New! Sign up for our free email newsletter.

Odd Creatures: Fossils & Ruins

March 18, 2024

Top Headlines

 

Dinosaurs get all the glory. But aetosaurs, a heavily armored cousin of modern crocodiles, ruled the world before dinosaurs did. These tanks of the Triassic came in a variety of shapes and sizes before going extinct around 200 million years ago. ...
The oldest fossilized forest known on Earth -- dating from 390 million years ago -- has been found in the high sandstone cliffs along the Devon and Somerset coast of South West ...
Fossils of a strange new species of marine lizard with dagger-like teeth that lived 66 million years ago, show a dramatically more biodiverse ocean ecosystem to what we see ...
A new fossil, named 'Attenborough's strange bird' after naturalist and documentarian Sir David Attenborough, is the first of its kind to evolve a toothless beak. It's from a branch of the bird family ...

Latest Headlines

updated 10:57pm EDT

Earlier Headlines

 

A technique originally devised to extract DNA from woolly mammoths and other ancient archaeological specimens can be used to potentially identify badly burned human remains, according to ...

Located at the Callacpuma archaeological site in the Cajamarca Basin of northern Peru, the plaza is built with large, vertically placed megalithic stones -- a construction method previously unseen in ...

Some people from an ancient community in what is now northern Italy were interred with animals and animal parts from species such as dogs, horses and pigs. The reasons remain mysterious, but might ...

Babies playfully tease others as young as eight months of age. Since language is not required for this behavior, similar kinds of playful teasing might be present in non-human animals. Now cognitive ...

The bead found at the La Prele Mammoth site in Wyoming's Converse County is about 12,940 years old and made of bone from a ...

Scientists examined hundreds of birds in museum collections and discovered a suite of feather characteristics that all flying birds have in common. These 'rules' provide clues as to how the ...

Snail shells are often colorful and strikingly patterned. This is due to pigments that are produced in special cells of the snail and stored in the shell in varying concentrations. Fossil shells, on ...

Following the arrival of the first farmers in Scandinavia 5,900 years ago, the hunter-gatherer population was wiped out within a few generations, according to a new study. The results, which are ...

The rivers of Australia, which once flowed across its now dry interior, used to host a range of bizarre animals -- including a sleek predatory lobe-finned fish with large fangs and bony scales. The ...

In the fossil record, trees typically are preserved with only their trunks. They don't usually include any leaves to show what their canopies and overall forms may have looked like. In a new ...

The first analysis results now confirm that the grave in Tiarp is one of the oldest stone burial chambers in Sweden. The researchers noted that some parts of the people buried in the grave are ...

DNA from ancient feces can offer archaeologists new clues about the life and health of Japanese people who lived thousands of years ago, according to a new ...

Microorganisms were the first forms of life on our planet. The clues are written in 3.5 billion-year-old rocks by geochemical and morphological traces, such as chemical compounds or structures that ...

Inspired by a 1725 fire engine that pumped water at larger distances and higher speeds than previously possible, authors analyzed the pressure chamber's Windkessel effect to capture the physics ...

Gliding winged-reptiles were amongst the ancient crocodile residents of the Mendip Hills in Somerset, England, researchers at the have ...

A new study shows the Megalodon, a gigantic shark that went extinct 3.6 million years ago, was more slender than earlier studies suggested. This finding changes scientists' understanding of ...

For almost 200 years, archaeologists have been puzzled by a mysterious brown stain on the ancient Greek Parthenon temple in Greece. Now, researchers have conducted new scientific analyses, and their ...

A feeding method of the extinct jawless heterostracans, among the oldest of vertebrates, has been examined and dismissed by scientists, using fresh ...

Researchers have identified a 3D fragment of fossilized skin that is at least 21 million years than previously described skin fossils. The skin, which belonged to an early species of Paleozoic ...

Researchers have developed a new technique to measure the number of chromosomes in ancient genomes more precisely, using it to identify the first prehistoric person with mosaic Turner syndrome ...

Thursday, February 29, 2024

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Tuesday, February 13, 2024

Monday, February 12, 2024

Friday, February 9, 2024

Thursday, February 8, 2024

Tuesday, February 6, 2024

Friday, February 2, 2024

Monday, January 29, 2024

Wednesday, January 24, 2024

Tuesday, January 23, 2024

Monday, January 22, 2024

Sunday, January 21, 2024

Thursday, January 18, 2024

Tuesday, January 16, 2024

Thursday, January 11, 2024

Wednesday, January 10, 2024

Tuesday, January 9, 2024

Monday, January 8, 2024

Thursday, January 4, 2024

Wednesday, January 3, 2024

Tuesday, January 2, 2024

Thursday, December 14, 2023

Wednesday, December 13, 2023

Tuesday, December 12, 2023

Thursday, December 7, 2023

Wednesday, December 6, 2023

Monday, December 4, 2023

Friday, December 1, 2023

Wednesday, November 29, 2023

Tuesday, November 28, 2023

Monday, November 27, 2023

Tuesday, November 21, 2023

Monday, November 20, 2023

Friday, November 17, 2023

Thursday, November 16, 2023

Tuesday, November 14, 2023

Monday, November 13, 2023

Thursday, November 9, 2023

Wednesday, November 8, 2023

Monday, November 6, 2023

Wednesday, November 1, 2023

Monday, October 30, 2023

Friday, October 27, 2023

Wednesday, October 25, 2023

Tuesday, October 24, 2023

Monday, October 23, 2023

Friday, October 20, 2023

Wednesday, October 18, 2023

Monday, October 16, 2023

Wednesday, October 11, 2023

Tuesday, October 10, 2023

Friday, October 6, 2023

Thursday, October 5, 2023

Wednesday, October 4, 2023

Thursday, September 21, 2023

Wednesday, September 20, 2023

Tuesday, September 19, 2023

Monday, September 11, 2023

Thursday, September 7, 2023

Tuesday, September 5, 2023

Thursday, August 31, 2023

Tuesday, August 29, 2023

Wednesday, August 23, 2023

Tuesday, August 22, 2023

Monday, August 21, 2023

Wednesday, August 16, 2023

Tuesday, August 15, 2023

Wednesday, August 9, 2023

Tuesday, August 8, 2023

Thursday, July 27, 2023

Monday, July 24, 2023

Thursday, July 20, 2023

Tuesday, July 18, 2023

Monday, July 17, 2023

Wednesday, July 12, 2023