Fossils
- Fossils
Fossil find adds a relative to our family tree
Lucy is the best known of our early ancestors. Now, a new fossil from Ethiopia suggests a second pre-human species lived alongside her kind.
- Animals
Picture This: The real ‘early bird’
Long before dinosaurs went extinct, birds were emerging on Earth. These hummingbird-size wading birds are the earliest known ancestors of today’s birds.
- Fossils
Ritual cannibalism occurred in Stone Age England
Stone Age human bones from a cave in England show signs of cannibalism. The people had been eaten during burial rituals nearly 15,000 years ago, experts say.
- Fossils
‘Frankenstein’ dino showed a mashup of traits
New species unearthed in Chile is “an anatomical Frankenstein,” declares one of its discoverers.
- Fossils
There really was a Brontosaurus, study claims
A new analysis finds evidence that the Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus were separate groups of animals, which deserve their own names and places on the dino family tree.
- Fossils
Snakes may have slithered amongst Jurassic dinos
Newly analyzed fossils suggest snakes lived at the same time as the golden age of dinosaurs. These early snakes appear to have had flexible skulls and likely also had four small limbs.
- Fossils
Scientists Say: Coprolite
Every living thing and signs of its existence — right down to their wastes — can fossilize under the right conditions. When poop fossilizes, it gets a special name.
- Fossils
Dino double whammy
Most scientists think an asteroid helped kill off the dinosaurs. But new calculations suggest that asteroid might have gotten some help from a long series of volcanic eruptions in what is now India.
- Fossils
Dinos: Some were ‘marathoners’
The arrangement of major muscles in a duck-billed dinosaur’s legs would have helped them outrun predators such as T. rex, a new analysis suggests.
- Fossils
Tar pit clues provide ice age news
New analyses of insects and mammals trapped in the La Brea Tar Pits point to climate surprises during the last ice age.
- Earth
When life exploded
Life exploded in diversity during the Cambrian Period. Experts are exploring what could account for this sudden change 540 million years ago.
- Fossils
Spiked tail to the rescue!
A stegosaur’s bony ‘armor’ didn’t just fend off a predator’s teeth. The tail spikes could gore attackers, ultimately killing them, fossils now show.
