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Magnified image showing microbes revived from 101.5 million-year-old sediment. Credit: JAMSTEC ======================================================================= For decades, scientists have gathered ancient sediment samples from below the seafloor to better understand past climates, plate tectonics, and the deep marine ecosystem. In a new study published in Nature Communications, researchers reveal that given the right food in the right laboratory conditions, microbes collected from sediment as old as 100 million years can revive and multiply, even after laying dormant since large dinosaurs prowled the planet. The research team behind the new study, from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), the URI Graduate...

When the paper was published, many mainstream publications were intrigued by the story and wrote about the findings, giving the team from China, the U.S. and Canada a bit of notoriety. But shortly thereafter, others in the field began questioning the categorization of the fossil—many suggested it appeared to be a lizard, which is a different group of reptiles from the dinosaurs. The specimen in question is a very small skull embedded in amber, believed to be approximately 100 million years old—dating it to the time of the dinosaurs. The researchers described the specimen as a bird-like skull less than...

In studying the hundreds of offspring produced, which some on the internet have named sturddlefish, the researchers found that they fell into one of three main categories: those that looked mostly like their mothers, those that looked mostly like their fathers and those that inherited features of both parents. Both of the parent fish are endangered, and they would not have had any chance of reproducing in the wild—as their names suggest, the paddlefish live in the U.S. and the sturgeon live in Russia. They are both considered to be "living fossils" by scientists because they have not changed very...

A giant 16-foot long dolphin has been discovered that lived 25 million years ago and was an apex predator. The prehistoric beast feasted on large-bodied prey, like the killer whale does today. Scientists have given a detailed description of the first nearly complete skeleton of the extinct dolphin, discovered in what is now South Carolina in the US.

To understand how and why color is preserved in some amber fossils but not in others, and whether the colors seen in fossils are the same as the ones insects paraded more than 99 million years ago, the researchers used a diamond knife blades to cut through the exoskeleton of two of the colorful amber wasps and a sample of normal dull cuticle. Using electron microscopy, they were able to show that colorful amber fossils have a well-preserved exoskeleton nanostructure that scatters light. The unaltered nanostructure of colored insects suggested that the colors preserved in amber may be the same...

Although past research has suggested Tyrannosaurus rex was related to chickens, now findings hint this giant predator might have acted chicken too. Instead of picking on dinosaurs its own size, researchers now suggest T. rex was a baby killer that liked to swallow defenseless prey whole. Fossil evidence of attacks of tyrannosaurs or similar gargantuan "theropods" on triceratops and duck-billed dinosaurs has been uncovered before, conjuring images of titanic clashes.

Artist's reconstruction of the world's oldest modern bird, Asteriornis maastrichtensis, in its original environment. 66.7 million years ago parts of Belgium were covered by a shallow sea, and conditions were similar to modern tropical beaches like The Bahamas. Asteriornis lived at the end of the Age of Dinosaurs, a time when mosasaurs (giant marine reptiles) swam in the oceans, and Tyrannosaurus rex lived on land. Asteriornis had fairly long legs and may have prowled the tropical shoreline. Credit: Phillip Krzeminski ==================================================================== The oldest fossil of a modern bird yet found, dating from the age of dinosaurs, has been identified by...

Researchers surveyed more than 2,000 dinosaur bones from the Jurassic Mygatt-Moore Quarry, a 152-million-year-old fossil deposit in western Colorado, looking for bite marks. They found more than they were expecting. Big theropod dinosaurs such as Allosaurus and Ceratosaurus ate pretty much everything - including each other... There were theropod bites on the large-bodied sauropods, whose gigantic bones dominate the assemblage, bites on the heavily armored Mymoorapelta, and lots of bites on theropods too, especially the common remains of Allosaurus. There were hundreds of them, in frequencies far above the norm for dinosaur-dominated fossil sites. Some were on meaty bones like...

A team of paleontologists from the United States, Canada and Argentina has analyzed the fossilized eggs of two different non-avian dinosaurs, Protoceratops and Mussaurus, and found that the eggs resembled those of turtles in their microstructure, composition, and mechanical properties. They've also found that hard-shelled eggs evolved at least three times independently in the dinosaur family tree. For many years there was scant fossil evidence of dinosaur eggs, and all known examples were characterized by thick, calcified shells -- leading paleontologists to speculate that all dinosaur eggs were hard-shelled, like those of modern crocodiles and birds. "The assumption has always...

Named Antarcticoolithus bradyi, the new fossil is the first fossilized egg found in Antarctica. The specimen exceeds eggs of all known non-avian dinosaurs in volume and differs from them in structure. Measuring 29 by 20 cm (11.4 by 7.9 inches) and weighing 6.5 kg, it is the largest soft-shell egg ever discovered and the second-largest egg of any known animal. Although the elephant bird egg is slightly larger, its eggshell is roughly five times thicker. University of Texas at Austin paleontologist Lucas Legendre and his colleagues from the United States and Chile think that Antarcticoolithus bradyi was laid by a...

