An Australian company's plan to mine a fossil-rich site in New Zealand to produce pig food has been described as unjustifiable vandalism. A campaign is under way to protect the site in perpetuity.

There is evidence to show this monster of the ancient sea was a cannibal, feeding on its own kind.

Saber-toothed cats may sometimes have wielded their formidable canine teeth as deadly weapons to puncture the skulls of rival cats. It was already suspected that Smilodon cats used their huge canines to take down prey, perhaps by ripping out the prey’s throat (SN: 3/30/19, p. 20). But some researchers argued that the daggerlike teeth, which could grow up to 28 centimeters long in the largest species, were too thin and fragile to puncture bone without breaking.

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.

“The preservation of fossilized tracks, or trace fossils, suggests that multicellular organisms that could move around to reach food resources may already have existed 2.1 billion years ago, more than 1.5 billion years older than previously thought,” said University of Alberta’s Professor Kurt Konhauser, co-author of the study. The trace fossils were found at the site of Franceville in the Haut-Ogooué Province of Gabon, Africa.

Acrylics on canvas - 30 * 40 cm

The “hypercarnivore” lived 22 million years ago and probably ate the ancestors of hippos and elephants.

An asteroid slammed down and did away with all the dinosaurs, paving the way for such developments as the human race, capitalism, and posting on the internet: it’s the story we all know and love. Yet if things had shaken out differently—if the asteroid had stayed in its place, and the dinosaurs allowed to proceed with their business—what would things have looked like?

Scientists extract proteins from a molar to uncover details of mysterious species’ origins

Scientists at The Ohio State University have discovered a new species that lived more than 500 million years ago—a form of ancient echinoderm that was ancestral to modern-day groups such as sea cucumbers, sea urchins, sea stars, brittle stars and crinoids. The fossil shows a crucial evolutionary step by echinoderms that parallels the most important ecological change to have taken place in marine sediments.

A number of tiny, bat-winged dinosaurs flew the Jurassic skies, according to the strongest evidence yet for such creatures—a well-preserved fossil of a starling-size fluffball that may have looked a little like a flying squirrel. The find, recovered near a farming village in northeastern China, suggests dinosaurs were experimenting with several methods of flight during this period, but many were an evolutionary dead end.

As the content of Earth's atmosphere changes over time, the course of animal evolution itself might change.

Spiders, millipedes, cockroaches, beetles, flies and wasps that would have lived on the forest floor, found inside it

Paleontologist Dan Fisher is challenging scientific consensus about when people first came to the continent and how they may have changed the world around them.

Paleobotanist Scott Wing stands in wintry Wyoming badlands, where alligators swam 56 million years ago.

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.