Fossils

Animals

Surprise! Fossils in a flash

By studying how dead tissues decay — or turn to ‘instant’ fossils — scientists are gleaning helpful clues to what ancient life looked like.

Fossils

Lobster’s ancient ‘cousin’ was gentle giant

Some 500 million years ago, this top predator would have likely netted its meals with long bristly limbs.

Fossils

Scary ‘chicken’ roamed Earth with T. rex

Scientists have just pieced together evidence of a weird new dinosaur that sported sharp claws, feathers and a beak. And it just may have been one of the last dinos to roam Earth about 67 million years ago.

Fossils

Reviving dinosaurs

With the help of computers, researchers are getting a pretty good idea of how these ancient creatures moved, walked and ate.

Animals

Flower loss doomed the mammoths

Woolly mammoths roamed the Arctic until about 10,000 years ago. Why they died out may trace to the vanishing of the mostly flowering plants on which they had been dining.

Fossils

Early tyrannosaurs would have feared this predator

A newfound dinosaur fossil appears to explain why ancestors of T. rex didn’t begin their growth in size — and dominance — any earlier than they did.

Fossils

King of Gore

Paleontologists debut the oldest T. rex ancestor. Weighing as much as a car and longer than a two-story building is tall, this meat eater would have been one fierce predator.

Fossils

Where do humans come from?

Some scientists propose a newfound South African species as the most likely ancestor of the line that led to humans. But not everyone accepts that this is where it all began.

Fossils

How sharks survived the ‘Great Dying’

By abandoning their coastal homes, some sharks survived an event that caused mass extinctions of other species.

Fossils

Tar pit bones yield climate clues

During the last ice age, more than 12,000 years ago, many unusual creatures wandered Southern California. Some got trapped in tar pits there. Now, their preserved remains are providing scientists with clues about summer weather during that bygone era.

Fossils

Dino-sized poop

Ewww: Scientists use poop from living animals to estimate the size of dung dropped by T. rex and other dinos.

Fossils

Shoulder bones fuel debate

Fossil shoulder blades suggest an ancient humanlike species may have been at home in the trees as well as on the ground.