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WASHINGTON (AP) — Some of the earliest Americans turn out to have been artists. A bone fragment at least 13,000 years old, with the carved image of a mammoth or mastodon, has been discovered in Florida, a new study reports. While prehistoric art depicting animals with trunks has been found in Europe, this may be the first in the Western Hemisphere, researchers report Wednesday in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

MANILA (AFP) – The bones of an extinct sea cow species that lived about 20 million years ago have been discovered in a cave in the Philippines by a team of Italian scientists, the expedition head said Monday. Several ribs and spine parts of the aquatic mammal were found in February and March in limestone rock above the waters of an underground river on the island of Palawan, said University of Florence geologist Leonardo Piccini. "The fossil is in the rock, in the cave. We cannot remove it and we don't want to extract it. We would like to wait...

Almost 50 million years ago, ants the size of hummingbirds roamed what is now Wyoming, a new fossil discovery reveals. These giant bugs may have crossed an Arctic land bridge between Europe and North America during a particularly warm period in Earth's history. At about 2 inches (5 cm) long, the specimen is a "monstrously big ant," said Bruce Archibald, a paleoentomologist at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia who reported the discovery today (May 3) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Though fossils of loose giant ant wings have been found before in the United States,...

The largest fossil spider uncovered to date once ensnared prey back in the age of dinosaurs, scientists find. The spider, named Nephila jurassica, was discovered buried in ancient volcanic ash in Inner Mongolia, China. Tufts of hairlike fibers seen on its legs showed this 165-million-year-old arachnid to be the oldest known species of the largest web-weaving spiders alive today — the golden orb-weavers, or Nephila, which are big enough to catch birds and bats, and use silk that shines like gold in the sunlight. The fossil was about as large as its modern relatives, with a body one inch (2.5...

T. Rex More Hyena Than Lion: Tyrannosaurus Rex Was Opportunistic Feeder, Not Top Predator, Paleontologists Say ScienceDaily (Feb. 22, 2011) — The ferocious Tyrannosaurus rex has been depicted as the top dog of the Cretaceous, ruthlessly stalking herds of duck-billed dinosaurs and claiming the role of apex predator, much as the lion reigns supreme in the African veld. But a new census of all dinosaur skeletons unearthed over a large area of eastern Montana shows that Tyrannosaurus was too numerous to have subsisted solely on the dinosaurs it tracked and killed with its scythe-like teeth. Instead, argue paleontologists John "Jack"...

ScienceDaily (Mar. 1, 2011) — Fossilized bones discovered in Texas from a flying reptile that died 89 million years ago may be the earliest occurrence of the prehistoric creature known as Pteranodon. Previously, Pteranodon bones have been found in Kansas, South Dakota and Wyoming in the Niobrara and Pierre geological formations. This likely Pteranodon specimen is the first of its kind found in Texas, according to paleontologist Timothy S. Myers at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, who identified the reptile. The specimen was discovered north of Dallas by an amateur fossil hunter who found various bones belonging to the left...

Anyone who's ever thought they had a big butt had nothing on a dinosaur literally named "thunder thighs." Among the sauropods, the largest creatures to have ever walked the Earth, Brontomerus — "thunder thighs" in Greek — probably had the biggest thighs of them all, scientists revealed. Its unusually powerful back legs might have been used for super-kicks against rivals or would-be predators, they added. [Illustration of Brontomerus] Partial skeletons of Brontomerus mcintoshi were recovered in 1994 in a quarry in eastern Utah. (The dinosaur's species name, mcintoshi, is meant to honor of John "Jack" McIntosh, a retired physicist and...

NEW YORK — Scientists have recovered the DNA code of a human relative recently discovered in Siberia, and it delivered a surprise: This relative roamed far from the cave that holds its only known remains. By comparing the DNA to that of modern populations, scientists found evidence that these "Denisovans" from more than 30,000 years ago ranged all across Asia. They apparently interbred with the ancestors of people now living in Melanesia, a group of islands northeast of Australia.

An accidental discovery by a bulldozer driver has led to what may be the find of the century: an ice-age burial ground that could rival the famed La Brea tar pits. After two weeks of excavating ancient fossils at the Ziegler Reservoir near Snowmass Village, Colorado, scientists from the Denver Museum of Natural Science returned home Wednesday with their unearthed treasures in tow -- a wide array of fossils, insects and plant life that they say give a stunningly realistic view of what life was like when ancient, giant beasts lumbered across the Earth. Since the team’s arrival in mid-October,...

If Barack Obama were to marshal America’s vast scientific and strategic resources behind a new Manhattan Project, he might reasonably hope to reinvent the global energy landscape and sketch an end to our dependence on fossil fuels within three to five years. We could then stop arguing about wind mills, deepwater drilling, IPCC hockey sticks, or strategic reliance on the Kremlin. History will move on fast.

