...

2+ mon, 1+ week ago  (857+ words) For decades, dinosaurs, especially the Tyrannosaurus rex, have captured the imaginations of the public and paleontologists alike. In many instances, pop culture has depicted the T. rex as the giant and fearsome hunter that lorded over other dinosaurs. However, paleontologists have…...