Fossils

An artistic rendering of a multituberculate mother with her litter of offspring.

Just Like Us, Jurassic Mammals Cared for Their Young

Clues from bones reveal multituberculates looked after their offspring for lengthy periods during the Age of Dinosaurs

Deinocheirus walks across a landscape dotted with ponds. Fossils found recently in eastern North America provide evidence that similar dinosaurs lived on our continent.

Giant Ostrich-Like Dinosaurs Once Roamed North America

Rare finds in Mississippi paint a picture of these creatures’ lost world

Researchers believe woolly mammoths walked into North America 100,000 years ago.

Alaska Couple Finds Massive Mammoth Bone After Storm

Typhoon Merbok’s flooding and winds revealed the complete femur, lying in the mud

The skeleton of a 70-million-year-old hadrosaurus dinosaur, the same genus as the dinosaur specimen in the new study, at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada. 

Rare ‘Mummified Dinosaur’ Formed in an Unexpected Way

The prehistoric reptile's skin may have been preserved by scavengers, research suggests

An artist’s reconstruction of Scleromochlus taylori, an ancestor of pterosaurs

The Ancestors of Flying Pterosaurs Were Sleek Reptiles That Ran on the Ground

High definition scans of a fossil reveal the form of an early pterosaur relative

An artist’s reconstruction of Qianodus duplicis, the earliest known fish that had a mouth with teeth

Haul of Fossil Fish Pushes Back the Origin of Teeth and Jaws

The unexpected finds illustrate life during a critical and little-understood time period

The Gogo fish fossil 

World's Oldest Vertebrate Fossil Heart Found in Australia

The 380-million-year-old heart came from a prehistoric fish that is our earliest jawed ancestor

The newly discovered Opisthiamimus gregori preys on a now-extinct water bug.

Scientists Discover Bug-Eating Reptile That Lived Among Dinosaurs

Delicate fossil reveals a cousin of the modern tuatara

Along the Vietnamese coast, temples constructed in reverence to whales and other marine mammals—such as this one in Phan Thiet—house valuable information on the country’s little-studied cetaceans.

Inside Vietnam's Whale Temples

Centuries-old whale worship shrines are shedding light on the diversity and distribution of marine mammals off the country's coast

A Haast's eagle hunts moa.

How a Giant Eagle Once Came to Dominate New Zealand

Before the formidable bird went extinct, scientists say it likely hunted the flightless moa

The uncovered skeleton shows where the lower left leg was amputated at the tibia and fibula.

Earliest Known Amputation Was Performed in Borneo 31,000 Years Ago

Prehistoric hunter gatherers carried out the surgery thousands of years before the previous recognized example

Paleontologists uncovered vertebrae and ribs from an enormous sauropod in Portugal.

Portuguese Man Accidentally Finds 82-Foot-Long Dinosaur in His Backyard

Scientists say this could be the largest specimen ever discovered in Europe

Sahelanthropus likely walked on the ground and used all its limbs to move around in trees.

Seven Million Years Ago, the Oldest Known Early Human Was Already Walking

Analysis of a femur fossil indicates that a key species could already move somewhat like us

At American Fossil Quarry, on privately owned land near Kemmerer, Wyoming, hammer- and chisel-wielding visitors pay $69 to $89 to spend up to four hours hunting for fossils. Finders, keepers.

The 50-Million-Year-Old Treasures of Fossil Lake

In a forbidding Wyoming desert, scientists and fortune hunters search for the surprisingly intact remains of horses and other creatures that lived long ago

Scientists scanned a fossil of the Jurassic cephalopod Vampyronassa, pictured here, and found clues that it was an active hunter.

What New Tech Is Revealing About Squishy, Prehistoric Cephalopods

Researchers have adopted innovative means, from cutting-edge scans to swimming robots, to reveal more about how the creatures lived

Archaeologists excavate the remains of friars buried at the former Augustinian friary in central Cambridge.

Why Were Medieval Monks So Susceptible to Intestinal Worms?

Friars in Cambridge, England, suffered from these parasites at nearly double the rate found among average unwashed citizens

Mastodon skeletons stand on display at the University of Michigan Museum of Natural History in Ann Arbor.

Construction Crews Stumble Upon Mastodon Skeleton in Michigan

The massive animal was likely between 10 and 20 years old when it died roughly 12,000 years ago

An illustration of A. nikolovi 

These Extinct Pandas Once Roamed Bulgaria

The bears are a close relative of today's giant pandas and likely ate soft plant materials, not bamboo

A Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton named STAN is one of the most complete specimens ever found.

Study Refutes Controversial Research That Divided the T. Rex Into Three Species

Scientists published a rebuttal article that found “insufficient evidence for multiple species of Tyrannosaurus”

Qikiqtania wakei (top) was more suited to swimming than its larger cousin Tiktaalik (bottom).

After Fish Developed Limbs, Some Might Have Returned to Swimming

Scientists think a recently discovered fossil is evidence that evolution is more like a branching tree than a ladder

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