Latest Fossil Stories

An analysis of skeletal remains has provided new evidence that humans made it to the Western Hemisphere during the last ice age, where they lived alongside giant, now-extinct mammals, claims a new study published online Thursday in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. University of Florida researchers used rare earth element analysis in order to measure the concentration of naturally occurring metals absorbed during fossilization in human and mammal remains discovered in south Florida...

Coelacanths, an ancient group of fishes once thought to be long extinct, made headlines in 1938 when one of their modern relatives was caught off the coast of South Africa. Now coelacanths are making another splash and University of Alberta researchers are responsible. Lead U of A researcher Andrew Wendruff identified fossils of a coelacanth that he says are so dramatically different from previous finds, they shatter the theory that coelacanths were evolutionarily stagnant in that their...

These days, only four species of Sirenian, more commonly known as the seacow, manatee or dugong exist in a given world region. Smithsonian scientists, however, have been studying fossil records of the ancient mammals and have discovered evidence that this hasn’t always been the case. According to these fossil records, which date back 50 million years ago, multiple species of seacow once existed together. The research also suggests the environment these seacows resided within, as well as...

Paleontologists have discovered the oldest organism with a skeleton in Australia. The creature is called Coronacollina acula and is estimated to be between 550 and 560 million years old. Paleontologists estimate this animal is from the Ediacaran Period, before the diversification of organisms in the Cambrian Period. The study results appeared online February 14 in Geology. This important find could be the key to unlocking several questions about early life, evolution, and extinction....

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[ Listen to the Recreation ] An international team of scientists took it upon themselves to recreate the love song of an extinct cricket that lived more than 160 million years ago during the Jurassic Period. The song was reconstructed using microscopic wing features on a fossilized bush cricket (Archaboilus musicus) found in northeast China. The call of the Jurassic cricket was simple, pure and capable of traveling long distances in the night, scientists noted. The reproduced sounds...

Numerous fossils -- including some collected by Charles Darwin -- have been rediscovered in an old wooden cabinet that had been tucked away in a dark corner of the British Geological Survey (BGS) headquarters in the UK, reports The Telegraph. The “treasure trove” of fossils was found by Dr. Howard Falcon-Lang, a paleontologist at Royal Holloway, University of London, undoubtedly by accident. The fossils had been lost to science for nearly 165 years, before Falcon-Lang stumbled onto...

How did insects get their hearing? A new study of 50 million year-old cricket and katydid fossils — sporting some of the best preserved fossil insect ears described to date— help trace the evolution of the insect ear, says a new study by researchers working at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center. Insects hear with help from unusual ears, said co-author Roy Plotnick of the University of Illinois at Chicago. Grasshoppers have ears on their abdomens. Lacewings have ears on their...

Researchers report that they have uncovered and analyzed human bedding believed to be 77,000 years old. The bedding material gives a look into how humans lived in South Africa. Lyn Wadley of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa says, “Domestic activities, like preparing and destroying plant bedding, can provide important information.” Some of the important information provided in the plant-based bedding materials, according to the National Science...

Changes in global carbon, sulfur cycles and to sea-level fueled biological responses Much of our knowledge about past life has come from the fossil record, but how accurately does that record reflect the true history and drivers of biodiversity on Earth? "It's a question that goes back a long way to the time of Darwin, who looked at the fossil record and tried to understand what it tells us about the history of life," says Shanan Peters, a geoscientist at the University of...