Odd Creatures: Fossils & Ruins

September 23, 2023

Top Headlines

Ritual Use of Human Remains Dating from the Neolithic

Sep. 21, 2023 — An international study has documented post-mortem bone modifications not linked to ...

Dinosaur Feathers Reveal Traces of Ancient Proteins

Sep. 21, 2023 — Palaeontologists have discovered X-ray evidence of proteins in fossil feathers that sheds new light on feather ...

New Recipes for Origin of Life May Point Way to Distant, Inhabited Planets

Sep. 19, 2023 — Life on a faraway planet -- if it's out there -- might not look anything like life on Earth. But there are only so many chemical ingredients in the universe's pantry, and only so many ways to mix them. Scientists have now exploited those limitations ...

Slow Growth in Crocodile Ancestors Pre-Dated Their Semi-Aquatic Lifestyle

Sep. 20, 2023 — A groundbreaking study is reshaping our understanding of crocodile evolution by pinpointing the onset of slow growth rates to the Late Triassic period, much earlier than the previously assumed Early Jurassic timeline. The research highlights newly ...

Latest Headlines

updated 11:12pm EDT

Archaeologists Discover World's Oldest Wooden Structure

Sep. 20, 2023 — Half a million years ago, earlier than was previously thought possible, humans were building structures made of wood, according to new ...

Prehistoric Fish Fills 100 Million Year Gap in Evolution of the Skull

Sep. 20, 2023 — X-rays of an ancient jawless fish shows earliest-known example of internal cartilage skull, unlike that of any other known ...

RNA for the First Time Recovered from an Extinct Species

Sep. 19, 2023 — A new study shows the isolation and sequencing of more than a century-old RNA molecules from a Tasmanian tiger specimen preserved at room temperature in a museum collection. This resulted in the ...

'Monstrous Births' and the Making of Race in the Nineteenth-Century United States

Sep. 7, 2023 — From the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, 'monstrous births' -- malformed or anomalous fetuses -- were, to Western medicine, an object of ...

Human Shoulders and Elbows First Evolved as Brakes for Climbing Apes

Sep. 5, 2023 — Researchers report that the flexible shoulders and elbows that allow us to throw a football or reach a high shelf may have evolved as a natural braking system that let our primate ancestors get out ...

Fossil Spines Reveal Deep Sea's Past

Sep. 5, 2023 — Right at the bottom of the deep sea, the first very simple forms of life on earth probably emerged a long time ago. Today, the deep sea is known for its bizarre fauna. Intensive research is being ...

The Scent of the Afterlife Unbottled in New Study of Ancient Egyptian Mummification Balms

Aug. 31, 2023 — A team of researchers has recreated one of the scents used in the mummification of an important Egyptian woman more than 3500 years ...

Three-Eyed Distant Relative of Insects and Crustaceans Reveals Amazing Detail of Early Animal Evolution

Aug. 29, 2023 — Scientists use cutting edge scanning technology to reconstruct 'fossil monster' that lived half a billion years ago. The creature's soft anatomy was ...

Newly Discovered 'Primitive Cousins of T Rex' Shed Light on the End of the Age of Dinosaurs in Africa

Aug. 23, 2023 — Researchers have discovered the fossils of two new abelisaurs in Morocco, showing the diversity of dinosaurs in this region at the end of the ...

Researchers Extract Ancient DNA from a 2,900-Year-Old Clay Brick, Revealing a Time Capsule of Plant Life

Aug. 22, 2023 — For the first time, a group of researchers have successfully extracted ancient DNA from a 2,900-year-old clay brick. The analysis provides a ...

Earlier Headlines

Summaries
Headlines

Super Antifreeze in Cells: The Ability to Survive in Ice and Snow Developed in Animals Far Earlier Than We Thought

Sep. 11, 2023 — More than 400 million years ago, an insect-like animal called the springtail developed a small protein that prevents its cells from ...

Did Sabertooth Tigers Purr or Roar?

Aug. 21, 2023 — When a sabertooth tiger called out, what noise did it make -- a mighty roar or a throaty purr? A new study examined the data behind the arguments for each vocalization and found that the answer was ...

Iceman Ötzi: Dark Skin, Bald Head, Anatolian Ancestry

Aug. 16, 2023 — A research team has used advanced sequencing technology to analyze Ötzi's genome to obtain a more accurate picture of the Iceman's appearance and genetic ...

