Paleontology
Heat-trapping asteroid dust may have incinerated the dinosaurs within hours
Within minutes of impact, debris began heating Earth’s atmosphere. Fine dust trapped that heat, potentially killing the dinosaurs quickly.
Paleontology
More Stories in Paleontology
- Paleontology
Ancient flowering plants may have used dinosaurs to spread their seeds
Scientists thought angiosperms didn’t use animals to spread seeds until after the Age of Dinosaurs. Fossilized fruits from these plants challenge this idea.
- Paleontology
The world’s largest scorpion lived 415 million years ago
A prehistoric scorpion was the largest ever to exist, and it may have preyed on land and freshwater species.
- Paleontology
A new dino fossil may solve an ancient murder mystery
A newly-described dinosaur, Jian changmaensis, may have glided through northwestern China about 120 million years ago, wreaking havoc on birds.
- Paleontology
A textbook assumption about early land vertebrates may be wrong
Three species that lived about 308 million years ago challenge the idea that the first land vertebrates underwent amphibian-like metamorphosis.
- Paleontology
Frozen squirrel poop hints at sights and smells of Ice Age ecosystems
DNA preserved in ancient scat reveals what Yukon ground squirrels ate and what animals shared their world.
- Paleontology
Some pterosaurs may have boasted bold iridescence
A new analysis of a 120-million-year-old fossil suggests at least one pterosaur species shimmered in iridescent greens and magentas.
- Paleontology
If wings came before flight, what were they for?
Scientists use simulated dinosaurs to trigger real insect brains and test how wings originally evolved.
- Animals
Giant, kraken-like octopuses may have ruled the Cretaceous deep
Some octopuses that lived over 72 million years ago were as long as whales. These huge predators may have been the largest invertebrates ever.
- Paleontology
Mummified reptile hints at the origins of how we breathe
A cave preserved two animals’ rib cages, cartilage and even traces of protein, revealing a flexible breathing apparatus like that of today’s land dwellers.
