June 16, 2015
One whale's incredible journey details East Africa's uplift
About 17 million years ago, a 7-meter-long beaked whale took a wrong turn off Africa’s east coast and swam hundreds of kilometers up the Anza …
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Paleo
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252 articles · Page 9 of 11
June 8, 2015
Geomedia: On the Web: Dinologue: A dino blog
Wherever you want to go, the Internet can take you there. Space? No problem. The bottom of the ocean? Sure. Now, you can add another stop to the …
June 8, 2015
Bigger is better in the sea
Since first appearing in the fossil record more than 550 million years ago, complex animals have steadily grown in average size, from millimeters …
June 1, 2015
Tiny plant fossils offer big view of ancient ecosystems
A key part in understanding a terrestrial ecosystem is analyzing its vegetation structure: How dense is the foliage? Is its canopy open or …
June 1, 2015
Oldest climbing and burrowing mammals discovered in China
During the Mesozoic, mammals were small and inconspicuous, remaining hidden in the shadows of their larger reptilian neighbors and only …
May 5, 2015
Comparing apples to oranges, hyenas to humans
Traditionally, anthropologists thought that hunting played a huge role in the lives of early humans, perhaps because of the prominence of stone …
May 5, 2015
The new anthropology: From bones and stones to biology and behavior
Paleoanthropology has traditionally been a dusty science, with new discoveries usually involving bones, teeth and stone tools painstakingly …
May 4, 2015
Amber-encased plant could be oldest known grass: Specimen may also preserve a Cretaceous-aged hallucinogen
Delicate grasses don’t preserve well in the fossil record, and evidence for grasses coexisting with dinosaurs is scant. But according to a new …
April 20, 2015
Earliest primates were tree dwellers
The first primates evolved shortly after the mass extinction of the dinosaurs about 66 million years ago. But whether these small mammals lived …
March 9, 2015
Soft-bodied fossils cast in fool's gold
Most of the fossil record is composed of hard bones and shells — only a handful of places preserve fossils of soft-bodied organisms from early in …
February 2, 2015
One-of-a-kind dinosaur skull goes digital
Some dinosaur species are only known from a single skull, and gaining access to study such rare and fragile fossils can be difficult, especially …
February 2, 2015
Tricky take-off limited pterosaur size
Pterosaurs are the largest flying animals in Earth’s history — some boasted nearly double the wingspan of the largest flying birds. But just how …
February 2, 2015
Early horse history written in Indian coal mine
Modern horses, rhinos and tapirs — all ungulates with an odd number of toes — belong to a group of animals called Perissodactyla. The oldest …
January 30, 2015
Fossil leaves reveal effect of "impact winter"
When the Chicxulub bolide struck the Yucatán Peninsula at the end of the Cretaceous about 66 million years ago, widespread extinctions of land …
January 30, 2015
Getting there and getting around Connecticut's ancient Rift Valley
Central Connecticut is easily accessible via major roads and flights into Hartford’s Bradley International Airport. The region is well equipped …
January 30, 2015
Travels in Geology: Exploring Connecticut's Ancient Rift Valley
In August 1966, bulldozer operator Edward McCarthy was excavating the basement of a new state building near Rocky Hill, Conn., when he made a …
January 5, 2015
Crumbly amber holds dinosaur secrets
In the movie “Jurassic Park,” dinosaurs were resurrected from DNA in blood harvested from Mesozoic mosquitoes preserved in amber. The plot was …
January 5, 2015
Scientists sequence oldest modern human genome to date
A chance fossil find along a Russian river has provided researchers with the oldest genomic data ever sequenced from a modern human. The fossil, …
January 5, 2015
Stegosaur's tail packed a lethal punch
With their big lumbering bodies and plates of armor, stegosaurs can be likened to the modern-day rhinoceros. Both are primarily peaceful plant …
January 5, 2015
Ancient cave art discovered in Indonesia
Europe has long been thought to have been the home of the oldest art in the world — including a stash of cave paintings in northern Spain that …
December 18, 2014
Down to Earth With: Adrian Hunt
Adrian Hunt grew up in England, but after earning his undergraduate degree in geology at the University of Manchester, he began looking for …
December 16, 2014
Down to Earth With: Kirk Johnson
In 1967, at a family picnic in Casper, Wyo., 6-year-old Kirk Johnson stumbled across a fossil that looked to him like an ancient rattlesnake tail …
December 15, 2014
Benchmarks: August 3, 1769: The La Brea Tar Pits are described
Long before Los Angeles’ infamous traffic packed the pavement of Wilshire Boulevard, the area teemed with hundreds of species of Ice Age animals …
December 9, 2014
New species of titanosaurus discovered in Tanzania
The Cretaceous landscape was dominated by huge herbivorous sauropods, the largest land animals ever to walk the planet. Fossils from many of …