Genetic material extracted from the hair of woolly mammoths has revealed new information about the extinct creatures, including how closely related they are to modern elephants.

Fossilized feathers of an early bird or dinosaur may retain evidence of pigment, offering a chance to animal colors of the Cretaceous.

For the first time, scientists have resurrected a piece of DNA from an extinct animal — the Tasmanian tiger. The researchers engineered mice with a piece of the long-gone marsupial's DNA that turns on a collagen gene in cartilage-producing cells.

A new analysis of fossils and living animals suggests that most dinosaurs' nostrils occurred at locations toward the tip of their snout rather than farther up on their face, a concept that may change scientists' views of the animals' physiology and behavior. (p. 70)

Mites fossilized in cave formations in the American Southwest show that at times during the past 3,200 years the climate there was much wetter and cooler. (p. 55)

A sleek predator and a pot-bellied giant dinosaur have emerged from North American rocks to fill in a 30-million-year gap in the dinosaur fossil record. (p. 389)

A tiny fossil skull found in 195-million-year-old Chinese sediments provides evidence that crucial features of mammal anatomy evolved more than 45 million years earlier than previously thought. (p. 324)

A variety of filamentary structures on the fossil of a small theropod dinosaur recently found in China may provide new insight into the evolution of feathers. (p. 262)