Former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Republican who has broken ranks in the past with the GOP, gave Democrat Joe Sestak his second major endorsement from moderates in a week in his bid for a hotly contested Senate seat in Pennsylvania. Hagel told The Associated Press on Monday that Sestak has demonstrated during his two terms in Congress that he puts the interests of the nation and his constituents ahead of his party. "I think he's exactly what our country needs more of. I think he's what the Senate needs more of _ courageous, independent thinking," Hagel said. "That's what...

I just decided to go in a different direction for a change this week. I hope the commercial entities don't mind a bit of low-cost advertising. Thin section Arizona Skies Meteoritesclick pic for 2x Sticks In Stones Lapidaryclick pic for 2x Ginkgo Gem Shop The Lone Star Mine Shaft

For millions of years, Tany laid buried under layers of rock in what is now Hudson County. She was unearthed in 1979 by a trio of amateur fossil hunters in an abandoned quarry: a rare, complete skeleton of a primitive reptile — one that swam through waterways in the northeast as dinosaurs began to roam the planet. But in the decades since her discovery, Tany has been stored out of state, modestly displayed in the lobby of a New York research laboratory. Now, she’s back home. The fossil’s founders, Steven and Trini Stelz and James Leonard, recently donated the 200-million-year-old...

Researchers have discovered the fossilised remains of an ancient whale with huge, fearsome teeth. Writing in the journal Nature, the scientists have dubbed the 12 million-year-old creature "Leviathan". It is thought to have been more than 17m long, and might have engaged in fierce battles with other giant sea creatures from the time. Leviathan was much like the modern sperm whale in terms of size and appearance. Continue reading the main story At the same time in the same waters was another monster... they might have fought each other Dr Christian de Muizon Natural History Museum, Paris But that is...

NASA's Mars Meteorite Research Team reopened a 14-year-old controversy on extraterrestrial life last week, reaffirming and offering support for its widely challenged assertion that a 4-billion-year-old meteorite that landed thousands of years ago on Antarctica shows evidence of microscopic life on Mars. In addition to presenting research that they said disproved some of their critics, the scientists reported that additional Martian meteorites appear to house distinct and identifiable microbial fossils that point even more strongly to the existence of life. "We feel more confident than ever that Mars probably once was, and maybe still is, home to life," team leader...

Remarkably well preserved for a two-million-year-old fossil, this child's skull belongs to Australopithecus sediba, a previously unknown species of ape-like creature that may have been a direct ancestor of modern humans, according to a new study in Science. Scientists think this particular Australopithecus sediba fossil is from a male between 8 and 13 years old. The child's fossils were found in the remnants of a subterranean South African cave system alongside the fossil remains of an adult female in her 30s. "It's the opinion of my colleagues and I that [A. sediba] may very well be the Rosetta stone that...

Fresh tissues continue to be found in supposedly millions-of-years-old fossils. These un-replaced, un-mineralized, still-soft tissues come from animals or plants that were preserved by some catastrophic event.1 Each specimen looks young, and a direct inference is that its host rock must also be dated as thousands, not millions, of years old. And the fresher the meat, the more ridiculous are the evolution-inspired claims of great antiquity for the rock in which it was discovered. These tissue finds are typically accompanied, in either the technical literature or science news, by the phrase "remarkable preservation." If one is to believe in the...

A fossil skeleton of a child discovered in a cave system known as the Cradle of Humankind may represent a previously unknown stage in the evolution of man, The (London) Sunday Times reported. The skeleton, which is almost complete despite being two million years old, is believed to belong to one of the hominid groups that includes humans. Hominid fossil finds are usually little more than small bone fragments. Scientists hope such a complete find will help them to work out what our ancestors looked like and to determine key dates in their evolution from ape-man to man-ape. Experts who...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – It had a body the size of a sheep, a long neck and tail, and lived some 185 million years ago. Scientists call this dinosaur find "a rare skeleton of a new species." Paleontologists unearthed the partial remains of the plant-eating creature, named Seitaad ruessi, in the red rocks of the Navajo Sandstone region of the western US state of Utah. The bones were found just below stone and adobe dwellings of the ancient Anasazi people in a site known as the Eagles Nest. Seitaad is an ancestor of the giant long-necked, long-tailed dinosaurs such as Diplodocus,...

Scientists have discovered a macabre death scene that took place 67 million years ago. The setting was a nest, in which a baby dinosaur had just hatched from an egg, only to face an 11-foot-long snake waiting to devour it. The moment was frozen forever when, apparently, the nest was buried in a sudden avalanche of mud or sand and everything was fossilized. Scientists have discovered a macabre death scene that took place 67 million years ago. The setting was a nest, in which a baby dinosaur had just hatched from an egg, only to face an 11-foot-long snake waiting...