Paleontology

Paleontology

Just a quick bite

Saber-toothed cats living in North America around 10,000 years ago had a much weaker bite than modern big cats.

Paleontology

Unexpected Archive: Mammoth hair yields ancient DNA

Hair from ancient mammoths contains enough genetic material to permit reconstruction of parts of the animal's genome.

Paleontology

Bumpy Bones: Fossil hints that dinosaur had feathery forearms

A series of knobs on the forearm bone of a 1.5-meter-long velociraptor provides the first direct evidence of substantial feathers on a dinosaur of that size.

Paleontology

Dinosaurs’ gradual rise to dominance

Early dinosaurs didn't quickly eclipse the creatures they evolved from, but lived alongside them for perhaps 20 million years.

Paleontology

Jurassic CSI: Fossils indicate central nervous system damage

Fossils found in the head-thrown-back position, the so-called "dead bird" pose, probably died from central nervous system damage.

Paleontology

Winged dragon

A quarry on the Virginia–North Carolina border has yielded fossils of an unusual gliding reptile that lived in the region about 220 million years ago.

Paleontology

Big and Birdlike: Chinese dinosaur was 3.5 meters tall

Paleontologists have unearthed the remains of a gigantic birdlike dinosaur, 3.5 meters tall, that lived 70 million years ago in what is now China.

Paleontology

Forest Primeval: The oldest known trees finally gain a crown

Recently unearthed fossils provide new insights about the appearance of the world's oldest known trees, plants that previously were known only from preserved stumps.

Paleontology

Ancient Extract: T. rex fossil yields recognizable protein

New analyses of a Tyrannosaurus rex leg bone reveal substantial remnants of proteins that strengthen the link between modern birds and dinosaurs.

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.