Paleontology

Paleontology

Fossil gets a leg up on snake family tree

A 95-million-year-old fossil snake with legs may be an advanced big-mouthed snake, not a primitive ancestor.

Paleontology

Salvaged DNA adds to Neandertals’ mystique

Researchers who isolated a sample of Neandertal mitochondrial DNA say that it provides no evidence that Neandertals contributed to modern human evolution.

Paleontology

Veggie Bites: Fossil suggests carnivorous dinosaurs begat vegetarian kin

Chinese rocks have yielded fossil remains of a creature that had rodentlike incisors and a hefty overbite, providing the first distinct dental evidence for plant-eating habits among theropod dinosaurs.

Paleontology

Sea Dragons

About 235 million years ago, as the earliest dinosaurs stomped about on land, some of their reptilian relatives slipped back into the surf, took on an aquatic lifestyle, and became ichthyosaurs—Greek for fish lizards.

Paleontology

Bone Crushers: Teeth reveal changing times in the Pleistocene

Tooth-fracture incidence among dire wolves in the fossil record can indicate how much bone the carnivores crunched and, therefore, something about the ecology of their time.

Paleontology

Unknown creature made birdlike tracks

Paleontologists have found a multitude of birdlike footprints left by a yet undiscovered creature in rocks more than 60 million years older than Archaeopteryx, the first bird to have left fossils of its body parts.

Paleontology

Skimming the Surface: Flying reptile may have scooped its meals

Fossils unearthed in Brazil strengthen the idea that some species of ancient flying reptiles snatched their meals on the fly, snapping up fish as they swooped low over the water's surface.

Paleontology

Fossil leaves yield extinction clues

Analyses of fossil leaves provide more evidence that the mass extinctions that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago were sudden and probably brought about by an extraterrestrial impact.

Paleontology

Into the Gap: Fossil find stands on its own four legs

A fossil originally misidentified as an ancient fish turns out to be the nearly intact remains of a four-limbed creature that lived during an extended period noted for its lack of fossils of land animals.

Paleontology

Rain Forest Primeval? Colorado fossils show unexpected diversity

The size, shape, and riotous variety of fossil leaves unearthed at a site in central Colorado suggest that the region may have been covered with one of the world's first tropical rain forests just 1.4 million years after the demise of the dinosaurs.

Paleontology

All mixed up over birds and dinosaurs

A bit of fossil fakery snookered a team of paleontologists

Paleontology

Ancient Whodunit: Scientists indict wee suspects in ancient deaths

Evidence locked in 180,000-year-old sediments suggests that a toxic algae bloom was the cause of death for a large group of mammals that were fossilized intact on an ancient lake bottom.