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Fossils News
June 30, 2023

Top Headlines

New Study Sheds Light on the Evolution of Animals

Scientists have been mystified as to why animals are missing in much of the fossil record. Researchers have now developed a new method to determine if animals really were absent during certain geological eras, or if they were present but too fragile to be ...

Newly Discovered Jurassic Fossils in Texas

Scientists have filled a major gap in the state's fossil record -- describing the first known Jurassic vertebrate fossils in Texas. The weathered bone fragments are from the limbs and backbone of a plesiosaur, an extinct marine ...

Humans' Ancestors Survived the Asteroid Impact That Killed the Dinosaurs

A Cretaceous origin for placental mammals, the group that includes humans, dogs and bats, has been revealed by in-depth analysis of the fossil record, showing they co-existed with dinosaurs for a short time before the dinosaurs went ...

50-Million-Year-Old Katydid Fossil Reveals Muscles, Digestive Tract, Glands and a Testicle

50 million years ago in what is now northwestern Colorado, a katydid died, sank to the bottom of a lake and was quickly buried in fine sediments, where it remained until its compressed fossil was recovered in recent years. When researchers examined ...
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Lost Giants: New Study Reveals the Abundance Decline of African Megafauna

A groundbreaking new paper focuses on the size and abundance of living and fossil African large mammals, shedding light on the ecological dynamics behind the decline of these iconic creatures. The ...

South Africa, India and Australia Shared Similar Volcanic Activity 3.5 Billion Years Ago

The Daitari greenstone belt shares a similar geologic make-up when compared to the greenstones exposed in the Barberton and Nondweni areas of South Africa and those from the Pilbara Craton of ...

Remains of an Extinct World of Organisms Discovered

Newly discovered biomarker signatures point to a whole range of previously unknown organisms that dominated complex life on Earth about a billion years ago. They differed from complex eukaryotic life ...

Geneticists Discover Hidden 'Whole Genome Duplication' That May Explain Why Some Species Survived Mass Extinctions

Geneticists have unearthed a major event in the ancient history of sturgeons and paddlefish that has significant implications for the way we understand evolution. They have pinpointed a previously ...

The Clams That Fell Behind, and What They Can Tell Us About Evolution and Extinction

A new study examined how bivalves -- the group that includes clams, mussels, scallops, and oysters -- evolved among many others in the period of rapid evolution known as the Cambrian Explosion. The ...

4,000-Year-Old Plague DNA Found -- The Oldest Cases to Date in Britain

Researchers have identified three 4,000-year-old British cases of Yersinia pestis, the bacteria causing the plague -- the oldest evidence of the plague in Britain to ...

107-Million-Year-Old Pterosaur Bones: Oldest in Australia

A team of researchers have confirmed that 107-million-year-old pterosaur bones discovered more than 30 years ago are the oldest of their kind ever found in Australia, providing a rare glimpse into ...

Fossils of a Saber-Toothed Top Predator Reveal a Scramble for Dominance Leading Up to 'the Great Dying'

A tiger-sized saber-toothed creature called Inostrancevia has previously only been found in Russia. But scientists have discovered its fossils in South Africa, suggesting that it migrated 7,000 miles ...

Ancient Climate Change Solves Mystery of Vanished South African Lakes

New evidence for the presence of ancient lakes in some of the most arid regions of South Africa suggests that Stone Age humans may have been more widespread across the continent than previously ...

Humanity's Earliest Recorded Kiss Occurred in Mesopotamia 4,500 Years Ago

Written sources from Mesopotamia suggest that kissing in relation to sex was practiced by the peoples of the ancient Middle East 4,500 years ...

Homo Sapiens Likely Arose from Multiple Closely Related Populations

In testing the genetic material of current populations in Africa and comparing against existing fossil evidence of early Homo sapiens populations there, researchers have uncovered a new model of ...

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A Jumping Conclusion: Fossil Insect ID'd as New Genus, Species of Prodigious Leaper, the Froghopper

A fossil arthropod entombed in 100-million-year-old Burmese amber has been identified as a new genus and species of froghopper, known today as an insect with prodigious leaping ability in adulthood ...

Earth's First Animals Had Particular Taste in Real Estate

Even without body parts that allowed for movement, new research shows -- for the first time -- that some of Earth's earliest animals managed to be picky about where they ...

Scientists Recover an Ancient Woman's DNA from a 20,000-Year-Old Pendant

An international research team has for the first time successfully isolated ancient human DNA from a Paleolithic artefact: a pierced deer tooth discovered in Denisova Cave in southern Siberia. To ...

New Tusk-Analysis Techniques Reveal Surging Testosterone in Male Woolly Mammoths

Traces of sex hormones extracted from a woolly mammoth's tusk provide the first direct evidence that adult males experienced musth, a testosterone-driven episode of heightened aggression against ...

'Golden' Fossils Reveal Origins of Exceptional Preservation

A recent study found that many of the fossils from Germany's Posidonia shale do not get their gleam from pyrite, commonly known as fool's gold, which was long thought to be the source of ...

Fossil Find in California Shakes Up the Natural History of Cycad Plants

According to researchers, a new analysis of an 80-million-year-old permineralized pollen cone found in the Campanian Holz Shale formation located in Silverado Canyon, California, offers a more ...

Ecosystem Evolution in Africa

New research pushes back the oldest evidence of C4 grass-dominated habitats in Africa -- and globally -- by more than 10 million years, with important implications for primate evolution and the ...

Searching for Ancient Bears in an Alaskan Cave Led to an Important Human Discovery

Genetic analysis links 3,000-year-old bone found in cave to modern Alaska ...

Colorado's Spicy Ancient History of Chili Peppers

Recently identified chili pepper fossils from Boulder and Denver museums challenge millions of years of global tomato evolutionary history. Now, that's some spicy ...

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