Latest Carnegie Museum of Natural History Stories
[Watch Video: Reconstructing Common Ancestor Of Placental Mammals] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online A team from Carnegie Museum of Natural History have completed the largest-ever study of mammalian ancestors, helping to construct what the common ancestor of all mammals may have looked like. The six-year research project looked at the evolution of placental mammals, which are the largest branch of the mammalian family tree with over 5,100 living species....
A remarkable 94-million-year-old fossil found in South America is shedding new light on the ancient history of mammals. The specimen, dubbed Cronopio dentiacutus, is one of the very few mammal fossils to come out of South America from the era when dinosaurs ruled the Earth. The mouse-sized creature had a long snout, dagger-like canines and a powerful set of muscles it used to chew its insect food. The mammal is a dryolestoid, an extinct group of animals distantly related to...
Paleontologists have discovered that an improved sense of smell jumpstarted brain evolution in the ancestral cousins of present-day mammals. The findings help explain why mammals evolved such large and complex brains, which in some cases ballooned 10 times larger than relative body size. The researchers constructed fossils of two Early Jurassic Period mammals to provide evidence that the mammalian brain evolved in three major stages. First by improvements in sense of smell or...
HARRISBURG, Pa., May 17, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Scientists have confirmed that researchers working at The State Museum of Pennsylvania in 2004 discovered a new dinosaur dating from the Late Triassic period. The dinosaur, now known as Daemonosaurus chauliodous, was found in a large mudstone block from New Mexico that contained other fossils. The block was on loan from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History for display in the Harrisburg's museum's "Dino Lab" exhibit, where visitors...
The skull of a juvenile sauropod dinosaur, rediscovered in the collections of Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Natural History, illustrates that some sauropod species went through drastic changes in skull shape during normal growth. University of Michigan paleontologists John Whitlock and Jeffrey Wilson, along with Matthew Lamanna from the Carnegie Museum, describe their find in the March issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.The fossil offers a rare chance to look at the early life...
Evidence that the first widespread occurrence of terrestrial vertebrates 300 million years ago was in response to a brief episode of a globally warmer, drier climateA team of researchers from Carnegie Museum of Natural History has described a new genus and species of carnivorous amphibian from western Pennsylvania. The fossil skull, found in 2004 near Pittsburgh International Airport, was recovered from rocks deposited approximately 300 million years ago during the Late Pennsylvanian Period....
Sandra Olsen of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History describes how she and her colleagues, with support from NSF, discovered evidence of the early beginnings of horse domestication in KazakhstanPaleolithic hunters in Europe and Asia began exploiting horses for meat thousands of years ago, yet the origin of horse domestication long has eluded archaeologists--for some captivating reasons.One of the biggest reasons is that for many centuries, horse skeletons did not significantly differ in...
Researches reported on Wednesday that fossils recently discovered in Myanmar might prove that the common ancestor of humans, monkeys and apes evolved from primates in Asia and not Africa.However, other scientists say that the finding does not end the debate over the origin of anthropoids, which is the primate group that includes ancient species as well as modern humans. Dr. Chris Beard, who is a paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh and a member of the team...
According to new research published online in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B (Biological Sciences) on July 1, 2009, a new fossil primate from Myanmar (previously known as Burma) suggests that the common ancestor of humans, monkeys and apes evolved from primates in Asia, not Africa as many researchers believe.A major focus of recent paleoanthropological research has been to establish the origin of anthropoid primates (monkeys, apes and humans) from earlier and more primitive primates...
Scientists from Canada and the U.S. have discovered the skeleton of a previously unknown web-footed carnivore in Canada's Arctic. The researchers said their discovery sheds light on how seals developed from land-based mammals.The primitive animal, known as Puijila darwini, measured around 43 inches from nose to tail, and had a body similar to that of an otter, but a skull akin to a seal.New research suggests Puijila is a "missing link" in the evolution of the group that today...
