Latest Paleontology Stories
In a brainless marine worm, MBL researchers find the developmental 'scaffold' for the vertebrate brain The origin of the exquisitely complex vertebrate brain is somewhat mysterious. "In terms of evolution, it basically pops up out of nowhere. You don't see anything anatomically like it in other animals," says Ariel Pani, an investigator at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole and a graduate student at the University of Chicago. But this week in the journal Nature, Pani...
Conventional wisdom holds that during the Mesozoic Era, mammals were small creatures that held on at life's edges. But at least one mammal group, rodent-like creatures called multituberculates, actually flourished during the last 20 million years of the dinosaurs' reign and survived their extinction 66 million years ago. New research led by a University of Washington paleontologist suggests that the multituberculates did so well in part because they developed numerous tubercles (bumps, or...
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....
A team of researchers have discovered that a 505 million-year-old fossil is actually an ancient relative to humans. Researchers from the University of Cambridge, University of Toronto and the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) confirmed that the extinct Pikaia gracilen found in Burgess Shale fossil beds in Canada's Yoho National Park is the most primitive form of all known vertebrates, including humans. Pikaia was first described by American paleontologist Charles Doolittle Walcott in 1911 as a...
The discovery of two new extinct camel species by University of Florida scientists sheds new light on the history of the tropics, a region containing more than half the world's biodiversity and some of its most important ecosystems. Appearing online this week in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, the study is the first published description of a fossil mammal discovered as part of an international project in Panama. Funded with a grant from the National Science Foundation, UF...
The Sciences Magazine EurekaMag.com publishes reviews of specific subjects of all areas of natural science. The latest review covers the Roquefort which is one of the world's best-known blue cheeses made of sheep milk, Australopithecus which is an extinct genus of humans that evolved in eastern Africa around four million years ago before spreading throughout the continent and becoming extinct two million years ago, and Paleontology which is the study of prehistoric life that includes...
Following one of Earth's five greatest mass extinctions, tiny marine organisms called graptoloids did not begin to rapidly develop new physical traits until about 2 million years after competing species became extinct. This discovery, based on new research, challenges the widely held assumption that a period of explosive evolution quickly follows for survivors of mass extinctions. In the absence of competition, the common theory goes, surviving species hurry to adapt, evolving new...
[ 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...
Mammals can evolve from the size of a mouse to the size of an elephant in as little as 24 million generations, although they shrink more than 10 times as fast as they grow to large sizes, according to new research reported Monday by an international team of biologists and paleontologists. The study is the first of its kind to measure how fast large-scale evolution can occur in mammals. The researchers explored increases and decreases in mammal size following the extinction of dinosaurs...
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...
