Odd Creatures: Fossils & Ruins

July 26, 2024

Top Headlines

Lampreys Possess a 'Jaw-Dropping' Evolutionary Origin

July 26, 2024 — Lampreys are one of only two living jawless vertebrates Jaws are formed by a key stem cell population called the neural crest New research reveals the gene regulatory changes that may explain morphological differences between jawed and jawless ...

Chemical Analyses Find Hidden Elements from Renaissance Astronomer Tycho Brahe's Alchemy Laboratory

July 25, 2024 — Danish Tycho Brahe was most famous for his contributions to astronomy. However, he also had a well-equipped alchemical laboratory where he produced secret medicines for Europe's ...

Komodo Dragons Have Iron-Coated Teeth to Rip Apart Their Prey

July 24, 2024 — Scientists have discovered that the serrated edges of Komodo dragons' teeth are tipped with iron. The study gives new insight into how Komodo dragons keep their teeth razor-sharp and may provide clues to how dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex killed ...

Scientists Assess How Large Dinosaurs Could Really Get

July 24, 2024 — A study looks at the maximum possible sizes of dinosaurs, using the carnivore, Tyrannosaurus rex, as an example. Using computer modelling, experts produced estimates that T. Rex might have been 70% heavier than what the fossil evidence ...

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Taco-Shaped Arthropod Fossils Gives New Insights Into the History of the First Mandibulates

July 23, 2024 — Palaeontologists are helping resolve the evolution and ecology of Odaraia, a taco-shaped marine animal that lived during the Cambrian period. Fossils ...

Hunter-Gatherers Kept an 'Orderly Home' in the Earliest Known British Dwelling

July 23, 2024 — Archaeological evidence from the world-famous Mesolithic site of Star Carr in North Yorkshire has shown that hunter-gatherers likely kept an orderly ...

'A History of Contact': Geneticists Are Rewriting the Narrative of Neanderthals and Other Ancient Humans

July 11, 2024 — Using genomes from 2,000 living humans as well as three Neanderthals and one Denisovan, an international team mapped the gene flow between the ...

First Ever 3D Reconstruction of 52,000-Year-Old Woolly Mammoth Chromosomes Thanks to Serendipitously Freeze-Dried Skin

July 11, 2024 — An international research team has assembled the genome and 3D chromosomal structures of a 52,000-year-old woolly mammoth -- the first time such a ...

A New Species of Extinct Crocodile Relative Rewrites Life on the Triassic Coastline

July 10, 2024 — The surprising discovery of a new species of extinct crocodile relative from the Triassic Favret Formation of Nevada, USA, rewrites the story of life ...

Research Reveals the Most Complete Dinosaur Discovered in the UK in a Century

July 10, 2024 — The most complete dinosaur discovered in the UK in the last 100 years, with a pubic hip bone the size of a 'dinner plate', has been described in a ...

First Local Extinction in the US Due to Sea Level Rise, Study Suggests

July 9, 2024 — The United States has lost its only stand of the massive Key Largo tree cactus in what researchers believe is the first local extinction of a species caused by sea level rise in the ...

Ancient Large Kangaroo Moved Mainly on Four Legs, According to New Research

July 9, 2024 — A type of extinct kangaroo that lived during the Pleistocene around two and a half million to ten thousand years ago, known as the 'giant wallaby', was a poor hopper, a study has ...

Life Underground Suited Newly Discovered Dinosaur Fine

July 9, 2024 — A newly discovered ancestor of Thescelosaurus shows evidence that these animals spent at least part of their time in underground burrows. The new species contributes to a fuller understanding of life ...

Giant Salamander-Like Creature Was a Top Predator in the Ice Age Before the Dinosaurs

July 3, 2024 — Meet Gaiasia jennyae, the swamp creature with a toilet seat-shaped head. It lived 40 million years before the first dinosaurs, and it was the top ...

Organic Material from Mars Reveals the Likely Origin of Life's Building Blocks

July 1, 2024 — Two samples from Mars together deliver clear evidence of the origin of Martian organic material. The study presents solid evidence for a prediction made over a decade ago that could be key to ...

Sixty-Million-Year-Old Grape Seeds Reveal How the Death of the Dinosaurs May Have Paved the Way for Grapes to Spread

July 1, 2024 — Scientists discovered the oldest fossil grapes in the Western Hemisphere, which help show how after the death of the dinosaurs, grapes spread across the ...

