Paleontology

This is the first pterosaur egg ever found that had not been flattened, discovered by paleontologists at the Turpan-Hami Basin in northwestern China.

Found: 120-Million-Year-Old Colony of Fossilized Flying Reptiles, Plus Their Eggs

The eggs were unearthed in the midst of a boneyard of pterosaurs, lending insight into the behaviors of ancient flying reptiles

Diver Susan Bird works at the bottom of Hoyo Negro, a large dome-shaped underwater cave on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. She carefully brushes the human skull found at the site while her team members take detailed photographs.

DNA From 12,000-Year-Old Skeleton Helps Answer the Question: Who Were the First Americans?

In 2007, cave divers discovered remains that form the oldest, most complete and genetically intact human skeleton in the New World

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

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

A hyper realistic reconstruction of an Australopithecus africanus based on cast of the skull STS5 (nicknamed "Mrs Ples") discovered in 1947 in Sterkfontein, South Africa. The fossil STS5 is between 2.1 and 2.7 million years old.

Paleoartist Brings Human Evolution to Life

For Elisabeth Daynès, sculpting ancient humans and their ancestors is both an art and a science

Cougars Survived the Pleistocene Extinction Because They’ll Eat Just About Anything Meaty

Eating everything that's in front of you is key to eking by when times are tough

A FedEx truck carrying the Wankel T. rex skeleton departed Bozeman, Montana, on Friday for the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. A bronze cast of the 65-million-year-old skeleton outside the Museum of the Rockies looks on in the foreground.

Five Things We Don’t Know About Tyrannosaurus Rex

As the Smithsonian welcomes the arrival of its fossil rex, scientists reveal all that we have yet to learn about this magnificent creature

Dinosaur Trackways

Almost 65 Years After Its Pieces Were Dispersed, Scientists Reconstructed a Long-Lost Dinosaur Chase

A lost set of dinosaur footprints in Texas has been reconstructed from 70-year-old photographs

An illustration of the large, feathered Anzu wyliei depicts several striking anatomical features—its long tail, feathered arms, toothless beak and a tall crest on the top of its skull.

Scientists Discover a Large and Feathered Dinosaur that Once Roamed North America

The 'Anzu wyliei' species looks like a cross between a chicken and a lizard

Pithovirus sibericum, TKTK

The World's Largest Virus Was Just Resurrected From 34,000-Year-Old Permafrost

It's not a threat to humans, but does show that ancient viruses can persist for millennia and remain a potential health threat

Fossil whale skeletons, evidence of an ancient mass stranding of the animals, discovered during the building of the Pan-American Highway in the Atacama Region of Chile in 2011.

Scientists Solve the Mystery of a Nine-Million-Year-Old Mass Whale Die-Off

Ancient blooms of toxic algae appear to have killed dozens of whales at once

Some dinosaurs, such as the (Caudipteryx zoui) above, had brightly colored feathers. New research suggests that modern birds inherited their own color varieties from their feathered dinosaur ancestors.

Colorful Plumage Began With Feathered Dinosaurs

The pigment patterns scientists use to predict ancient animal colors started with feathered dinosaurs and led to vibrant color in birds

In addition to its limb-like front fins, Tiktaalik had large, mobile rear fins that it used to push itself around in the water.

Ancient Walking Fish May Have Walked on All Fours

A fossilized pelvis shows the fish had functioning rear “legs”

Dinosaur Poop Is Harder to Find Than It Should Be

Why don't archaeologists find fossilized poop all over the place? In a word: roaches

A time capsule of life in the Eocene: Ailuravus, a three-foot-long, squirrel-like rodent

The Evolutionary Secrets Within the Messel Pit

An amazing abundance of fossils in a bygone lake in Germany hints at the debt humans owe to animals that died out 48 million years ago

One of the ancient human fossils found in Spain's La Sima de los Huesos.

Scientists Just Sequenced the DNA From A 400,000-Year-Old Early Human

The fossil, found in Spain, is mysteriously related to an ancient group of homonins called the Denisovans, previously found only in Siberia

Kirk Johnson — Director of the National Museum of Natural History

"Future Is Here" Featured Speaker

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How Scientists Are Recreating a Mating Call Last Heard in the Jurassic Period

Preserved in stone, a set of ancient insect wings are “chirping” once again thanks to the work of entomologists

A cautious Camptosaurus approaches a resting Allosaurus. Even though the carnivore undoubtedly hunted the herbivore at times, the two weren’t constantly at war with each other.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Dinosaurian Oddities

Matthew Carrano, a paleontologist with the National Museum of Natural History, recommends Dinosaur State Park in Connecticut for those evotourists interested in dinosaurs.

A Smithsonian Paleontologist Suggests His Evotourism Sites

For even more ideas on where to take an evolution vacation, we turned to one of our own dinosaur experts

The badlands north of Worland, Wyoming, shown here, expose sediments deposited during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.

Wyoming Paleontology Dispatch #9: Why It’s Called “Breaking Camp”

Some trick of the human psyche makes a patch of sagebrush feel like home

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