Paleontology

New Fossil Adds 200 Million Years To The Age Of Jellyfish

Scientists have described the oldest definitive jellyfish ever found, using recently discovered "fossil snapshots" found in rocks more than 500 million years old. The jellyfish are unique because they push the known occurrence of jellyfish back f ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 30 2007 - 5:26pm

Pseudotribos Robustus: Ancient Jurassic Mammal With New Type Of Teeth

A team of Chinese and American scientists has discovered a new mammal from the 165 million-year-old lakebeds of the Jurassic Period in Northern China. The find is reported in the November 1st issue of the journal Nature. ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 31 2007 - 6:28pm

Velociraptor Had Fowl Breath Too, Says Study

The ' dinosaurs became birds ' evidence just got lot a little stronger. Except they were more like diving waterfowl than the land-based kind. A University of Manchester team, comprising biologists and palaeontologists, has found that theropod din ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 6 2007 - 7:50pm

Extinct Eurypterid Fossil Shows It Was Bigger Than A Grown Man

The discovery of a giant fossilised claw from an ancient sea scorpion indicates that when alive it would have been about two and a half meters long, much taller than the average man. This find, from rocks 390 million years old, suggests that spiders, insec ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 21 2007 - 2:46am

Glacialisaurus Hammeri: New Genus And Species Of Dinosaur Discovered In Antarctica

A new genus and species of dinosaur from the Early Jurassic has been discovered in Antarctica. The massive plant-eating primitive sauropodomorph is called Glacialisaurus hammeri and lived about 190 million years ago. The recently published description of t ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 10 2007 - 9:50pm

Student Identifies Carcharodontosaurus Iguidensis As New Species Of Carnivorous Dinosaur

The remains of one of the largest meat-eating dinosaurs ever found have recently been recognized as representing a new species by a student working at the University of Bristol. The new species is one of the largest carnivorous dinosaurs ever to have lived ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 11 2007 - 10:12pm

Indohyus: The 'Missing Link' Between Whales And Four-Legged Ancestors

Scientists since Darwin have known that whales are mammals whose ancestors walked on land. In the past 15 years, researchers led by Hans Thewissen of the Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy (NEOUCOM) have identified a series of ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 20 2007 - 12:13pm

Out With A Whimper: Insects May Have Killed Dinosaurs

The extinction of dinosaurs has always fascinated historians and biologists. Theories abound regarding asteroid impacts or massive volcanic flows that might have occurred around the time dinosaurs became extinct but a new book argues that the mightiest cre ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 3 2008 - 10:39am

Amber Fossils Reveal Ancient France Was Jungle

Research on a treasure trove of amber has yielded evidence that France once was covered by a dense tropical rainforest with trees similar to those found in the modern-day Amazon. The report is on 55-million-year-old pieces of amber from the Oise River area ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 7 2008 - 11:23am

Solved: 150 Year-Old Paleontological Mystery

Discovery of an exceptional fossil specimen in southeastern Morocco that preserves evidence of the animal’s soft tissues has solved a paleontological puzzle about the origins of an extinct group of bizarre slug-like animals with rows of mineralized armor p ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 9 2008 - 3:28pm