Investigating Newly Discovered Hydrothermal Vents at Depths of 3,000 Meters Off Svalbard

June 28, 2024 — Hydrothermal vents can be found around the world at the junctions of drifting tectonic plates. But there are many hydrothermal fields still to be discovered. During a 2022 expedition of the MARIA S. ...

Last Surviving Woolly Mammoths Were Inbred but Not Doomed to Extinction

June 27, 2024 — The last population of woolly mammoths was isolated on Wrangel Island off the coast of Siberia 10,000 years ago, when sea levels rose and cut the mountainous island off from the mainland. A new ...

Prehistoric 'Pompeii' Discovered: Most Pristine Trilobite Fossils Ever Found Shake Up Scientific Understanding of the Long Extinct Group

June 27, 2024 — Researchers have described some of the best-preserved three-dimensional trilobite fossils ever discovered. The fossils, which are more than 500 million years old, were collected in the High Atlas of ...

Researchers Find Genetic Stability in a Long-Term Panamanian Hybrid Zone of Manakin Birds

June 26, 2024 — We often think of species as separate and distinct, but sometimes they can interbreed and create hybrids. When this happens consistently in a specific area, it forms what's known as a hybrid ...

Almonds, Pottery, Wood Help Date Famed Kyrenia Shipwreck

June 26, 2024 — Researchers have identified the likeliest timeline of the famous Hellenistic-era Kyrenia shipwreck, discovered and recovered off the north coast of Cyprus in the ...

Shocked Quartz Reveals Evidence of Historical Cosmic Airburst

June 26, 2024 — Researchers continue to expand the case for the Younger Dryas Impact hypothesis. The idea proposes that a fragmented comet smashed into the Earth's atmosphere 12,800 years ago, causing a ...

Study Challenges Popular Idea That Easter Islanders Committed 'Ecocide'

June 21, 2024 — Some 1,000 years ago, a small band of Polynesians sailed thousands of miles across the Pacific to settle one of the world's most isolated places -- a small, previously uninhabited island they ...

New Study Finds Dinosaur Fossils Did Not Inspire the Mythological Griffin

June 20, 2024 — For centuries, scientists thought they knew where the griffin legend came from. A new study takes a closer look at the data and folklore's influence on ...

Newly Discovered Dinosaur Boasts Big, Blade-Like Horns

June 20, 2024 — A new dinosaur has been identified and named. The dinosaur's name, Lokiceratops rangiformis, translates roughly to 'Loki's horned face that looks like a ...

The World's Oldest Wine Discovered

June 18, 2024 — A white wine over 2,000 years old, of Andalusian origin, is the oldest wine ever ...

Ancient Polar Sea Reptile Fossil Is Oldest Ever Found in Southern Hemisphere

June 17, 2024 — An international team of scientists has identified the oldest fossil of a sea-going reptile from the Southern Hemisphere -- a nothosaur vertebra found on New Zealand's South Island. 246 million ...

Sharks Have Depleted Functional Diversity Compared to the Last 66 Million Years

June 14, 2024 — New research has found that sharks retained high levels of functional diversity for most of the last 66 million years, before steadily declining over the last 10 million years to its lowest value in ...

The Rotation of Earth's Inner Core Has Slowed, New Study Confirms

June 13, 2024 — The new study provides unambiguous evidence that the inner core began to decrease its speed around 2010, moving slower than the Earth's ...

Paleontology: New Fossil Fish Genus Discovered

June 13, 2024 — Paleontologists have identified a new genus of fossil goby, revealing evolutionary secrets of a lineage that stretches back millions of ...

No Bones About It: 100-Million-Year-Old Bones Reveal New Species of Pterosaur

June 12, 2024 — New research has identified 100-million-year-old fossilized bones discovered in western Queensland as belonging to a newly identified species of pterosaur, which was a formidable flying reptile that ...

Ritual Sacrifice at Chichén Itzá

June 12, 2024 — Rising to power in the wake of the Classic Maya collapse, Chichen Itz was among the largest and most influential cities of the ancient Maya, but much about its political connections and ritual life ...

A Mountainous Mystery Uncovered in Australia's Pink Sands

June 12, 2024 — Deposits of deep-pink sand washing up on South Australian shores shed new light on when the Australian tectonic plate began to subduct beneath the Pacific plate, as well as the presence of previously ...

Scientists Unlock Secrets of How Archaea, the Third Domain of Life, Makes Energy

June 11, 2024 — An international scientific team has redefined our understanding of archaea, a microbial ancestor to humans from two billion years ago, by showing how they use hydrogen gas. The findings explain how ...