Fossils News

JAKARTA — Indonesia says it will begin retiring coal-fired power plants for good — while still continuing to build more than a hundred new ones, in the latest mixed message…

The asteroid impact 66 million years ago that killed more than 75% of all species on Earth, including all non-avian dinosaurs, triggered an ecological catastrophe that took the neotropical rainforests…

JAKARTA — Indonesia says it will stop building new coal-fired power plants after 2023 to meet its carbon-neutral goals — but the more than 100 plants to be built by…

A 66-million-year-old fossil has allowed scientists to describe a bizarre new species of mammal that lived in Madagascar during the time of the dinosaurs. They’ve christened it Adalatherium hui, which in Malagasy…

JAKARTA — Japan is exporting pollution and endangering public health overseas by funding coal-fired power plants that wouldn’t meet the strict emissions standards it imposes at home, a new report…

Millions of years ago, giant birds roamed ancient New Zealand. There was the moa, an extinct flightless bird, thought to weigh up to 230 kilogram (510 pounds). Then there was…

In 2016, researchers digging along the Río Alto Madre de Dios in the Peruvian Amazon uncovered hundreds of fossils of rodents, bats and other animals. Among the fossils was an…

In November 2017, two volunteers assisting researchers of the Florida Museum of Natural History dig through a large excavation site in North Florida unearthed the bones of a bird. Those…

For a long time, some of the fossil remains that had been excavated from a site in western Kenya in the late 1970s languished in a drawer at Nairobi National…

Until about 1,000 years ago, Madagascar was home to fantastical creatures like elephant birds, giant fossas and large-bodied lemurs. Unlike their present-day cousins, they were enormous — bigger than the average…

JAKARTA — Usman’s been glued to the TV news lately. A young fisherman living in Batang, along the northeastern coast of Indonesia’s main island of Java, Usman is closely following…

New research suggests humans reached Madagascar far earlier than previously thought. The study, published today in the journal Science Advances, is based on analysis of giant elephant bird bones discovered…

A new study drastically upends conventional wisdom about when plants colonized land, pushing back the date about 80 million years to around half a billion years ago. The new date…

As recently as a few thousand years ago, the Indonesian island of Sumba was home to miniature elephants, giant rats and dragons, according to fossil discoveries reported in a scientific…

In the Riversleigh World Heritage Area in north-western Queensland, Australia, scientists have discovered the fossil remains of a new species of marsupial lion that went extinct about 18 million years…

Scientists have identified a new species of prehistoric dolphin from a fossil that lay undescribed in the collection of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History for the last 65 years. Researchers have…

A new study provides further evidence that humans drove large-scale landscape changes in Madagascar after they brought cattle to the Indian Ocean island around 1,000 years ago. Analyzing the chemical…

In a cave in Australia, researchers from the University of New South Wales discovered giant fossilized sperm. The sperm were produced 17 million years ago by a group of tiny,…

Scientific American magazine recently ran an article on the rediscovery of the smoothtooth blacktip shark (Carcharhinus leiodon) in a Kuwaiti fish market. Believed extinct for over 100 years, the smoothtooth…

Based on a single tooth from Australia, scientists believe they have discovered a giant, meter-long (3.3 feet) duck-billed platypus that likely fed on fish, frogs, and even turtles, according to…

Rainforests in South America have endured three previous extreme global warming events in the past, suggesting they will survive a projected 2-6 degree rise in temperatures over the coming century,…

Half a billion years after an arthropod with long triple claws roamed the shallow Cambrian seas, scientists have named it after Hollywood movie actor, Johnny Depp: Kooteninchela deppi. Depp, known…

The bleached bones of seabirds are telling us a new story about the far-reaching impacts of industrial fisheries on today's oceans. Looking at the isotopes of 250 bones from Hawaiian…

One of the survivors: the Takahē, a flightless rail from New Zealand. Photo by: © ZSL. Around 4,000 years ago intrepid Polynesian seafarers made their way into an untamed wilderness:…

Reconstruction of Carbonemys preying upon a small crocodylomorph. Courtesy of Cadena et al. 2012 Researchers working in Colombia has discovered the fossilized remains of a giant freshwater turtle that lived…

An extinct marsupial mega-herbivore, Diprotodon optatum. Drawing by Peter Murray. Image © Science/AAAS. The theory that humans, and not climate change, was primarily responsible for the extinction of giant marsupials…

An artist's recreation of Microraptor, a pigeon-sized, four-winged dinosaur that lived about 130 million years ago. Recent research has shown that the dinosaur had iridescent plumage. Image by: Jason Brougham/University…

Ocean acidification growing at a rate faster than anytime in 300 million years. To the left a discoaster of marine plankton before an ocean acidification event 56 million years ago,…

Coyote feeding on elk carcass in Yellowstone National Park. Photo by: Jim Peaco/U.S. National Park Service. Not long ago, geologically speaking, coyotes (Canis latrans) were bigger and more robust than…

Two Kairuku penguins come ashore, passing a stranded Waipatia dolphin. Artwork by Chris Gaskin, owner and copyright owner: Geology Museum, University of Otago.. Around 25 million years ago a penguin…