We rarely portray Neanderthals, our close relatives, as telegenic. Museum exhibits give them wild tangles of hair, and Hollywood reduces them to grunting unsophisticates. Their skulls suggest broad faces, tiny chins and jutting brows.

Feathers found in Burmese amber dating back 100 million years are so exquisitely preserved that palaeontologists have been able to make a detailed study of their structure - and they're like nothing seen in living birds today.

A giant, plant-eating creature with a beak-like mouth and reptilian features may have roamed the Earth during the late Triassic period more than 200 million years ago, scientists said Thursday.

People have always known of dinosaurs, though they have called them by many names. Old legends that place Western dragons in caves…

We are all familiar with the trade in drugs or stolen artworks. But what would make someone want to risk life and limb for a fossil? That’s one of the questions Paige Williams has tried to answer in The Dinosaur Artist: Obsession, Betrayal and the Quest for the Ultimate Trophy.

A new study found that birds' dinosaur relatives had eggs with traces of two pigments—a red-brown one and a blue-green one. In today's birds that might produce a color such as robin's egg blue.

For a group of paleontologists, a tour of the Creation Museum seemed like a great tongue-in-cheek way to cap off a serious conference. But while there were a few laughs and some clowning for the camera, most left more offended than amused by the frightening way in which evolution -- and their life's work -- was attacked.

Is it time to put the stereotype of the violent and brutish Neanderthal to rest? New research paints a different picture of the ancient hominin — one that looks similar to Homo sapiens. Researchers previously thought that Neanderthal lives were far more nasty, brutish and short than ancient H. sapiens, based mainly on studies looking at levels of injury among both groups. Now, however, in a much more comprehensive look, a team of University of Tübingen (UIT) researchers found that both Neanderthals and H. sapiens living in the Ice Age sustained similar levels of head trauma.

Scientists on Thursday unveiled the discovery of a gigantic mammal-like reptile the size of an elephant that they believe rubbed shoulders with large Triassic-era dinosaurs, including the relatives of sauropods such as Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus.

A newly discovered "King of Gore" tyrannosaur pushes back the origins of T. rex's terrifying family tree to at least 80 million years ago, report paleontologists.

The controversial discovery of 68-million-year-old soft tissue from the bones of a Tyrannosaurus rex finally has a physical explanation. According to new research, iron in the dinosaur's body preserved the tissue before it could decay.

A new horse species, which roamed the Earth approximately 4.4 million years ago, has been discovered from fossils found in Ethiopia, scientists are reporting. Scott Simpson, who is a professor of anatomy at Case Western School of Medicine, and is also one of the chief scientists over this research study, stated that the horse fossils that were discovered were only a few pieces of an extremely complex puzzle which included many parts.

Neanderthals died out long ago, but their genes live on in us. Scientists studying human chromosomes say they've discovered a surprising amount of Neanderthal DNA in our genes. And these aren't just random fragments; they help shape what we look like today, including our hair and skin.

Scientists have discovered the fossil remains of an ancient marine reptile in the act of being born.

The teenage boys couldn't resist posing for selfies with the stars of the show. It didn't matter that these stars were the famous dinosaur fossils at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. If you think kids outgrow dinosaurs by kindergarten, think again. "The dinosaurs were amazing. It is astounding that these creatures once roamed the Earth," said Khaliq Sanda, a high school senior.

Sharks turn out to be more modern and sleek than anyone had ever imagined, given a new study that negates a prior theory that today’s sharks are “living fossils,” changing little over time.

A new type of Tyrannosaur with a very long nose has been nicknamed "Pinocchio rex". The ferocious carnivore, nine metres long with a distinctive horny snout, was a cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex. Its skeleton was dug up in a Chinese construction site and identified by scientists at Edinburgh University, UK.

The world's oldest and best preserved sperm has been discovered in 17 million-year-old fossils unearthed in far north Queensland. The sperm of an ancient species of freshwater shrimp, which were found inside a rock taken from the Riversleigh World Heritage area, were not only hardy, but huge compared to the animal's body size. The not-so-little swimmers were as long as the crustacean itself, which was only a couple of millimetres in length.

The case was cold, but critical clues pointed to a killer's identity in ancient Madagascar

In the dinosaur kingdom, the raptor reigns as a pop-culture bogeyman. While not as big as the T. Rex, the feathered creature had a mean set of teeth and claws. But there was at least one refuge from its tyranny: the air.

Dinosaurs were lumbering, stupid, scientifically boring beasts—until John Ostrom rewrote the book on them.

Dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid impact when they were at their most vulnerable, according to a new study. Dr Steve Brusatte, of Edinburgh University, said sea level rises and volcanic activity had made many species more susceptible to extinction. They might have survived if the asteroid had hit the Earth a few million years later or earlier, he said, calling it "colossal bad luck".

Paleontologists at Ohio University have unearthed the partial skeleton of an entirely new species of titanosaur – the massive herbivores that were the largest animals ever to walk on the planet.

The biggest-known dinosaur predator to stalk the planet earth looked rather like a monster daschund, but with 7-meter tall spines on its back.

The tooth of a 220-million-year-old semi-aquatic phytosaur has been found embedded in the thigh bone of a terrestrial rauisuchid. Both are giant prehistoric reptiles distantly related to the modern crocodile.

Some 220m years ago, the Triassic Period marked the beginning of the age of dinosaurs. But by the time the earliest dinosaurs were just starting to appear in the fossil record, it was distant relatives of crocodiles that reigned over both the water and land.

A long-mysterious dinosaur now has a nearly complete skeleton, revealing a form much more unusual than scientists had predicted.

There were thought to be five mass extinctions in Earth history. Fossil evidence is now pointing to a sixth – and it's not the human-made Anthropocene

It’s been a big year for dinosaurs – quite literally when the new “biggest dinosaur ever” Dreadnoughtus was uncovered in South America.

A nine-ton block of sandstone that was pulled from a Utah mountain late last year holds the biggest fossil trove ever found of the giant predatory dinosaur known as Utahraptor. Covered in feathers, with a huge sickle claw on each second toe, Utahraptor looked like a pumped-up version of the Jurassic Park star Velociraptor. The fossils might help resolve a long-standing debate about whether these predators hunted in groups. In the Jurassic Park films...

University of Alberta paleontologists including PhD student Tetsuto Miyashita, former MSc student Lida Xing and professor Philip Currie have discovered a new species of a long-necked dinosaur from a skeleton found in China.

In the epoch before striped dresses, the Internet was ruled by baby animals. Likewise, our Pleistocene ancestors were no doubt enthralled by the menagerie of little woolly mammals that once roamed the Earth—at least until climate change drove them to extinction. Now...

The "Carolina butcher" has been found and is just as scary as the name suggests.

Chilesaurus diegosuarezi belongs to the theropod group of dinosaurs, which includes tyrannosaurs, but was vegetarian and has other curious features

Scientists have discovered what appear to be red blood cells and collagen fibres in the fossilised remains of dinosaurs that lived 75 million years ago. Traces of the soft tissues were found by accident when researchers at Imperial College in London analysed eight rather shabby fossils that had been dug up in Canada a century ago before finding their way to the Natural History Museum in London.