Paleontology News

June 28, 2025

Top Headlines

Geological Time Capsule Highlights Great Barrier Reef's Resilience

June 2, 2025 — New research adds to our understanding of how rapidly rising sea levels due to climate change foreshadow the end of the Great Barrier Reef as we know it. The findings suggest the reef can withstand rising sea levels in isolation but is vulnerable to ...

New Velvet Worm Species a First for the Arid Karoo

May 30, 2025 — A new species of velvet worm, Peripatopsis barnardi, represents the first ever species from the arid Karoo, which indicates that the area was likely historically more forested than at present. In the Cape Fold Mountains, we now know that every ...

New Method Provides the Key to Accessing Proteins in Ancient Human Remains

May 30, 2025 — A new method could soon unlock the vast repository of biological information held in the proteins of ancient soft tissues. The findings could open up a new era for palaeobiological ...

Dinosaurs Could Hold Key to Cancer Discoveries

May 29, 2025 — New techniques used to analyze soft tissue in dinosaur fossils may hold the key to new cancer discoveries. Researchers have analyzed dinosaur fossils using advanced paleoproteomic techniques, a method that holds promise for uncovering molecular data ...

Long Shot Science Leads to Revised Age for Land-Animal Ancestor

May 29, 2025 — The fossils of ancient salamander-like creatures in Scotland are among the most well-preserved examples of early stem tetrapods -- some of the first animals to make the transition from water to land. Thanks to new research, scientists believe that ...

Birds Nested in Arctic Alongside Dinosaurs

May 29, 2025 — Spring in the Arctic brings forth a plethora of peeps and downy hatchlings as millions of birds gather to raise their young. The same was true 73 million years ago, according to a new article. The paper documents the earliest-known example of birds ...

Rock Record Illuminates Oxygen History

May 29, 2025 — A new study reveals that the aerobic nitrogen cycle in the ocean may have occurred about 100 million years before oxygen began to significantly accumulate in the atmosphere, based on nitrogen isotope analysis from ancient South African rock cores. ...

Europe's Most Complete Stegosaurian Skull Unearthed in Teruel, Spain

May 29, 2025 — Palaeontologists have analyzed the most complete stegosaurian skull ever found in Europe and rewritten the evolutionary history of this iconic group of ...

Megalodon: The Broad Diet of the Megatooth Shark

May 26, 2025 — Contrary to widespread assumptions, the largest shark that ever lived -- Otodus megalodon -- fed on marine creatures at various levels of the food pyramid and not just the top. Scientists analyzed the zinc content of a large sample of fossilized ...

Mystery of 'Very Odd' Elasmosaur Finally Solved: Fiercely Predatory Marine Reptile Is New Species

May 23, 2025 — A group of fossils of elasmosaurs -- some of the most famous in North America -- have just been formally identified as belonging to a 'very odd' new genus of the sea monster, unlike any previously ...

Different Phases of Evolution During Ice Age

May 23, 2025 — Cold-adapted animals started to evolve 2.6 million years ago when the permanent ice at the poles became more prevalent. There followed a time when the continental ice sheets expanded and contracted and around 700,000 years ago the cold periods ...

Toothache from Eating Something Cold? Blame These Ancient Fish

May 22, 2025 — New research shows that dentine, the inner layer of teeth that transmits sensory information to nerves inside the pulp, first evolved as sensory tissue in the armored exoskeletons of ancient ...

Latest Headlines

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These 545-Million-Year-Old Fossil Trails Just Rewrote the Story of Evolution

June 27, 2025 — A groundbreaking study suggests that the famous Cambrian explosion—the dramatic burst of diverse animal life—might have actually started millions ...

Mammals Didn't Walk Upright Until Late—here's What Fossils Reveal

June 25, 2025 — The shift from lizard-like sprawl to upright walking in mammals wasn’t a smooth climb up the evolutionary ladder. Instead, it was a messy saga full of unexpected detours. Using new bone-mapping ...

Monster Salamander With Powerful Jaws Unearthed in Tennessee Fossil Find

June 17, 2025 — A massive, extinct salamander with jaws like a vice once roamed ancient Tennessee and its fossil has just rewritten what we thought we knew about Appalachian amphibians. Named Dynamognathus ...

The 10,000-Mile March Through Fire That Made Dinosaurs Possible

June 13, 2025 — Despite Earth's most devastating mass extinction wiping out over 80% of marine life and half of land species, a group of early reptiles called archosauromorphs not only survived but thrived, ...

What a Dinosaur Ate 100 Million Years ago—Preserved in a Fossilized Time Capsule

June 10, 2025 — A prehistoric digestive time capsule has been unearthed in Australia: plant fossils found inside a sauropod dinosaur offer the first definitive ...

New Evidence Reveals Advanced Maritime Technology in the Philippines 35,000 Years Ago

June 9, 2025 — In a bold reimagining of Southeast Asia s prehistory, scientists reveal that the Philippine island of Mindoro was a hub of human innovation and ...

Scientists Have Figured out How Extinct Giant Ground Sloths Got So Big and Where It All Went Wrong

May 22, 2025 — Scientists have analyzed ancient DNA and compared more than 400 fossils from 17 natural history museums to figure out how and why extinct sloths got ...

Scientists Use Fossils to Assess the Health of Florida's Largest Remaining Seagrass Bed: Surprisingly, It's Doing Well!

May 16, 2025 — A new study shows that seagrass ecosystems along the northern half of Florida's Gulf Coast have remained relatively healthy and undisturbed for the ...

