Paleontology News

May 1, 2025

Top Headlines

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 ...

Giant Croclike Carnivore Fossils Found in the Caribbean

Apr. 29, 2025 — Imagine a crocodile built like a greyhound -- that's a sebecid. Standing tall, with some species reaching 20 feet in length, they dominated South American landscapes after the extinction of dinosaurs until about 11 million years ago. Or at least, ...

Latest Headlines

updated 7:51pm EDT

Elephant Instead of Wild Boar? What Could Have Been in Europe

Apr. 28, 2025 — Even under today's climatic conditions, the long-extinct straight-tusked elephant could still live in Europe. This is the conclusion of a recent study. For this finding, the research group combined ...

The Oldest Ant Ever Discovered Found Fossilized in Brazil

Apr. 24, 2025 — A 113-million-year-old hell ant that once lived in northeastern Brazil is now the oldest ant specimen known to science, finds a new report. The hell ant, which was preserved in limestone, is a member ...

How Activity in Earth's Mantle Led the Ancient Ancestors of Elephants, Giraffes, and Humans Into Asia and Africa

Apr. 21, 2025 — What roils beneath the Earth's surface may feel a world away, but the activity can help forge land masses that dictate ocean circulation, climate ...

Secret to Crocodylian Longevity

Apr. 16, 2025 — Researchers examined teeth and skulls of 99 extinct crocodylomorph species and 20 living crocodylian species to reconstruct their dietary ecology and identify characteristics that helped some groups ...

Footprints of Tail-Clubbed Armored Dinosaurs Found for the First Time

Apr. 14, 2025 — Footprints of armored dinosaurs with tail clubs have been identified, following discoveries made in the Canadian Rockies. The 100-million-year-old fossilized footprints were found at sites at both ...

Footprints Reveal Prehistoric Scottish Lagoons Were Stomping Grounds for Giant Jurassic Dinosaurs

Apr. 2, 2025 — Jurassic dinosaurs milled about ancient Scottish lagoons, leaving up to 131 footprints at a newly discovered stomping ground on the Isle of Skye in ...

Ancient Amphibians as Big as Alligators Died in Mass Mortality Event in Triassic Wyoming

Apr. 2, 2025 — Dozens of amphibians perished together on an ancient floodplain around 230 million years ago, according to a new ...

8 Million Years of 'Green Arabia'

Apr. 9, 2025 — A new study reveals the modern arid desert between Africa and Saudi Arabia was once regularly lush and green with rivers and lakes over a period of 8 million years, allowing for the occupation and ...

Prehistoric Rhinos Lived in Super-Herds

Apr. 9, 2025 — Rhinos that flourished across much of North America 12 million years ago gathered in huge herds, according to a new ...

Mediterranean Hunter Gatherers Navigated Long-Distance Sea Journeys Well Before the First Farmers

Apr. 9, 2025 — Evidence shows that hunter-gatherers were crossing at least 100 kilometers (km) of open water to reach the Mediterranean island of Malta 8,500 years ...

Mammoth Genetic Diversity Throughout the Last Million Years

Apr. 9, 2025 — A new genomic study has uncovered long-lost genetic diversity in mammoth lineages spanning over a million years, providing new insights into the evolutionary history of these ...

Life Recovered Rapidly at Site of Dino-Killing Asteroid: A Hydrothermal System May Have Helped

Apr. 8, 2025 — About 66 million years ago, an asteroid slammed into the planet, wiping out all non-avian dinosaurs and about 70% of all marine species. But the crater it left behind in the Gulf of Mexico was a ...

Dinosaurs' Apparent Decline Prior to Asteroid May Be Due to Poor Fossil Record

Apr. 8, 2025 — The idea that dinosaurs were already in decline before an asteroid wiped most of them out 66 million years ago may be explained by a worsening fossil record from that time rather than a genuine ...

Animal Behavioral Diversity at Risk in the Face of Declining Biodiversity

Apr. 3, 2025 — Drastic declines in biodiversity due to human activities present risks to understanding animal behaviors such as tool use, according to new research. Shrinking animal populations make the study of ...

