Feb. 29, 2024 A technique originally devised to extract DNA from woolly mammoths and other ancient archaeological specimens can be used to potentially identify badly burned human remains, according to ...
Feb. 20, 2024 In a new study, paleontologists describe the oldest-known leaf-nosed bat fossils, which were found along the banks of the Panama Canal. They're also the oldest bat fossils from Central America, ...
Feb. 20, 2024 By analysing ancient DNA, an international team of researchers have uncovered cases of chromosomal disorders, including what could be the first case of Edwards syndrome ever identified from ...
Feb. 19, 2024 Until recently, Orthacanthus gracilis could have been considered the 'John Smith' of prehistoric shark names, given how common it was. Three different species of sharks from the late ...
Feb. 16, 2024 Palaeontological analysis shows that a renowned fossil thought to show soft tissue preservation is in fact just paint. The fossil discovered in 1931 was thought to be an important specimen for ...
Feb. 15, 2024 New research has shown that the tropical subsurface ocean gained oxygen during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (commonly referred to as PETM). During this short-lived interval of time in Earth s ...
Feb. 14, 2024 A new study explores the weight great fossil sites have on our understanding of evolutionary relationships between fossil groups and quantified the power these sites have on our understanding of ...
Feb. 12, 2024 Scientists examined hundreds of birds in museum collections and discovered a suite of feather characteristics that all flying birds have in common. These 'rules' provide clues as to how the ...
Feb. 9, 2024 Snail shells are often colorful and strikingly patterned. This is due to pigments that are produced in special cells of the snail and stored in the shell in varying concentrations. Fossil shells, on ...
Feb. 9, 2024 Nearly 400 exceptionally well-preserved fossils dating back 470 million years have been discovered in the south of France by two amateur paleontologists. The discovery provides unprecedented ...
Feb. 6, 2024 The rivers of Australia, which once flowed across its now dry interior, used to host a range of bizarre animals -- including a sleek predatory lobe-finned fish with large fangs and bony scales. The ...
Feb. 2, 2024 In the fossil record, trees typically are preserved with only their trunks. They don't usually include any leaves to show what their canopies and overall forms may have looked like. In a new ...
Jan. 31, 2024 Did the ancient Greeks and Romans experience Alzheimer's? Medical texts from 2,500 years ago rarely mention severe memory loss, suggesting today's widespread dementia stems from modern ...
Jan. 30, 2024 Evolutionary biologists report they have combined PET scans of modern pigeons along with studies of dinosaur fossils to help answer an enduring question in biology: How did the brains of birds evolve ...
Jan. 29, 2024 A new study, which centers on evidence from skulls of a 6-million-year-old fossil ape, Lufengpithecus, offers important clues about the origins of bipedal locomotion courtesy of a novel method: ...
Jan. 24, 2024 DNA from ancient feces can offer archaeologists new clues about the life and health of Japanese people who lived thousands of years ago, according to a new ...
Jan. 24, 2024 The brown bear is one of the largest living terrestrial carnivores, and is widely distributed across the Northern Hemisphere. Unlike many other large carnivores that went extinct at the end of the ...
Jan. 24, 2024 Microorganisms were the first forms of life on our planet. The clues are written in 3.5 billion-year-old rocks by geochemical and morphological traces, such as chemical compounds or structures that ...
Jan. 23, 2024 Of all the organisms that photosynthesize, land plants have the most complex form. How did this morphology emerge? A team of scientists has taken a deep dive into the evolutionary history of ...
Jan. 22, 2024 Gliding winged-reptiles were amongst the ancient crocodile residents of the Mendip Hills in Somerset, England, researchers at the have ...