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Paleontology

Anderson Taylor stands behind display cases in the Cambridge Natural History Museum in Cambridge, Illinois.

An 11-Year-Old Boy in a Small Midwestern Town Just Became the Guinness World Record Holder for Being the Youngest Museum Curator

Four years after Anderson Taylor began collecting specimens, he opened the Cambridge Natural History Museum in Cambridge, Illinois, offering school tours and attracting visitors from across the region

A saber-toothed cat skull found at the La Brea Tar Pits

Spinal Deformities in Saber-Toothed Cat Fossils Reveal How the Now-Extinct Felines May Have Spent Their Final Days

Researchers studied saber-toothed cat vertebrae found in the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. They identified a surprisingly high number of deformations, including signs of spinal nerve tumors, hinting at a dwindling population suffering the consequences of inbreeding

The recently discovered ancient snake species probably burrowed underground, while another of a similar age likely lived on the surface.

How Did Some Reptiles Lose Their Limbs to Become Snakes? An 80-Million-Year-Old Fossil Helps Uncover the Winding Evolutionary History

Researchers have long suspected that the first of these slithering creatures lived in water, on land or underground. New research hints that more than one environment might be correct

An overview of the excavated track surface with a mix of deeper hippopotamus and antelope footprints and shallower hominin tracks visible

Ancient Fossil Footsteps Found in Kenya May Hint That an Early Human Relative Was Larger Than Previously Thought

The trackway sheds light on how some hominins moved around their environments and with one another

A 52-foot-long model of a female Otodus megalodon is suspended from the ceiling at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

Predatory Sharks Grew to Enormous Sizes in Prehistoric Times. These Five Strategies Helped Them Get So Big

By cannibalizing their siblings in the womb or avoiding meat-eating pliosaurs, fearsome carnivores like the megalodon ballooned to proportions that would dwarf any shark alive today

Sotheby's is auctioning one of the largest and most complete T. rex skeletons ever found.

This T. Rex Fossil Could Fetch the Largest Sum of Any Dinosaur Ever Auctioned. Scientists Worry They’ll Lose the Chance to Study It

Bids on “Gus” will start at $19 million, a steep price for public institutions. Specimens in private collections can be harder for researchers to examine, and they’re practically impossible to include in studies in top-tier scientific journals

About two-thirds of the analyzed fossils were bent left, which means that the animals were curved right when they were alive.

Meet the Earliest Known ‘Right-Handed’ Animal, a Worm-Like Creature That Lived About 550 Million Years Ago

During the Ediacaran period, the critter wriggled around on the ocean floor of what’s now South Australia and preferred to turn right, a fossil analysis suggests

Illustration of what Praearcturus gigas may have looked like

After Decades of Debate, Scientists Say These Fossils Belong to the Largest Known Scorpion, Which Lived 415 Million Years Ago

Researchers have wondered whether Praearcturus gigas was a giant crustacean called an isopod or some other creature. A new analysis of museum specimens suggests that it was a scorpion that stretched more than three feet long

An artist's rendition of the new species, Jian changmaensis, on the left attacking the early bird Gansus yumenensis

This Strange, Feathered Dinosaur May Have Glided Between Trees Like a Flying Squirrel to Hunt Birds 120 Million Years Ago

A fossil of the creature provides the first evidence that microraptors lived in what is now northwestern China. Its discovery might also solve an ancient murder mystery

Two fossils of juvenile embolomeres—crocodile-like creatures, illustrated here—suggest that they did not undergo metamorphosis to become adults and that the ancestors of today’s birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians might not have had a tadpole life phase.

A Vietnam Veteran Collected Fossils for 66 Years. One, Mislabeled ‘Baby Lamprey,’ Made Paleontologists Reconsider How Vertebrates Moved From Water to Land

The fossil turned out to be a hatchling of a crocodile-like creature, and it suggests, according to a new study, that early animals did not use metamorphosis to evolve to dwell on land

Researchers recovered environmental DNA from ancient ground squirrel poop.

Researchers Investigated Ancient Squirrel Poop Frozen in Permafrost and Found Enlightening Details About the Animal’s Ecosystem

Up to 700,000 years ago, ground squirrels in modern-day Canada collected tons of helpful genetic information on their bygone environment through their diet

Researchers weren't sure what drove some theropods, like T. rex, to evolve tiny arms relative to their body sizes.

Tyrannosaurus Rex and Other Terrifying Predatory Dinosaurs Had Itty-Bitty Arms. Scientists May Have Finally Figured Out Why

A new study suggests that certain theropods—two-legged, mostly meat-eating dinosaurs—had shrunken forelimbs as an evolutionary trade-off for their strong skulls

Enormous dinosaurs like the Brachiosaurus in this illustration evolved multiple times over millions of years.

What Was the Biggest Dinosaur? Fragmentary Fossils Make It Hard to Tell

Pinning down the most titanic of the large sauropod dinosaurs is not an easy task, since the odds were generally against the biggest ones being buried and preserved

An artistic rendering of Tylosaurus rex

Paleontologists Discover an Ancient Marine Reptile They’ve Dubbed the T. Rex of the Sea, Crowning Another King of the Cretaceous

Scientists figured out that the predators were lumped in with a previously named mosasaur species. The new one, called Tylosaurus rex, could grow to 43 feet long, about the length of a school bus

Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis was a long-necked, plant-eating dinosaur that lived in what is now Thailand between 100 million and 120 million years ago.

Cool Finds

A Man Spotted Strange-Looking Rocks Near a Pond in Thailand. They Turned Out to Be the Bones of a Massive New Dinosaur Species

Paleontologists have dubbed the long-necked, plant-eating creature “Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis.” It’s the 14th named dinosaur from Thailand, and it might be the biggest one ever found in Southeast Asia

Kenya's Great Rift Valley

East Africa Might Break Off From the Continent Sooner Than Scientists Thought—and a New Ocean May Fill the Gap

A new study suggests that a rift in Kenya and Ethiopia has reached a critical stage in the split-up process, and that water may flood it in a few million years

Illustration of the giant ancient octopus

Cool Finds

This Bone-Crunching Octopus Was Nearly the Size of a Semitruck and May Have Feasted on Giant Reptiles 100 Million Years Ago

The massive invertebrates may have been top predators, according to an analysis of their fossilized jaws. The work suggests that ancient oceans weren’t completely ruled by spine-bearing creatures, as previously thought

The cave's floor is largely undisturbed, so archaeologists are hopeful it may help answer questions about the transition between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens in Britain.

This Medieval Castle Sits Atop a Prehistoric Time Capsule. New Excavations Could Reveal the History of Neanderthals in Britain

In a cave tucked beneath the Welsh landmark, archaeologists have found evidence of human and animal visits over the past 120,000 years. Now, they’re starting a five-year excavation project

Mountains in Montana’s Makoshika State Park, where some of the Hell Creek Formation lies.

250 Places to Celebrate America

The Hell Creek Formation Is North America’s Legendary Boneyard. See the Top Five Discoveries Found in the Iconic Fossil Bed

From preserved plants to T. rex, the material found in these Late Cretaceous rocks has resulted in countless breakthroughs for paleontologists

An artist's rendition of Captorhinus in its death pose

This Nearly 300-Million-Year-Old Mummified Reptile Reveals the Evolutionary Origins of How We Breathe

Unusually well-preserved fossils have provided the earliest known evidence of a land vertebrate that could pump air in and out of its chest using muscles between the ribs—the same strategy used by modern mammals, reptiles and birds

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