Machine Learning Helps Construct an Evolutionary Timeline of Bacteria

Apr. 3, 2025 — Scientists have helped to construct a detailed timeline for bacterial evolution, suggesting some bacteria used oxygen long before evolving the ability to produce it through ...

Mammals Were Adapting from Life in the Trees to Living on the Ground Before Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid

Apr. 1, 2025 — More mammals were living on the ground several million years before the mass extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs, new research has ...

New Species Revealed After 25 Years of Study on 'Inside Out' Fossil -- And Named After Discoverer's Mum

Mar. 26, 2025 — A new species of fossil is 444 million years-old with soft insides perfectly preserved. Research 'ultramarathon' saw palaeontologist puzzled by bizarre fossil for 25 ...

From Dinosaurs to Birds: The Origins of Feather Formation

Mar. 20, 2025 — Feathers, essential for thermoregulation, flight, and communication in birds, originate from simple appendages known as proto-feathers, which were present in certain dinosaurs.By studying embryonic ...

Genetic Study Reveals Hidden Chapter in Human Evolution

Mar. 18, 2025 — Modern humans descended from not one, but at least two ancestral populations that drifted apart and later reconnected, long before modern humans spread across the ...

New Fossil Discovery Reveals How Volcanic Deposits Can Preserve the Microscopic Details of Animal Tissues

Mar. 18, 2025 — An analysis of a 30,000-year-old fossil vulture from Central Italy has revealed for the first time that volcanic rock can preserve microscopic details in feathers -- the first ever record of such a ...

Iguanas Floated One-Fifth of the Way Around the World to Colonize Fiji

Mar. 17, 2025 — The only iguanas outside the Americas, Fiji iguanas are an enigma. A new genetic analysis shows that they are most closely related to the North American desert iguana, having separated about 34 ...

Misha Lived in Zoos, but the Elephant's Tooth Enamel Helps Reconstruct Wildlife Migrations

Mar. 13, 2025 — Misha lived her whole life in zoos, but this elephant's teeth are now helping scientists reconstruct wildlife migrations. Geologists show how strontium isotopes found in teeth or tusks reveal ...

Dozens of 3-Toed Dinosaurs Leave Their Mark in Australia

Mar. 13, 2025 — A researcher has confirmed a boulder at a regional school contains one of the highest concentrations of dinosaur footprints per square meter ever documented in ...

New Name for One of the World's Rarest Rhinoceroses

Mar. 13, 2025 — A recent study has reclassified the species commonly known as the Javan rhinoceros, proposing a more precise scientific name: Eurhinoceros sondaicus. The research highlights key differences in body ...

A 62-Million-Year-Old Skeleton Sheds Light on an Enigmatic Mammal

Mar. 11, 2025 — For more than 140 years, Mixodectes pungens, a species of small mammal that inhabited western North America in the early Paleocene, was a mystery. What little was known about them had been mostly ...

Are Volcanoes Behind the Oxygen We Breathe?

Mar. 10, 2025 — It is widely believed that Earth's atmosphere has been rich in oxygen for about 2.5 billion years due to a relatively rapid increase in microorganisms capable of performing photosynthesis. ...

Earth's Orbital Rhythms Link Timing of Giant Eruptions and Climate Change

Mar. 7, 2025 — An international team of scientists has synchronized key climate records from the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to unravel the sequence of events during the last million years before the extinction of ...

Plants Struggled for Millions of Years After the World's Worst Climate Catastrophe

Mar. 6, 2025 — Scientists have uncovered how plants responded to catastrophic climate changes 250 million years ago. Their findings reveal the long, drawn-out process of ecosystem recovery following one of the most ...

Prehistoric Bone Tool 'Factory' Hints at Early Development of Abstract Reasoning in Human Ancestors

Mar. 5, 2025 — The oldest collection of mass-produced prehistoric bone tools reveal that human ancestors were likely capable of more advanced abstract reasoning one million years earlier than thought, finds a new ...

When Birds Lose the Ability to Fly, Their Bodies Change Faster Than Their Feathers

Feb. 27, 2025 — Researchers examined dozens of bird species in museum collections looking for differences in the feathers and bodies between birds that can fly and birds that can't. They found that when birds ...