Paleontology
- Paleontology
Birds’ ancestors had small genomes too
Among mammals, reptiles, and related animals, today's birds have the smallest genomes, and the dinosaurs that gave rise to birds had small genomes as well.
- Paleontology
Catching evolution in the act
Paleontologists have unearthed fossils that provide direct evidence of something scientists had long suspected: The tiny bones in the middle ears of modern-day mammals evolved from bones located at the rear of their reptilian ancestors' jaws.
- Paleontology
Ancient slowpoke
A 1-centimeter-long, 505-million-year-old fossil from British Columbia represents a creature that joins two lineages of marine invertebrates from that era that scientists previously hadn't linked.
- Paleontology
Ancient Glider: Dinosaur took to the air in biplane style
About 125 million years before the Wright Brothers took to the air with their biplane, a 1-meter-long dinosaur may have been swooping from tree to tree using the same arrangement of wings.
- Paleontology
Going Under Down Under: Early people at fault in Australian extinctions
A lengthy, newly compiled fossil record of Australian mammals bolsters the notion that humanity's arrival on the island continent led to the extinction of many large creatures there.
- Paleontology
Of penguins’ range and climate change
Variations in the range of Adélie penguins along one section of Antarctica's coast during the past 45,000 years are a keen indicator of climate change there.
- Paleontology
Paleotrickery: A lengthy lineage for leaf-mimicking insects
Species in one group of insects have escaped the hungry eye of predators by looking like foliage and moving like swaying leaves for at least 47 million years, a new fossil find suggests.
- Paleontology
Mammals started flying when birds did
The first gliding mammal winged through forests at least 70 million years earlier than scientists had previously presumed, a new fossil shows. The specimen dates from about 150 million years ago, during the time when birds were developing flight. ANCIENT GLIDER. Volaticotherium antiquus was gliding through ancient forests 150 million years ago. The creature weighed […]
- Paleontology
Asian amber yields oldest known bee
A tiny chunk of amber from Southeast Asia contains the remains of a bee that's at least 35 million years older than any reported fossil of similar bees.
- Paleontology
Early tetrapod likely ate on shore
The skull structure of Acanthostega, a semiaquatic creature that lived about 365 million years ago, suggests that the animal fed on shore or in the shallows, not in deep water.
- Paleontology
Society sans frills
The discovery of the fossils of several young dinosaurs in one small space suggests that the members of one dinosaur group evolved complex social behaviors millions of years earlier than previously suspected.
- Paleontology
DNA analysis reveals extinct type of wolf
New genetic analyses of the remains of gray wolves found in Alaska indicate that a distinct subpopulation of that species disappeared at the end of the last ice age, possibly because of its dietary habits.
