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The find, made in 110-million-year-old deposits in northwest China, is of a new species known as Avimaia schweitzerae and the fossil has been described as "incredibly well preserved." The new species belongs to the group known as Enantiornithes, which were fairly common in the Cretaceous period, living alongside dinosaurs. However, the fossilized egg may have resulted in the death of the so-called mother bird, researchers said. "The egg shell consists of two layers instead of one as in normal healthy bird eggs, indicating the egg was retained too long inside the abdomen," Dr. Alida Bailleul said in comments obtained by...

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. – George Orwell I confess, I’ve been a little upset ever since I saw the picture of the sheep comforting the sheepdog that had been injured by a wolf threatening his flock. I felt a little better after seeing the collars the dogs wear for protection against wolf attacks but it was still unsettling, thinking about the price our protectors pay. And I thought, what if we all joined with the sheepdog in fighting our foe? Wouldn’t the wolf...

A new oviraptorosaur species from the Late Cretaceous was discovered in Mongolia... Oviraptorosaurs were a diverse group of feathered, bird-like dinosaurs from the Cretaceous of Asia and North America. Despite the abundance of nearly complete oviraptorosaur skeletons discovered in southern China and Mongolia, the diet and feeding strategies of these toothless dinosaurs are still unclear. In this study, Lee and colleagues described an incomplete skeleton of an oviraptorosaur found in the Nemegt Formation of the Gobi desert of Mongolia. The new species, named Gobiraptor minutus, can be distinguished from other oviraptorosaurs in having unusual thickened jaws. This unique morphology suggests...

The prestigious international journal Quaternary Science Reviews has just published a paper which has involved the participation of Gibraltarian scientists from the Gibraltar National Museum alongside colleagues from Spain, Portugal and Japan. The results which have been published come from an area of the Catalan Bay Sand Dune. This work started ten years ago, when the first dates using the OSL method were obtained. It is then that the first traces of footprints left by vertebrates were found. In subsequent years the successive natural collapse of sand has revealed further material and has permitted a detailed study including new dates....

More than 3.8 billion years ago, in a time period called the Hadean eon, our planet Earth was constantly bombarded by asteroids, which caused the large-scale melting of its surface rocks. Most of these surface rocks were basalts, and the asteroid impacts produced large pools of superheated impact melt of such composition. These basaltic pools were tens of kilometres thick, and thousands of kilometres in diameter. “If you want to get an idea of what the surface of Earth looked like at that time, you can just look at the surface of the Moon which is covered by a vast...

Hagfish Haunts Darwin A zombie hagfish rises from the dead, and scares Darwin from two directions. January 24, 2019 | David F. Coppedge Hagfish are eel-like fish that look like creatures from a horror movie. Their tapir-like snouts are scary enough, but when threatened, they have a unique weapon: slime! They can spread a net of sticky slime around them that can clog the gills of an attacker. And they have been doing this for at least 100 million Darwin Years, perhaps 300 million.

It turns out that our galaxy looks the way it does today thanks to a run-in with something called the 'Gaia Sausage'. As greasy as space is, we're not talking cosmic processed foods here. Rather, astronomers have found signs that a small galaxy smashed into the Milky Way billions of years ago, leaving behind a mess of stars with some rather unusual orbits. So, what makes this cosmic object a 'sausage'? Cambridge University astronomer Wyn Evans says it all came down to the paths of the stars following the impact... Collisions between galaxies aren't all that unusual, and the Milky...

Just like the modern platypus, this 250-million-year-old, Triassic-age marine reptile likely used its cartilaginous bill to discover and seize its next meal, a new study finds. "This animal had unusually small eyes for the body, only rivaled by some living animals that rely on senses other than vision and feed in the dusk or darkness — for example some shrews, badgers and the duck-billed platypus," said study lead researcher Ryosuke Motani, a paleobiologist at the University of California, Davis. "So, it most likely used tactile senses [with its] platypus-like bill to detect prey in the dusk or darkness." ..." Previously,...

Convert to Creation. Margaret Wieland interviews bird expert and former renowned evolutionist Dr Jon Ahlquist Dr Jon Ahlquist is a molecular biologist, ornithologist and artist who before his retirement specialized in molecular phylogenetics. With a B.S. from Cornell University, and an M.S. and Ph.D. from Yale University (all in biology) he subsequently taught and researched at Yale. He then held professorships at Ohio University, the University of Louisville (Kentucky), and several South Carolina universities.

Paleoanthropology Division Smithsonian Institute 207 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, DC 20078 Dear Sir: Thank you for your latest submission to the Institute, labeled “ 211-D, layer seven, next to the clothesline post . Hominid skull .” We have given this specimen a careful and detailed examination, and regret to inform you that we disagree with your theory that it represents “conclusive proof of the presence of Early Man in Oklahoma County two million years ago. .” Rather, it appears that what you have found is the head of a Barbie doll, of the variety one of our staff, who has small...

