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Paleontologists had to adjust to stay safe during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many had to postpone fossil excavations, temporarily close museums and teach the next generation of fossil hunters virtually instead of in person.

A study published in Cretaceous Research expands the paleontological richness of continental fossils of the Lower Cretaceous with the discovery of a new water plant (charophytes), the species Mesochara dobrogeica . The study also identifies a new variety of carophytes from the Clavator genus (in particular, Clavator ampullaceus var.

Carnegie Mellon University April 21, 2021 Tarantulas are among the most notorious spiders, due in part to their size and vibrant colors. With their prevalence throughout the world, it may be surprising to learn that tarantulas are actually homebodies. Females and their young rarely leave their burrows and only mature males will wander to seek out a mate.

Over approximately 2.5 million years, North America likely hosted 2.5 billion Tyrannosaurus rexes, a minuscule proportion of which have been dug up and studied by paleontologists, according to a UC Berkeley study.

By closely examining the jaw mechanics of juvenile and adult tyrannosaurids, some of the fiercest dinosaurs to inhabit earth, scientists led by the University of Bristol have uncovered differences in how they bit into their prey.

A new study published Feb. 24 in the journal Royal Society Open Science documents the earliest-known fossil evidence of primates.

The small, furry ancestors of all primates - a group that includes humans and other apes - were already taking to the trees a mere 100,000 years after the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs

A study of more than 1,400 protein-coding genes of fleas has resolved one of the longest standing mysteries in the evolution of insects, reordering their placement in the tree of life and pinpointing who their closest relatives are. The University of Bristol study, published in the journal Palaeoentomology , drew on the largest insect molecular dataset available.

Bill Clemens had been excavating fossils in eastern Montana's Hell Creek Formation for more than 10 years, focusing primarily on the small mammals that scurried around the feet of dinosaurs and other

An artist's depiction of ancient albatrosses harassing a pelagornithid - with its fearsome toothed beak - as penguins frolic in the oceans around Antarctica 50 million years ago.

Despite having bat-like wings, two small dinosaurs, Yi and Ambopteryx, struggled to fly, only managing to glide clumsily between the trees where they lived, according to a new study led by an international team of researchers, including McGill University Professor Hans Larsson. Unable to compete with other tree-dwelling dinosaurs and early birds, they went extinct after just a few million years.

The origin of endothermy in synapsids, including the ancestors of mammals. The diagram shows the evolution of main groups through the Triassic, and the scale from blue to red is a measure of the degree of warm-bloodedness reconstructed based on different indicators of bone structure and anatomy.

Hibernation is a familiar feature on Earth today. Many animals - especially those that live close to or within polar regions - hibernate to get through the tough winter months when food is scarce, temperatures drop and days are dark.

Hauffiopteryx altera (Latin for different from ) has been identified as a new species of Ichthyosaurs by researchers from McGill University and the State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart in Germany.

North America had the T. rex , South America had the Giganotosaurus and Africa the Spinosaurus - now evidence shows Australia had gigantic predatory dinosaurs. The discovery came in University of Queensland research, led by palaeontologist Dr Anthony Romilio , which analysed southern Queensland dinosaur footprint fossils dated to the latter part of the Jurassic Period, between 165 and 151 million-year-ago.

Cave divers carefully maneuver the giant ground sloth's pelvis through Hoyo Negro. Photo Credit: Sam Meacham, CINDAQ F or thousands of years, the massive pelvis lay undisturbed at the bottom of the watery black pit.

The evidence consists of limestone pebbles that carry borings made by molluscs as well as oysters. These pebbles were torn up from the underlying Carboniferous limestone which formed the basic landscape all over Somerset and across the Severn Estuary to South Wales.

While smaller dinosaurs needed speed, huge predators like T. rex were optimized for energy-efficient walking, according to a study published in PLOS ONE.

Old photos from Mount Morgan's sealed off 'Dino Cave' have shed light onto new and unusual Aussie dinosaur behaviours, thanks to University of Queensland research.

Researchers dated ash deposits from this hill, called a koppie in South Africa. The lower part of koppie Loskop exposes strata from before the end-Permian extinction (Palingkloof Member of the Balfour Formation), while the upper part contains layers deposited after the extinction (Katberg Formation).