'Resurrecting' the Legendary Figure Behind Count Dracula

Aug. 15, 2023 — Vlad III, known as Vlad the Impaler, was a 15th century prince and military leader who was so terrifying, he's thought to have inspired the creation of the literary vampire, Count Dracula. Now, ...

Fossil Feces Infested With Parasites from Over 200 Million Years Ago

Aug. 9, 2023 — Fossilized feces preserve evidence of ancient parasites that infected an aquatic predator over 200 million years ago, according to a new ...

Drops of Seawater Contain Traces of an Ancient World

Aug. 9, 2023 — New research links chemical changes in seawater to volcanic activity and ...

Whale-Like Filter-Feeding Discovered in Prehistoric Marine Reptile

Aug. 8, 2023 — A remarkable new fossil from China reveals for the first time that a group of reptiles were already using whale-like filter feeding 250 million years ...

'Time-Traveling' Pathogens in Melting Permafrost Pose Likely Risk to Environment

July 27, 2023 — Ancient pathogens that escape from melting permafrost have real potential to damage microbial communities and might potentially threaten human health, according to a new ...

Wormlike Animals Are First Amphibians Shown to Pass Microbes to Their Offspring

July 24, 2023 — Caecilians are an illusive type of snakelike amphibian that live in aquatic and subterranean environments. In some species, mothers produce a special type of nutrient-rich skin that juveniles ...

Paleontologists Identify Two New Species of Sabertooth Cat

July 20, 2023 — Sabertooth cats make up a diverse group of long-toothed predators that roamed Africa around 6-7 million years ago, around the time that hominins -- the group that includes modern humans -- began to ...

Unusual Fossil Shows Rare Evidence of a Mammal Attacking a Dinosaur

July 18, 2023 — Scientists have described an unusual fossil from around 125 million years ago in China that shows a dramatic moment in time when a carnivorous mammal attacked a larger plant-eating dinosaur. The two ...

All About the Benjamins: Researchers Decipher the Secrets of Benjamin Franklin's Paper Money

July 17, 2023 — During his career, Benjamin Franklin printed nearly 2,500,000 money notes for the American Colonies using what the researchers have identified as highly original ...

Ice Age Saber-Tooth Cats and Dire Wolves Suffered from Diseased Joints

July 12, 2023 — Ice Age saber-tooth cats and dire wolves experienced a high incidence of bone disease in their joints, according to new ...

Why There Are No Kangaroos in Bali (and No Tigers in Australia)

July 6, 2023 — Researchers are using a new model to clarify why millions of years ago more animal species from Asia made the leap to the Australian continent than vice versa. The climate in which the species ...

Giant Stone Artefacts Found on Rare Ice Age Site in Kent, UK

July 6, 2023 — Researchers have discovered some of the largest early prehistoric stone tools in ...

Fossils Reveal How Ancient Birds Molted Their Feathers -- Which Could Help Explain Why Ancestors of Modern Birds Survived When All the Other Dinosaurs Died

July 5, 2023 — Birds are the only group of dinosaurs that survived the asteroid-induced mass extinction 66 million years ago. But not all the birds alive at the time made it. Why the ancestors of modern birds lived ...

Apex Predator of the Cambrian Likely Sought Soft Over Crunchy Prey

July 4, 2023 — Biomechanical studies on the arachnid-like front 'legs' of an extinct apex predator show that the 2-foot (60-centimeter) marine animal Anomalocaris canadensis was likely much weaker than ...

How Urea May Have Been the Gateway to Life

June 28, 2023 — Urea reacts extremely quickly under the conditions that existed when our planet was newly formed. This new insight furthers our understanding of how life on Earth might have ...

Newly Discovered Jurassic Fossils in Texas

June 27, 2023 — Scientists have filled a major gap in the state's fossil record -- describing the first known Jurassic vertebrate fossils in Texas. The weathered bone fragments are from the limbs and backbone ...

Megalodon Was No Cold-Blooded Killer

June 26, 2023 — How the megalodon, a shark that went extinct 3.6 million years ago, stayed warm was a matter of speculation among scientists. Using an analysis of tooth fossils from the megalodon and other sharks of ...

Monday, September 11, 2023