One hundred million years ago, the sky was filled with birds unlike those seen today, many with long, streamerlike tail feathers. Now, paleontologists have found examples of these paired feathers preserved in exquisite detail in 31 pieces of Cretaceous amber from Myanmar. The rare 3D preservation reveals the feathers’ structure is completely different from that of modern feathers—and hints that they may have been defensive decoys to foil predators. Such tail streamers—in some cases longer than the bodies—have been observed in early bird fossils from China for several decades, in particular, the 125-million-year-old Confuciusornis sanctus. They may also be present...

About 2.6 million years ago, an oddly bright light arrived in the prehistoric sky and lingered there for weeks or months. It was a supernova some 150 light years away from Earth. Within a few hundred years, long after the strange light in the sky had dwindled, a tsunami of cosmic energy from that same shattering star explosion could have reached our planet and pummeled the atmosphere, touching off climate change and triggering mass extinctions of large ocean animals, including a shark species that was the size of a school bus. The effects of such a supernova—and possibly more than...

A giant rhino that may have been the origin of the unicorn myth survived until at least 39,000 years ago - much longer than previously thought. Known as the Siberian unicorn, the animal had a long horn on its nose, and roamed the grasslands of Eurasia. New evidence shows the hefty beast may have eventually died out because it was such a picky eater. Scientists say knowing more about the animal's extinction could help save the remaining rhinos on the planet. Rhinos are in particular danger of extinction because they are very picky about their habitat, said Prof Adrian Lister...

Imagine if you crossed a rhino with a giant turtle and then supersized the result: You might get something like Lisowicia bojani, a newly discovered Triassic mammal cousin that had a body shaped like a rhinoceros, a beak like a turtle, and weighed as much as an African elephant, about 9 tons. Paleontologists say this startling creature offers a new view of the dawn of the age of the dinosaurs. "Who would have ever thought that there were giant, elephant-sized mammal cousins living alongside some of the very first dinosaurs?" marvels Stephen Brusatte, a vertebrate paleontologist at The University of...

A new species of sauropod dinosaur that stretched 39 feet (12 m) from head to tail has been unearthed in Patagonia, ArgentinaDubbed Lavocatisaurus agrioensis, the new dinosaur is thought to have lived approximately 110 million years ago (Cretaceous period).The creature was a type of sauropod, a group of huge plant-eating dinosaurs that includes the largest animals ever to walk the Earth.One adult and two immature specimens of Lavocatisaurus agrioensis were recovered near the locality of Agrio del Medio, a small town in the central part of the province of Neuquén, Patagonia.“We found most of the skull bones of Lavocatisaurus agrioensis:...

An international team of scientists has completed the first 3D virtual reconstruction of the ribcage of the most complete Neandertal skeleton unearthed to date, potentially shedding new light on how this ancient human moved and breathed. The team, which included researchers from universities in Spain, Israel, and the United States, including the University of Washington, focused on the thorax -- the area of the body containing the rib cage and upper spine, which forms a cavity to house the heart and lungs. Using CT scans of fossils from an approximately 60,000-year-old male skeleton known as Kebara 2, researchers were able...

We now know what the missing teeth would have looked like at the front of this jaw. Eden, Janine and Jim/CC BY 2.0Until this week, Pachycephalosaurus seemed like a friendly neighborhood herbivore. The scariest thing about these dinosaurs, which have been frequently depicted placidly munching on greenery, was the unique architecture of their skulls: domed, sloping, pointy around the edges, and 10 inches thick. They might have butted heads, but that didn’t make them seem dangerous, exactly.But now, new research presented at a Society of Vertebrate Paleontology conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico, raises the specter that Pachycephalosaurus was a...

The 28 footprints capture an early reptile-like creature’s unusual diagonal gait (Courtesy of Stephen Rowland) Some 310 million years ago, a reptile-like creature with an unusual gait roamed the sandy expanses of the Grand Canyon, leaving a trail of 28 footprints that can still be seen today. As Michael Greshko reports for National Geographic, these unusually well-preserved markers represent the national park’s oldest footfalls—and, if additional analysis links the early reptile to one that left a similar set of prints in Scotland roughly 299 million years ago, the tracks may even earn the distinction of being the oldest of their...

The Three Supernovas By Philip Cottraux Atheists used to believe the universe was eternally pre-existing and static. By rejecting the biblical creation account, they couldn’t accept the idea of a universe that had a beginning. Bertrand Russell, Charles Darwin, and at one time even Einstein labored under this philosophy. The idea of the whole universe condensed to a small state whose expansion was triggered by a colossal explosion was first proposed by a Catholic priest, Georges LeMaitres. The idea seemed so preposterous that astronomer Fred Hoyle first coined the phrase “big bang” as a term of ridicule. But two years...

Zanolli and colleagues examined dental remains from the sites of Fontana Fanuccio, located 50km southeast of Rome, and Visogliano, located 18km northwest of Trieste. At around 450,000 years old, these teeth join a very short list of fossil human remains from Middle Pleistocene Europe. Using micro-CT scanning and detailed morphological analyses, the authors examined the shape and arrangement of tooth tissues and compared them with teeth of other human species. They found that the teeth of both sites share similarities with Neanderthals and are distinct from modern humans. There has been much debate over the identities and relationships of Middle...