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Fossils

Terrifying. An ancestor of the modern-day croc stood nine feet tall and walked on its hind legs. It's been lovingly christened the "Carolina Butcher."

Before There Were Crocodiles, There Was the “Carolina Butcher”

A newly discovered crocodilian ancestor was a nine-foot-tall predator that stood on its hind legs

Cool Finds

Divers Discover Graveyard Filled With Giant Lemur Skeletons

A Madagascar cave is packed with the bones of extinct species

New Research

Fossils Show How Flying Fish Started to Glide

In the quest to avoid being eaten, some fish took a leap into the open air

Cool Finds

Jurassic Park May Have Been Right—Some Dinosaurs Hunted in Packs

The film inspired paleontologists to discover the truth about dinos, including whether raptors were social hunters

A Megalodon tooth -- not the one found recently in California

Cool Finds

Fossil Hunting Is Best After Big Storms

California’s storms unearthed treasures along beaches and in foothills including a Megolodon tooth and a Steller’s sea cow ribs

The skeleton was discovered near the American Falls dam and reservoir in Idaho.

Cool Finds

What Appears to Be a Complete Mammoth Skeleton Was Discovered in an Idaho Ditch

A nearby reservoir has just covered the fossil in water, however, postponing the excavation

An artist's impression of an antiarch mating scene.

New Research

A Very Ancient Group of Jawed Fish Were Having Surprisingly Intimate Intercourse

Many fish later ditched this clumsy method in favor of external fertilization

It took scientists 150 years to finally complete the fossil of Basilosaurus, an early whale. But even then, no one could agree on a name: it was first called Basilosaurus, or "king lizard," then later Hydrarchos, or "giant sea serpent." Its bones were seen as having been part of a long-extinct flightless giant bird. Today the complete fossil that we know to be the intermediary between older land mammals and modern limbless whales is hanging in the Ocean Hall in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

A History of Life In 10 Fossils

From their new book A History of Life in 100 Fossils, Paul Taylor and Aaron O’Dea share the story of 10 incredible fossils

Dinosaur bone fossils at the Dinosaur National Monument in Utah.

The Best Places in America to See Fossils

October 14 is National Fossil Day—here are some of the best places in America to take a trip back in geological time

Vice-grips Fossil (detail), 2014, wood, oil paint, polyurethane, pigment, marble dust, cast plastic.

Anthropocene

What Will We Leave in the Fossil Record?

Artist Erik Hagen considers the remnants of modern human life that may be found in rock strata millions of years from now

A carrion beetle fossil from the Cretaceous period.

New Research

Carrion Beetles Were the First Caring Parents

Flesh-eating beetles that lived 125 million years ago set the stage for modern parenting

Columbian Mammoth skeleton recovered from the LaBrea Tar Pits on display at the Page Museum in Los Angeles' Hancock Park

Cool Finds

Rare, Red Mammoth Hair Found on Californian Artichoke Farm

Columbian mammoths roamed Western North America thousands of years ago, and now we have a better idea of what they looked like

Artist's rendering of Dreadnoughtus schrani

Trending Today

Meet Dreadnought, Largest Dinosaur In The World

Dreadnought is the largest dinosaur in the world to be scientifically described

A bromeliad epiphyte growing on a branch of a giant ceiba tree in Ecuador

New Research

Flowering Plants Appeared in Forest Canopies Just a Few Million Years After Dinosaurs Went Extinct

A new study gives scientists some more insight into the weird history of flowering plants

A modern Arctic fox

Cool Finds

Polar Carnivores Might Have Originated in Tibet

A new fox fossil lends weight to the idea that many carnivores now found in the Arctic originated in what is now Tibet

Tiktaalik roseae had fish-like fins, a flattened skull (similar to a crocodile), and is thought to have lived in shallow water, using its fins to prop itself up.

Did the Evolution of Animal Intelligence Begin With Tiktaalik?

How one marvelously preserved fossil sheds light on how the vertebrate invasion of land took place

The sperm cells were found in Riversleigh, a remote spot in northwestern Australia that was once a teeming rainforest.

New Research

Giant Sperm Cells Belonging to 17 Million Year Old Shrimp Are the Oldest Ever Found

The sperm were longer than the male shrimp’s entire body

Track the Nation’s T-Rex as it Arrives at the Smithsonian

The Natural History Museum’s much-anticipated fossil completes the ultimate road trip: a 2,000 mile journey from Montana to our nation’s capital.

Fuxianhuia protensa

New Research

Oldest Fossilized Heart Found…It Belonged to A Shrimp

Researchers found the oldest-known cardiovascular system in a fossilized “shrimp-like” anima

Columbian Mammoth

Trending Today

When Evolution’s Controversial, Declaring a State Fossil Can Get Tricky

The Columbian Mammoth gets caught in the crossfire of the culture wars

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