news

New observations and excavations in South African caves have found that  Homo naledi , an early human ancestor, intentionally buried their dead and made crosshatch engravings in the cave walls nearby. Fossils of  Homo naledi  were first discovered in these caves 10 years ago by a team of researchers led by paleoanthropologist  Lee Berger , now a National Geographic Explorer in Residence, with key participation by John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and other UW-Madison researchers.

Palaeontologists at the University of Southampton studying a British dinosaur tooth have concluded that several distinct groups of spinosaurs - dinosaurs with fearsome crocodile-like skulls - inhabited southern England over 100 million years ago. The team, from the University's EvoPalaeoLab, carried out a series of tests on the 140 million year old tooth, discovered in the early 20th century, in a thick, complicated rock structure named the Wealden Supergroup.

Contemporary DNA evidence suggests that humans emerged from the interaction of multiple populations living across the continent There is broad agreement that Homo sapiens originated in Africa. But there remain many uncertainties and competing theories about where, when, and how.

Scientists have discovered a new species of rare mosasaur in Morocco, adding to evidence of the vast diversity of these marine reptiles 66 million years ago. Scientists have discovered a new species of mosasaur, a sea-dwelling lizard from the age of the dinosaurs, with strange, ridged teeth unlike those of any known reptile.

Study on the evolution of Brontotheres lead by UV palaeontologist Éscar Sanisidro published in the journal -Science- Palaeontology specialists lead by University of Valencia investigator Éscar Sanisidro publish a study in the -Science- journal on the body size of Brontotheres, a mammal family that went extinct 53 million years ago.

Schöningen/Tübingen, 05/12/2023. In a study published today in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews, an international research team led by scientists from the University of Tübingen and the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment presents the earliest human footprints known from Germany.

We now know more about the diet of a prehistoric creature that grew up to two and a half metres long and lived in Australian waters during the time of the dinosaurs, thanks to the power of X-rays and a team of scientists at The Australian National University (ANU) and the Australian Museum Research Institute (AMRI).

A pair of studies to be published April 15 in the journal Science paint a new picture about apes, ancient Africa and the origins of humans. Many scientists had once hypothesized that the first apes to evolve in Africa more than 20 million years ago ate primarily fruit and lived within the thick, closed canopy of a nearly continent-wide forest ecosystem.

Pair of studies pushes back ape origins and grassy woodland evolution by 10 million years in Africa Anthropologists have long thought that our ape ancestors evolved an upright torso in order to pick fruit in forests, but new research from the University of Michigan suggests a life in open woodlands and a diet that included leaves drove apes' upright stature.

New research led by SFU paleobotanist Rolf Mathewes provides clues about what plants existed in the Burnaby Mountain area 40 million years ago during the late Eocene, when the climate was much warmer than it is today. The results of their plant fossil analysis were recently published in the International Journal of Plant Sciences.

Plant fossils from Egypt shed light on the evolutionary history of rainforests An international team of researchers led by first author Dr. Clément Coiffard of Freie Universität Berlin and Senckenberg scientist Dieter Uhl has taken a close look at the evolutionary history of tropical rainforests.

Islands are biodiversity hotspots and are home to animal species with unique characteristics, including dwarf specimens, which have evolved to very small sizes compared to their mainland relatives, and giants. An international study now reports that these species are at higher risk of extinction. The findings are supported by software developed by Daniele Silvestro of the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB) at the University of Fribourg.

Billions of sea anemones adorn the bottom of the Earth's oceans - yet they are among the rarest of fossils because their squishy bodies lack easily fossilized hard parts. Now a team of paleontologists has discovered that countless sea anemone fossils have been hiding in plain sight for nearly 50 years.

Simon Fraser scientists say their research on the latest fossil find near Princeton, B.C. is raising questions about how the dispersal of animals and plants occurred across the Northern Hemisphere some 50 million years ago, including whether brief intervals of global warming were at play.

Sharks acquired bioluminescence in a unique event during the Jurassic Period, after colonising the deep sea.

Molecular biology phylogenetic tree provides new insights into cartilaginous fish evolution Cartilaginous fish have changed much more in the course of evolution than previously assumed. Evidence for this thesis was provided by molecular biological data on fossil remains of Protospinax annectans , an already highly evolved shark from the late Jurassic.

Study led by the University of Bonn: Aetosaur find involves juveniles Aetosaurs had a small head and a crocodile-like body. The land dwellers were up to six meters long and widely distributed geographically. They died out about 204 million years ago, at the end of the Triassic. In Kaltental near Stuttgart, Germany, an assemblage of 24 Aetosaurus ferratus individuals, only between 20 and 82 centimeters long, was discovered in 1877.

About 250 million years ago, the Permian-Triassic mass extinction killed over 80 per cent of the planet's species. In the aftermath, scientists believe that life on earth was dominated by simple species for up to 10 million years before more complex ecosystems could evolve. Now this longstanding theory is being challenged by a team of international researchers - including scientists from McGill University and Université du Québec à Montréal.

Researchers gain insight into life in an ancient sea With a broken jaw on the prowl - that seems almost impossible. But researchers have discovered an approximately 245-million-year-old nothosaur fossil on which the injury had healed. The international team, with participation from the University of Bonn, examined other marine reptile bone anomalies from a site near the town of Winterswijk in the Netherlands.

Ancient fossils reveal the evolutionary history of ossification in the spine of land vertebrates A study conducted by researchers from the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin revealed the evolution of ossification patterns in the backbones of four-legged vertebrates. Antoine Verrière and his colleagues were able to reconstruct the patterns of how the bones in the vertebral column formed in the ancestor to all land vertebrates based on a large dataset of modern and fossil vertebrates with the inclusion of rare new data from the 300 Ma old reptile Mesosaurus tenuidens.