Latest Paleontology Stories
WUSTL paleoanthropologist, colleagues develop artificial neural network model to predict location of fossil sites In 1991, a team led by Washington University in St. Louis paleoanthropologist Glenn Conroy, PhD, discovered the fossils of the first — and still the only — known pre-human ape ever found south of the equator in Africa after only 30 minutes of searching a limestone cave in Namibia. Traditionally, fossil-hunters often could only make educated guesses as to where fossils...
Archaeologists have discovered a nest containing 15 fossilized juvenile Protoceratops andrewsi dinosaurs in Mongolia. The discovery is the first nest of this genus ever found and the first indication that Protoceratops juveniles remained in the nest for an extended period. David Fastovsky, URI professor of geosciences with the University of Rhode Island, said the nest was 2.3 feet in diameter and his team discovered it in the Djadochta Formation at Tugrikinshire, Mongolia. "Finding...
Researchers from the University of Saskatchewan and Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) have followed fossilized footprints to a multi-legged predator that ruled the seas of the Cambrian period about half a billion years ago. "Short of finding an animal at the end of its trackway, it's really very rare to be able to identify the producer so confidently," said Nicholas Minter, lead author of the article on the study, which appears in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Minter...
Scientists have produced amazing three-dimensional images of a prehistoric mite as it hitched a ride on the back of a 50 million-year-old spider. At just 176 micrometers long and barely visible to the naked eye, University of Manchester researchers and colleagues in Berlin believe the mite, trapped inside Baltic amber (fossil tree resin), is the smallest arthropod fossil ever to be scanned using X-ray computed tomography (CT) scanning techniques. They say their study – published in...
Exhibit opens December 10 and will have extended holiday hours Tickets now on sale PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 2, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The world's largest and most unusual dinosaurs invade The Franklin Institute Saturday, December 10th in the new exhibition Giant Mysterious Dinosaurs - and tickets go on sale today. This exclusive exhibition allows visitors the chance to get up close-and-personal with gigantic dinosaurs, as long as 70 feet, excavated from such...
An analysis of fossilized teeth from dinosaurs in the western United States has provided the first concrete evidence that sauropods undertook seasonal migrations in search of food. Scientists have often assumed that dinosaurs did, in fact, migrate. However, it is difficult to determine from fossils even what dinosaurs looked like, let alone infer their behavior. But Henry Fricke, head of geology at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, and his colleagues seem to have found solid...
The cataclysmic events that marked the end of the Permian Period some 252 million years ago were a watershed moment in the history of life on Earth. As much as 90 percent of ocean organisms were extinguished, ushering in a new order of marine species, some of which we still see today. But while land dwellers certainly sustained major losses, the extent of extinction and the reshuffling afterward were less clear. In a paper published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B,...
A massive tail muscle made a 23-foot-long carnivorous dinosaur one of the fastest-running (and deadliest) hunters of its era, a University of Alberta researcher has discovered. According to UPI reports on Friday, Scott Persons, a graduate student in paleontology at the university, used 3D computer models of re-create the tail muscles of the twin-horned Carnotaurus. Persons discovered that the dinosaur's tail had "a series of tall rib-like bones that interlocked with the next pair in...
The fossil beetle discovered in the 16-23 million years old sediments of the Irtysh River in southern Siberia belongs to the modern species Helophorus sibiricus, a member of the water scavenger beetles (Hydrophiloidea), which is at present widely distributed in Eurasia and reaches even North America. The species was originally described in 1860 by the Russian entomologist Victor Motschulsky based on specimens collected at Lake Baikal. It is aquatic and inhabits various kinds of standing...
[ Video 1 ] | [ Video 2 ] A University of Alberta-led research team has taken a rare look inside the skull of a dinosaur and come away with unprecedented details on the brain and nasal passages of the 72 million year old animal. Lead researcher Tetsuto Miyashita, a U of A master's student in paleontology, examined the armored skull of a Euoplocephalus, a six-meter long plant eater. The skull, which had been sitting in the U of A's paleontology collection, was broken, allowing...
Latest Paleontology Reference Libraries
The Common Starfish (Asterias rubens), also known as the Common Sea Star, is the most common species of starfish found in the northeast Atlantic Ocean. It is usually found on rocky and gravelly substrate. This starfish has five arms and usually grows to between 4 and 12 inches in diameter, although some specimens have been recorded up to 21 inches across. It is typically orange or brown in color, but sometimes can be yellow, white, blue, purple or green; deep-water specimens are paler....
The Antarctic Sea Urchin (Sterechinus neumayeri), is a species of sea urchin in the family Echinidae. It is found in the Antarctic Ocean living on the seafloor. It is common around the circumpolar waters, including the Balleny Islands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Terra Nova Bay, and Victoria Land. It is found at depths of about 820 feet. The colors of this species range from bright red to dull purple and can grow to 2 inches in diameter. The test (shell) is globular with...
The Magnificent Star (Luidia magnifica), is a species of starfish in the family Luidiidae. It is found only in the Pacific Ocean on sandy areas of the seabed surrounding Hawaii and the Philippines at a depth of 60 to 440 feet. This starfish can grow quite large, with one specimen found on the Pearl and Hermes Atoll, Hawaii, measuring 33 inches in diameter. It usually has ten long, tapering arms with pointed tips, but will sometimes have 11 arms. One or more of these arms may regenerate...
Tyrannosaurus, meaning “tyrant lizard,” was a genus of theropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Period (68 to 65 million years ago). It was among the last non-avian dinosaurs to exist prior to the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event. Perhaps the most famous Tyrannosaurus species, T. rex, was named in 1905 by Henry Fairfield Osborn, president of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). Teeth belonging to Tyrannosaurus were first discovered in 1874 by A. Lakes near Golden...
Massospondylus, meaning “longer vertebrae,” is a genus of prosauropod dinosaur from the Hettangian to Pliensbachian ages of the Early Jurassic Period (200 to 183 million years ago). Massospondylus was discovered in 1853 by J.M. Orpen in the Upper Elliott Formation at Harrismith, South Africa. It was described in 1854 by Sir Richard Owen. It is one of the first dinosaurs to have been named. The type species is M. carinatus. There have been seven other named species during the past 150...