Digital Reconstruction Reveals 80 Steps of Prehistoric Life

May 15, 2025 — A dinosaur's 40-second journey more than 120 million years ago has been brought back to life by a research team using advanced digital modelling ...

Australia's Oldest Prehistoric Tree Frog Hops 22 Million Years Back in Time

May 14, 2025 — Scientists have now discovered the oldest ancestor for all the Australian tree frogs, with distant links to the tree frogs of South ...

160 Million Years Ago, This Fungus Pierced Trees Like a Microscopic Spear

June 8, 2025 — In a paper published in National Science Review, a Chinese team of scientists highlights the discovery of well-preserved blue-stain fungal hyphae within a Jurassic fossil wood from northeastern ...

Dexterity and Climbing Ability: How Ancient Human Relatives Used Their Hands

May 14, 2025 — Scientists have found new evidence for how our fossil human relatives in South Africa may have used their hands. Researchers investigated variation in finger bone morphology to determine that South ...

Fossil Tracks Show Reptiles Appeared on Earth Up to 40 Million Years Earlier

May 14, 2025 — The origin of reptiles on Earth has been shown to be up to 40 million years earlier than previously thought -- thanks to evidence discovered at an Australian fossil site that represents a critical ...

UV Light and CT Scans Helped Scientists Unlock Hidden Details in a Beautifully-Preserved Fossil Archaeopteryx

May 14, 2025 — Archaeopteryx is the fossil that clearly demonstrated Darwin's views. It's the oldest known fossil bird, and it helps show that all birds -- including the ones alive today -- emerged from ...

CT Scanning Helps Reveal Path from Rotten Fish to Fossil

May 13, 2025 — Scientists confirm CT scanning doesn't interfere with natural decomposition processes, opening new windows into understanding how fossils ...

Palaeontologists Discover 506-Million-Year-Old Predator

May 13, 2025 — Palaeontologists have discovered a remarkable new 506-million-year-old predator from the Burgess Shale of Canada. Mosura fentoni was about the size of your index finger and had three eyes, spiny ...

From Prehistoric Resident to Runaway Pet: First Tegu Fossil Found in the U.S.

May 12, 2025 — Originally from South America, the charismatic tegu made its way to the United States via the pet trade of the 1990s. But a recent discovery shows these reptiles are no strangers to the region -- ...

First Fossil Evidence of Endangered Tropical Tree Discovered

May 9, 2025 — Scientists have discovered fossil evidence of an endangered, living tropical tree species. The unprecedented find was made in Brunei, a country on the large island of Borneo, and reveals a critical ...

New Ancient Fish Species Earliest Known Salmon Ancestor

May 9, 2025 — The Arctic landscape during the Cretaceous Period may have been dominated by the dinosaurs, but the rivers and streams held something more familiar. Alaska's fresh waters 73 million years ago ...

Triassic Fossil Reveals Nature's Best Jaw for Hunting Fast Fish

May 7, 2025 — Newly discovered species of extinct fish shows striking similarities to unrelated modern-day predators, suggesting certain traits have emerged multiple times and remained consistent over hundreds of ...

T. Rex's Direct Ancestor Crossed from Asia to North America

May 6, 2025 — Tyrannosaurus rex evolved in North America, but its direct ancestor came from Asia, crossing a land bridge connecting the continents more than 70 million years ago, according to a new ...

New Drone-Assisted 3D Model Offers a More Accurate Way to Date Dinosaur Fossils

May 6, 2025 — A new study is reshaping how scientists date dinosaur fossils in Alberta's Dinosaur Provincial Park (DPP). Using advanced drone-assisted 3D mapping, researchers have uncovered significant ...

Slickrock: Geologists Explore Why Utah's Wasatch Fault Is Vulnerable to Earthquakes

May 6, 2025 — Using rock samples collected from the Wasatch Fault, geoscientists combined experiments and analysis with examinations of fault rock textures. The team's research revealed significant clues ...

Western US Spring Runoff Is Older Than You Think

May 5, 2025 — Hydrologists show most streamflow out of the West's mountains is old snowmelt on a multi-year underground journey. New study finds that spring runoff is on average 5 years ...

Genomic Survey Uncovers Evolutionary Origins of Secretoglobins

May 5, 2025 — At a conference in Washington D.C. in 2000, the secretoglobin super family of proteins was named to classify proteins with structural similarities to its founding member uteroglobin. Now, 25 years ...

How Mid-Cretaceous Events Affected Marine Top Predators

May 2, 2025 — The highest trophic niches in Mesozoic oceans were filled by diverse marine reptiles, including ichthyosaurians, plesiosaurians, and thalattosuchians, dominating food webs during the Jurassic and ...

Why Did Some Ancient Animals Fossilize While Others Vanished?

May 1, 2025 — Why do some ancient animals become fossils while others disappear without a trace? A new study reveals that part of the answer lies in the body itself. The research shows that an animal's size ...

Ptero Firma: Footprints Pinpoint When Ancient Flying Reptiles Conquered the Ground

May 1, 2025 — A new study links fossilized flying reptile tracks to animals that made them. Fossilized footprints reveal a 160-million-year-old invasion as pterosaurs came down from the trees and onto the ground. ...

Geobiology: Iron, Sulfur, Heat -- And First Life

Apr. 30, 2025 — The very first cells obtained their energy from geochemical reactions. Researchers have now managed to recreate this ancient metabolic process in their ...

One of Earth's Ancient Volcanic Mysteries Solved

Apr. 30, 2025 — A new study traces a 120-million-year-old 'super-eruption' to its source, offering new insights into Earth's complex geological ...