Channels McGill University News and Events A fossilised insect wing discovered in an abandoned mine in Labrador has led palaeontologists from McGill University and the University of Gda'sk to identify a new hairy cicada species that lived around 100 million years ago.

The mystery surrounding dinosaur footprints on a cave ceiling in Central Queensland has been solved after more than a half a century. University of Queensland palaeontologist Dr Anthony Romilio discovered pieces to a decades-old puzzle in an unusual place - a cupboard under the stairs of a suburban Sydney home.

Our knowledge of dinosaurs has expanded greatly since the public first became aware of their existence, but the history of these animals encompasses more than just the fossils themselves, writes Richard Fallon (UCL Science & Technology Studies).

ç €äoe“äž­æ–‡ à€¹à€¿à€šà¥à€Šà¥€ Português Español Share on: Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn A newly described fossil whale represents a new species and an important step in the evolution of whale locomotion, according to a University of Michigan paleontologist and his colleagues.

Each summer, the University of Chicago welcomes high school students from around the world for a unique course on paleontology, which culminates with two weeks of fieldwork spent hunting for fossils.

This modern porcelain crab is really a member of the squat lobster family that became adapted to the same intertidal environment as true crabs.

Leslea Hlusko, a paleoanthropologist, with primate skull casts in Berkeley's Human Evolution Research Center.

Paleontologists are trying to dispel a myth about what life was like when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. The false narrative has wormed its way into books, lectures and even scientific papers about this long-ago era. The myth's focus isn't on dinosaurs. Its main characters are ancient mammals and their relatives, which together are known as mammaliaforms.

One of the world's leading economists explains why our communities could hold the answer to many of society's problems. Sloths once roamed the Americas, ranging from tiny, cat-sized animals that lived in trees all the way up to massive ground sloths that may have weighed up to six tons. The only species we know and love today, however, are the two-toed and three-toed sloths-but paleontologists have been arguing how to classify them, and their ancestors, for decades.

Using two partially fragmented fossil skulls, a student at the University of Bristol has digitally reconstructed, in three-dimensions, the skulls of two species of ancient reptile that lived in the Late Triassic, one of which had been previously known only from its jaws.

Image courtesy of Naturalis Visitors to Glasgow will get an amazing opportunity to see one of the best preserved Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons when it visits Scotland on the last leg of its European tour.

A newly discovered species of whale - found preserved in ancient rock on the Oregon coast - has been named for a University of Washington paleontologist.

During the late Cretaceous period, more than 65 million years ago, hundreds of different species of birds flitted around the dinosaurs and through the forests as abundantly as they flit about our woods and fields today.

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Aust Cliff near Bristol has been known as a rich fossil site since the 1820s. Since then, thousands of people have visited this spectacular location on the banks of the Severn, and collected fossils of ancient sharks and sea dragons.

Kirk's father and Austin-based artist Randy Kirk produced his own rendering of what the species might have looked like. Painting on marble by Randwolf. AUSTIN, Texas - Biological anthropologists from The University of Texas at Austin have described three new species of fossil primates that were previously unknown to science.

A new species of ancient reptile has been described by scientists at the University of Birmingham, filling a critical gap in the fossil record of dinosaur cousins and suggesting that some features thought to characterise dinosaurs evolved much earlier than previously thought. Described in a paper published today in Nature, the carnivorous reptile, Teleocrater rhadinus, was approximately 7-10 feet in length, had a long neck and tail, and walked on four crocodile-like legs.

Possible look of the newly discovered predatory fish species Birgeria americana with the fossil oft he skull shown at bottom right (Artwork: Nadine Bösch) The most catastrophic mass extinction on Earth took place about 252 million years ago - at the boundary between the Permian and Triassic geological periods.

For how long have warm-blooded animals existed? The time at which this character first appeared in the ancestors of mammals has long been debated.

In order to determine the incubation temperature of eggs laid by non-avian dinosaurs, we analysed the oxygen isotope compositions of both eggshell carbonate ('18Oc) and embryo bone phosphate ('18Op) from seven oviraptorosaur eggs with preserved in ovo embryo bones.