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Paleontologists have described a new species of the extant bee genus Leioproctus from a fossil specimen found in southern New Zealand.Named Leioproctus barrydonovani, the new species lived during the Middle Miocene epoch, some 14.6 million years ago.The ancient insect belongs to Leioproctus, a large genus within the plasterer bee family Colletidae.Extant Leioproctus species are small, black, hairy bees between 4 and 16 mm in length.They are found in Australasia and South America, and include the most common native bees in New Zealand...The specimen (total length of the body is 6.4 mm) was recovered from the Middle Miocene deposits of the...

“Why is it that man ever chooses to sin? The answer is that man has fallen away from God (and) his whole nature has become perverted and sinful. Man’s whole bias is away from God. By nature he hates God and feels that God is opposed to him. His god is himself…his own abilities and powers and desires (Man) likes and covets the things which God prohibits, and dislikes the things and kind of life to which God calls him. These are no mere dogmatic statements. They are facts (that) alone explain the moral muddle and the ugliness that characterize...

LONDON — The mystery of dinosaur origins has taken an unexpected turn toward the equator. While paleontologists have long searched southern regions for clues about where these magnificent creatures first evolved, new research suggests we may have been looking in the wrong latitude altogether. A new study indicates that the first dinosaurs may have emerged in Earth’s ancient tropics, forcing scientists to reconsider long-held theories about their origins. For years, paleontologists believed dinosaurs originated in what is now southern South America and southern Africa, since the oldest unequivocal dinosaur fossils come from late Carnian rock formations (around 230 million years...

Scientists identified the specimen as a horned lark, which they believe could be an ancestor to two lark species alive now. Love Dalén - An intact 46,000-year-old bird was found for the first time in the Siberian permafrost. Archaeologists have uncovered many remarkable, ancient specimens from the Siberian permafrost. This time they found the mummified remains of a whole bird — and it still had its feathers and talons intact. According to CNN, the 46,000-year-old bird has been identified as a horned lark, or Eremophila alpestris, and scientists believe it could be a prehistoric predecessor to two subspecies alive today,...

In 2018, a female Neanderthal was discovered in the Shanidar Cave in Iraqi Kurdistan. Now, archaeologists from The University of Cambridge have unveiled the reconstructed face of the 75,000-year-old woman, based on the assembly of hundreds of individual bone fragments recovered during excavations. “Neanderthals have had a bad press ever since the first ones were found over 150 years ago,” said Professor Graeme Barker from Cambridge’s McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, who led the excavation at the cave where the woman’s remains were discovered. Neanderthals are believed to have become extinct around 40,000 years ago, and discoveries of their remains...

Tails are useful in many ways, but — unlike these vervet monkeys pictured in Lake Mburo National Park in Uganda — humans' closest primate relatives lost the appendages about 25 million years ago. (Photo credit: imageBROKER/Shutterstock via CNN Newsource) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Humans have many wonderful qualities, but we lack something that’s a common feature among most animals with backbones: a tail. Exactly why that is has been something of a mystery. Tails are useful for balance, propulsion, communication and defense against biting insects. However, humans and our closest primate relatives — the great apes — said farewell to tails about 25...

A team of international scientists have discovered 240-million-year-old fossils from the Triassic period in China that one scientist described as a "long and snake-like, mythical Chinese dragon." The 16-foot-long aquatic reptile, called Dinocephalosaurus orientalis, has 32 separate neck vertebrae – an extremely long neck, according to the National Museums of Scotland, which announced the news on Friday. The new fossil has a snake-like appearance and flippers and was found in the Guizhou Province of southern China. Dinocephalosaurus orientalis was first identified in 2003 when its skull was found, but this more complete fossil discovery has "allowed scientists to depict the...

In 2022, researchers stumbled upon the footprint site near the northern tip of North Africa while examining boulders at a nearby pocket beach. A team of archaeologists have unveiled the discovery of the oldest human footprints ever recorded in North Africa and the southern Mediterranean. The footprints, dating back an astonishing 90,000 years, were found on a beach in Larache, Morocco, by a multinational team led by Moncef Essedrati, a research professor and laboratory director at the French University of Southern Brittany. "Between tides, I said to my team that we should go north to explore another beach," Essedrati told...

Dr Valentina Rossi of University College Cork, Ireland, who led the research team which discovered that a 280-million-year-old lizard fossil is, in part, a forgery. (Image credit: Zixiao Yang) A 280-million-year-old fossil that has baffled researchers for decades has been shown to be, in part, a forgery following new examination of the remnants. The discovery has led the team led by Dr Valentina Rossi of University College Cork, Ireland (UCC) to urge caution in how the fossil is used in future research. Tridentinosaurus antiquus was discovered in the Italian alps in 1931 and was thought to be an important specimen...

A newly described fossil suggests that the ancestor of humans and apes arose in Europe, not in Africa...In the new study, the researchers analyzed a newly identified ape fossil from the 8.7 million-year-old site of Çorakyerler in central Anatolia. They dubbed the species Anadoluvius turkae. "Anadolu" is the modern Turkish word for Anatolia, and "turk" refers to Turkey.The fossil suggests that A. turkae likely weighed about 110 to 130 pounds (50 to 60 kilograms), or about the weight of a large male chimpanzee.Based on the fossils of other animals found alongside it — such as giraffes, warthogs, rhinos, antelope, zebras,...

