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…
Innovative research has made a long-extinct katydid—which inhabited the world of dinosaurs like stegosaurus, allosaurus, and diplodocus—sing again. The discovery of an incredibly well-preserved fossil of a new species of…