Named Kampecaris obanensis, the prehistoric millipede lived during the Silurian period, about 425 million years ago. The ancient creature was a small (2-3 cm in length), short-bodied animal with three recognizable sections. It likely lived near a lake in a semi-arid forested environment and ate decomposing plants. Its fossilized remains were unearthed on the island of Kerrera in the Scottish Inner Hebrides. The specimen is about 75 million years younger than the age other paleontologists have estimated the oldest millipede to be using a technique known as molecular clock dating. The oldest fossil of a land-dwelling, stemmed plant, Cooksonia, has...

Scientists have been stunned to find that some ancient crocodiles might have moved around on two feet. The evidence comes from beautifully preserved fossil tracks in South Korea. Nearly a hundred of these 18-24cm-long indentations were left in what were likely the muddy sediments that surrounded a lake in the Early Cretaceous, 110-120 million years ago. The international team behind the discovery says it will probably challenge our perception of crocodiles.

Paleontologists have uncovered the remains of megaraptor that lived 70 million years ago, making it one of the last carnivorous dinosaur to roam the Earth. Discovered in Argentina, the team found vertebrae, ribs and part of what would have been the dinosaur's chest and shoulder girdle. After a further analysis, they determined the creature was approximately 33 feet in length -the largest megaraptor found to date. Unlike the Tyrannosaurus rex, this lethal dinosaur had extremely long, muscular arms with massive claws at the end that were used to attack prey.

Hamilton, ON - A gigantic ape, measuring about 10 feet tall and weighing up to 1,200 pounds, co-existed alongside humans, a geochronologist at McMaster University has discovered. Using a high-precision absolute-dating method (techniques involving electron spin resonance and uranium series), Jack Rink, associate professor of geography and earth sciences at McMaster, has determined that Gigantopithecus blackii, the largest primate that ever lived, roamed southeast Asia for nearly a million years before the species died out 100,000 years ago. This was known as the Pleistocene period, by which time humans had already existed for a million years. “A missing piece of...

A gigantic ape standing 10 feet tall and weighing up to 1,200 pounds lived alongside humans for over a million years, according to a new study. Fortunately for the early humans, the huge primate's diet consisted mainly of bamboo. Scientists have known about Gigantopithecus blackii since the accidental discovery of some of its teeth on sale in a Hong Kong pharmacy about 80 years ago. While the idea of a giant ape piqued the interest of scientists – and bigfoot hunters – around the world, it was unclear how long ago this beast went extinct. Precise dating Now Jack Rink,...

Four fossilized monkey teeth discovered deep in the Peruvian Amazon provide new evidence that more than one group of ancient primates journeyed across the Atlantic Ocean from Africa. The teeth are from a newly discovered species belonging to an extinct family of African primates known as parapithecids. Fossils discovered at the same site in Peru had earlier offered the first proof that South American monkeys evolved from African primates.

One of the most important archaeological sites for our understanding of Neanderthals is still disgorging its secrets. A new skeleton has been found in Shanidar Cave in Iraqi Kurdistan, and it's helping reveal how the Neanderthals dealt with their dead. Shanidar Cave is famous for what is known as the Flower Burial. Among 10 fragmentary Neanderthal skeletons unearthed there in the 1950s and 1960s, one was found with clumps of pollen mixed in with the surrounding dirt. This was interpreted as evidence that the bones - belonging to a man aged between 30 and 45 years - had been buried...

Hardly one-tool wonders, ancient hominids called Homo erectus relied on a toolkit that included relatively simple and more complex cutting devices, new discoveries suggest. Excavations at two Ethiopian sites located about 5.7 kilometers apart uncovered partial H. erectus braincases alongside two types of stone tools, paleoanthropologist Sileshi Semaw of the National Research Center on Human Evolution in Burgos, Spain, and colleagues report March 4 in Science Advances. Some artifacts featured a single sharpened edge, while others consisted of double-edged designs such as pear-shaped hand axes. One H. erectus fossil dates to about 1.26 million years ago, the other to between...

Palaeontologists have announced the discovery of organic material in 75-million year old dinosaur fossils. The team claims to have found evidence of cartilage cells, proteins, chromosomes and even DNA preserved inside the fossils, suggesting these can survive for far longer than we thought. The researchers, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and North Carolina State University, made the discovery in skull fragments of Hypacrosaurus, a duck-billed herbivore from the Cretaceous period. These particular specimens were “nestlings”, meaning that at time of death they weren’t yet old enough to leave the nest. Inside the skull fragments, the team spotted evidence of...

Researchers in the Czech Republic have uncovered a fossilized skull of a ‘protodog’ at a dig site dating back an estimated 28,500 years, giving new insight into what influenced the eventual split between dogs and wolves. The team, which was led by University of Arkansas anthropology professor Peter Ungar, also found wolf samples from the site and compared the scratches and scrapes on the preserved teeth along with chemical isotopes left in each. The samples came from a dig site in the countryside near the small town of Předmostí in the eastern part of the Czech Republic.