Prof. Begun said: "Our findings further suggest that hominines [bonobos, chimpanzees, and gorillas] not only evolved in western and central Europe - but spent over five million years evolving there and spreading to the eastern Mediterranean before eventually dispersing into Africa."....This migration, he added, was "probably a consequence of changing environments and diminishing forests."

If the claims are true, the behavior by Homo naledi—a baffling, small-brained member of the human family tree—would pre-date the earliest known burials by at least 100,000 years. An extinct human species that lived hundreds of thousands of years ago may have deliberately buried its dead and carved meaningful symbols deep in a South African cave—advanced behaviors generally deemed unique to Neanderthals and modern Homo sapiens. If confirmed, the burials would be the earliest yet known by at least 100,000 years. The claims, made today in two research papers uploaded to the preprint server bioRxiv, were also announced by paleoanthropologist...

A blackened, broken leg bone from Earth’s prehistoric past may hold the answer to when early humans diverged from apes and started their own evolutionary path.The fossilized find, first uncovered two decades ago, suggests that early humans regularly walked on two feet some seven million years ago... Since many consider bipedalism the major milestone that put our own lineage on a different evolutionary path than the apes, Sahelanthropus could be the very oldest known hominin—the group consisting of modern humans, extinct human species and all of our immediate ancestors.The species could even be our oldest non-ape ancestor, if its lineage...

Lizard Skull Fossil Closeup One of the Thalassotitan skulls. (University of Bath) The discovery of incredible fossils of a giant marine lizard reveals how this ancient extinct beast would have ruled the sea 66 million years ago. The beast is a newly discovered species of mosasaur, giant marine reptiles that hunted the oceans during the Late Cretaceous. It's called Thalassotitan atrox, and wear on its teeth along with other remains found at its excavation site suggest that this intimidating animal was no gentle giant – but feasted on difficult prey such as sea turtles, plesiosaurs, and other mosasaurs. Other mosasaurs...

A joint Ethiopian-US team of palaeontologists announced on Saturday they had discovered the world's oldest biped skeleton to be unearthed so far, dating it to between 3.8 and four million years old. "This is the world's oldest biped," Bruce Latimer, director of the natural history museum in Cleveland, Ohio, told a news conference in the Ethiopian capital, adding that "it will revolutionise the way we see human evolution".The bones were found three weeks ago in Ethiopia's Afar region, at a site some 60 kilometres from Hadar where Lucy, one of the first hominids, was discovered in 1974. Researchers at the...

An Australian academic who has examined the skeletal remains of a three-foot hominid discovered in an Indonesian cave and nicknamed a "hobbit" disputed Friday a report that they represent a new species of human. Professor Maciej Henneberg, head of anatomy at Adelaide University, said he thought the bones found in 2003 on Indonesia's Flores island were simply those of a normal human stunted by a viral disease, microcephaly -- a conclusion rejected in the earlier report by another team of scientists. That team analyzed the find and said the partial skeleton was evidence of a new, dwarf species of human....

Research on human fossils generally proceeds at a leisurely pace. Those who discover new bones sometimes take years to analyze them, while their colleagues and rivals wait impatiently to get a good look. But that's not the case with the 18,000-year-old "hobbit" skeleton of Indonesia. Ever since the Australian- Indonesian team that discovered the bones made the startling claim that they are the remains of a species of small, archaic human, Homo floresiensis (Nature, 28 October, p. 1055), the bones have been analyzed and reanalyzed at a breathtaking pace. For the past 3 months, however, the studies have been directed...

These are three of the dogmas which we are endoctrinated nowadays in school : #1 - origins of the current forms life forms: by evolution from previous forms #2 - appearance of Homo Sapiens (from encarta): The oldest known fossils that possess skeletal features typical of modern humans date from between 130,000 and 90,000 years ago. #3 - last ice age (from encarta): the most recent ice age, the Pleistocene Epoch, lasted from about 1.6 million years to 10,000 years before present ... when temperatures were 5° to 7° C cooler than today. #1 and #2 are part of current...

"Little Foot" one of several well-known fossils found at Sterkfontein caves in South Africa's Cradle of Humankind. The fossils of our earliest ancestors found in South Africa are a million years older than previously thought, meaning they walked the Earth around the same time as their East African relatives like the famous "Lucy", according to new research. The Sterkfontein caves at the Cradle of Humankind world heritage site southwest of Johannesburg have yielded more Australopithecus fossils than any other site in the world. Among them was "Mrs Ples", the most complete skull of an Australopithecus africanus found in South...

This video delves into the intriguing tale of Andrew Sarkus Mongali Enus, the largest land predator ever unearthed. Its discovery, nearly a century past, during an expedition in Mongolia, unveiled a creature of formidable proportions. Initially pegged as a member of the Mesonychids, a diverse group of mammals spanning small to large sizes, further scrutiny four decades later revealed Andrew Sarkus's true kinship with the Uintatheres, colloquially dubbed "hell pigs." The enigmatic nature of Andrew Sarkus is compounded by its solitary status within the Andrew Sids group, making it a challenge to reconstruct its full anatomical profile. Clad in fur...