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Paleontologists from the University of Alberta have discovered a never-before-seen species of fish in South America, with the help of a curious tourist. The fossil, called Candelarhynchus padillai, is approximately 90 million years old, and has no modern relatives, explained Oksana Vernygora, Ph.D. ...

Scientists have identified a new species of reptile from prehistoric Connecticut and, boy, does it have a mouth on it. Named Colobops noviportensis, the creature lived 200 million years ago and had exceptionally large jaw muscles — setting it apart from other reptiles at the time. Even compared to t...

After a great mass extinction shook the world about 252 million years ago, animal life outside of the ocean began to take hold. The earliest mammals entered the scene, and reptiles — including early dinosaurs — lived on Pangea, the name given to the giant landmass in which all of the world’s contine...

University of Otago paleontologists are rewriting the history of New Zealand’s ancient whales by describing a previously unknown genus of baleen whale, alive more than 27.5 million years ago and found in the Hakataramea Valley. The new genus and species of extinct baleen whale is based on a skull an...

An international team of paleontologists and other geoscientists has discovered the first North American co-occurrence of hadrosaur and therizinosaur tracks in the lower Cantwell Formation within Denali National Park, suggesting that an aspect of the continental ecosystem of central Asia was also pr...

Yale paleontologist Derek Briggs was part of a research team that identified Thanahita distos, a new species of lobopodian, an ancient relative of modern-day onychophorans, or velvet worms. Thanahita distos was discovered and reconstructed as a virtual fossil using physical-optical tomography. It ca...

Paleontologists from Russia have described a new dinosaur, the Volgatitan. Seven of its vertebrae, which had remained in the ground for about 130 million years, were found on the banks of the Volga, not far from the village of Slantsevy Rudnik, five kilometers from Ulyanovsk. The study has been publ...

A surprise discovery in a Crimean cave suggests that early Europeans lived alongside some of the largest ever known birds, according to new research published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. It was previously thought that such gigantism in birds only ever existed on the islands of Madagas...

University of Alberta paleontologists uncover spiky skull—and overturn long-standing assumptions in identifying horned dinosaurs. A team of researchers at the University of Alberta has unearthed a well-preserved Styracosaurus skull—and its facial imperfections have implications for how paleontologis...

Study describes new group of pterosaurs, identifies crustacean-heavy diet. New research suggests that ancient flying reptiles known as pterosaurs were much more diverse than originally thought, according to a new study by an international group of paleontologists including scientists at the Universi...

Tiny Fossils, Big Findings: Paleontologists Discover Odd Mid-Cretaceous Shrimp Hundreds of tiny well-preserved fossils shed new light on one of the poorest fossil records of marine arthropods. One of the most incomplete fossil records of marine life is being filled in by a new find by a team of pale...

A ‘Jackalope’ of an Ancient Spider Fossil Deemed a Hoax Earlier this year, a remarkable new fossil specimen was unearthed in the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation of China by area fossil hunters — possibly a huge ancient spider species, as yet unknown to science. The locals sold the fossil to scient...

They lived on the Earth about 166-168 million years ago, in the Middle Jurassic. The paleontologists found the remains of the ancient amphibian at the Berezovsky quarry, a fossil locality in the Krasnoyarsk Krai near the town of Sharypovo. Fossils of ancient fish, various reptiles, mammals, herbivor...

Analysis of Paleolithic-era teeth from a 28,500-year-old fossil site in the Czech Republic provides supporting evidence for two groups of canids – one dog-like and the other wolf-like – with differing diets, which is consistent with the early domestication of dogs. The study, published in the Journa...

100 million years ago, ferocious predators, including flying reptiles and crocodile-like hunters, made the Sahara the most dangerous place on Earth. This is according to an international team of scientists, who have published the biggest review in almost 100 years of fossil vertebrates from an area ...

The Kem Kem beds in Morocco are famous for the spectacular fossils found there, including at least four large-bodied non-avian theropods, several large-bodied pterosaurs, and crocodilians. Now, in a new geology and paleontology monograph, that reveals much more about the famous Kem Kem beds in Moroc...

Paleontologists at St Petersburg University created the most detailed virtual 3D-model of the endocranial cast and blood vessels of the head of an ankylosaurian. Paleontologists from St Petersburg University have been the first to study in detail the structure of the brain and blood vessels in the s...

University of Colorado Denver researcher Marin Lockley was a member of the team that found the well-preserved footprints. A new study released on June 11 in Scientific Reports announced the surprising discovery of abundant, well-preserved 110-120-million-year-old footprints, belonging to a large bip...

Ancient lizard’s long, crocodile-like snout suggests it carved out a niche in a competitive marine ecosystem. A new species of an ancient marine reptile that evolved to strike terror into the hearts of the normally safe, fast-swimming fish has been identified by a team of University of Alberta resea...

Paleontologists have made a surprising discovery while searching through 100-year-old fossil collections from the UK – a new mystery species of pterosaur, unlike anything seen before. Lead author of the project, University of Portsmouth PhD student Roy Smith, discovered the mystery creature amongst ...

SFU-led research team uncovers how fossil dragonfly relatives have been misclassified due to their striking similarity. For more than 150 years, scientists have been incorrectly classifying a group of fossil insects as damselflies, the familiar cousins of dragonflies that flit around wetlands eating...

Paleontologists from the Universities of Bonn and Liverpool examined 14 skulls of Plateosaurus trossingensis. “Everyone’s unique” is a popular maxim. All people are equal, but there are of course individual differences. This was no different with dinosaurs. A study by researchers at the ...

120-Million-Year-Old Animals Evolved “Scratch-Digging” Traits Independently Paleontologists have discovered two new species of mammal-like, burrowing animals that lived about 120 million years ago in what is now northeastern China. The new species, described today in the journal Nature, are distantl...

Analysis of what’s known about the dinosaur leads to conclusion there were 2.5 billion over time. How many Tyrannosaurus rexes roamed North America during the Cretaceous period? That’s a question Charles Marshall pestered his paleontologist colleagues with for years until he finally team...

A tiny stegosaur footprint found in China suggests young dinosaurs walked on their toes, unlike their heel-walking adult counterparts. A single footprint left by a cat-sized dinosaur around 100 million years ago has been discovered in China by an international team of paleontologists. University of ...

Scientists estimate 2.5 billion T. rex lived over time, using a model based on body mass and population density. Over their entire late-Cretaceous reign, the total number of Tyrannosaurus rex that ever lived on Earth was roughly 2.5 billion individuals, according to a new study, which leveraged the ...

Deposit contains exceptionally preserved fossils of soft-bodied, juvenile organisms from the Cambrian period. All life on Earth 500 million years ago lived in the oceans, but scientists know little about how these animals and algae developed. A newly discovered fossil deposit near Kunming, China, ma...

Researchers observe a “warming bias” over the past 66 million years that may return if ice sheets disappear. It is increasingly clear that the prolonged drought conditions, record-breaking heat, sustained wildfires, and frequent, more extreme storms experienced in recent years are a direct result of...

Scientists Reveal the Fossilized Skin of a Bull-Like Carnivorous Dinosaur One of the strangest carnivorous dinosaurs ever discovered has been given a makeover by a pair of Belgian and Australian paleontologists. The remarkable fossil was discovered in 1984 by celebrated Argentine paleontologist José...