Fossils | Science News for Students

Fossils

fossilized egg

This ancient bird is Avimaia schweitzerae. It lived about 110 million years ago in what is now northwestern China. When the bird died, its body held an unlaid egg (the lighter brown smudge).

A.M. BAILLEUL ET AL/NATURE COMMUNICATIONS 2019

Fossils
 
Apr 29, 2019
Paleontologists find the first fossilized egg inside an ancient bird
an illustration of Moros intrepidus

About the size of a deer, the newly discovered Moros intrepidus (illustrated) is one of the smallest tyrannosaurs known.

Jorge Gonzalez, © L. Zanno

Fossils
 
Mar 22, 2019
Mini tyrannosaur fills big evolutionary gap
a photo of a fossil of developing baby plesiosaur skeleton inside the mother's skeleton

The bones of a developing baby (encircled) can be seen inside the skeleton of this plesiosaur.

NHMLA

Fossils
 
Mar 8, 2019
Bones show ancient marine reptile was a big baby
A short video clip of the OroBOT walking as seen from overhead

Researchers built a robot called OroBOT to re-create the way that Orobates pabsti might have walked. That four-legged creature lived some 290 million years ago.

Tomislav Horvat and K. Melo/EPFL Lausanne

Fossils
 
Feb 15, 2019
This robot shows how an ancient creature might have walked
860_whiskered_pterosaur_fuzz.png

This pterosaur (seen here in an illustration) was covered in different sorts of hairlike fuzz. Their structure is the same as the protofeathers that covered some dinosaurs.

Yang Zhang

Fossils
 
Feb 4, 2019
These fuzz-covered flying reptiles had catlike whiskers
a photo of Ron Clarke, a pealeoanthropologist, excavating the skull of a skeleton embedded in a cave

Paleoanthropologist Ron Clarke excavates the skull of a skeleton called Little Foot. This adult female hominid lived in southern Africa nearly 3.7 million years ago. Researchers can’t agree on what species she belonged to.

University of the Witwatersrand

Human evolution
 
Jan 16, 2019
A skeleton named ‘Little Foot’ causes big debate
a photo of the skeleton of Sue, a T. rex skeleton at Chicago's Field Museum, against a white background

T. rex didn’t have the ability to clamp its jaws to crush bones, like some mammals do today. Instead, it used its powerful bite and strong teeth to pulverize the bones of its prey.

Connie Ma/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Fossils
 
Nov 12, 2018
T. rex pulverized bones with an incredible amount of force
an underwater image from the movie showing a megalodon shark swimming past a person in a clear polycarbonate cage

In this image from The Meg, a megalodon shark swims past a polycarbonate “cage” containing a biological oceanographer, played by Li Bingbing. 

Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
Animals
 
Aug 22, 2018
What ‘The Meg’ doesn't quite get right about megalodon sharks
an illustration of a newly discovered giant long-necked sauropod called Ingentia prima

Some early relatives of giant long-necked sauropods may have used an unexpected biological approach to grow to such a large size. This illustration shows how a newly described species, called Ingentia prima, may have looked.

Jorge A. González

Fossils
 
Aug 7, 2018
There’s more than one way to build a giant dinosaur
fossil dino like bird skull

Scientists used fossils of an ancient toothed bird (illustrated at right) to make a 3-D reconstruction of its skull (left). They discovered the animal had a small beak at the tip of its snout.

Michael Hanson and B.-A. Bhullar

Fossils
 
Jul 11, 2018
This extinct bird boasted dinosaur-like teeth