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Life Sciences - Paleontology - 17.05.2023

A new understanding of human origins in Africa
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.

Paleontology - Life Sciences - 17.05.2023

Fossil of mosasaur with bizarre ’screwdriver teeth’ found in Morocco
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.

Life Sciences - Paleontology - 11.05.2023

Study on the evolution of Brontotheres lead by UV palaeontologist Óscar Sanisidro published in the journal ’Science’
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.

Paleontology - Life Sciences - 11.05.2023

300,000-Year-Old Snapshot: Oldest Human Footprints from Germany Found
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.

Paleontology - Life Sciences - 20.04.2023

Aussie prehistoric predator’s last meal revealed
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).

Environment - Paleontology - 13.04.2023

Apes may have evolved upright stature for leaves, not fruit, in open woodland habitats
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.

Environment - Paleontology - 13.04.2023

Africa’s grassy habitats emerged 10+ million years earlier than previously thought
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.

Paleontology - Environment - 12.04.2023

SFU professor unearths the ancient fossil plant history of Burnaby Mountain
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.

Environment - Paleontology - 28.03.2023

80 million years old rainforest
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.

Paleontology - Environment - 14.03.2023

Dwarf and giant species are most at risk of extinction
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.

Paleontology - 08.03.2023

Paleontologists flip the script on anemone fossils
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.

Environment - Paleontology - 06.03.2023

’Giant’ ant fossil raises questions about ancient Arctic migrations
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.

Paleontology - Environment - 01.03.2023

A study reconstructs the habitats and lifestyles of the first sharks capable of emitting light
Sharks acquired bioluminescence in a unique event during the Jurassic Period, after colonising the deep sea.

Paleontology - Life Sciences - 28.02.2023

’Jurassic Shark’ - shark from the Jurassic period already highly developed
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.

Paleontology - Life Sciences - 13.02.2023

Researchers solve a 150-year-old mystery
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.

Paleontology - 09.02.2023

Fossil discovery reveals complex ecosystems existed on Earth much earlier than previously thought
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.

Paleontology - Health - 18.01.2023

Traces of a trauma 245 million years ago
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.

Life Sciences - Paleontology - 05.01.2023

The vertebral column develops in the same way in modern animals as it did 300 million years ago
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.

Paleontology - Life Sciences - 04.01.2023

’Veggie’ dinosaurs differed in how they ate their food
Scientists discover differences in the way early herbivore dinosaurs ate their food Although most early dinosaurs were vegetarian, there were a surprising number of differences in the way that these animals tackled eating a plant-based diet, a new study reveals. Scientists used CT scans of dinosaur skulls to track the evolution of early dinosaur herbivores - reconstructing jaw muscles and measuring the animals' bite force to understand how dinosaur feeding evolved.

History / Archeology - Paleontology - 02.01.2023

The oldest bearded vulture nest in the Iberian Peninsula
Coprolites, or fossil faeces from around 30,000 years ago, have been used to identify the presence of bearded vultures ( Gypaetus barbatus ) at the Palaeolithic site of Lagar Velho (Portugal). A comparison of the coprolites found in the excavations with the faeces of present-day lammergeyers has confirmed the presence of these animals in the past.