science wire

New Milner Centre for Evolution study tracks how "flower power" survived mass extinction 66 million years ago to become the dominant plant type Published on Wednesday 13 September 2023 Last updated on Wednesday 13 September 2023 A new study by researchers from the University of Bath (UK) and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Mexico) shows that flowering plants escaped relatively unscathed from the mass extinction that killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

Fossils of two new abelisaurs have been discovered in Morocco, showing the diversity of dinosaurs in this region at the end of the Cretaceous period.

A perfectly preserved turtle fossil from Lower Bavaria yields important clues about both the species and the habitat that existed in southern Germany 150 million years ago.

Using a particular type of sedimentary rocks as their guide, researchers begin to tackle the question of when animals first appeared on Earth.

Digital modelling of legendary fossil's soft tissue suggests Australopithecus afarensis had powerful leg and pelvic muscles suited to tree dwelling, but knee muscles that allowed fully erect walking.

An artist's depiction of a newly described species of pachycephalosaur that was named Platytholus clemensi, after the late UC Berkeley paleontologist William Clemens.

Study: Human consumption of large herbivore digesta and its implications for foraging theory Early human foragers may have relied on eating the partially digested vegetable matter, called digesta, found in the stomachs and digestive tracts of bison and other large game herbivores.

An almost metre-long footprint made by a giant, meat-eating theropod dinosaur from the Jurassic Period represents the largest of its kind ever found in Yorkshire. Curiously, the unusual footprint appears to capture the moment that the dinosaur rested or crouched down some 166 million years ago. The Yorkshire coast is renowned for producing some visually and scientifically incredible fossils, including thousands of dinosaur footprints.

Study: Exceptional fossil preservation and evolution of the ray-finned fish brain DOI 10.1038/s41586'022 -05666-1 The CT-scanned skull of a 319-million-year-old fossilized fish, pulled from a coal mine in England more than a century ago, has revealed the oldest example of a well-preserved vertebrate brain.

Microraptor was an opportunistic predator, feeding on fish, birds, lizards - and now small mammals. The discovery of a rare fossil reveals the creature was a generalist carnivore in the ancient ecosystem of dinosaurs. Finding the last meal of any fossil animal is rare. When McGill University Professor Hans Larsson saw a complete mammal foot inside the rib cage of the small, feathered dinosaur, his jaw dropped.

For paleontologists, Hammerschmiede in the Allgäu region, the site where the great ape Danuvius was discovered, is a treasure trove unlike any other: more than 140 fossil vertebrate species have been found here.

A new study by Yale paleontologists charts the radical evolutionary changes to the thigh bones of dinosaurs and birds that allowed them to stand on two feet. Dinosaurs - and birds - wouldn't have been able to stand on their own two feet without some radical changes to their upper thigh bones. Now, a new study by Yale paleontologists charts the evolutionary course of these leggy alterations.

The remains of glyptodonts, a group of extinct giant armadillos, indicate that humans spread to South America earlier than previously assumed. Found in northwestern Venezuela, the fractured skulls could represent evidence of hunting by humans, says UZH paleontologist Marcelo Sánchez. Skilled human hunters are also likely to have contributed to pushing the large, heavily armored animals over the brink.

Tenaya Canyon (center) and part of Yosemite Valley (foreground) as seen from Glacier Point in Yosemite National Park.

An extinct reptile's oddly shaped chompers, fingers, and ear bones may tell us quite a bit about the resilience of life on Earth, according to a new study. In fact, paleontologists at Yale, Sam Houston State University, and the University of the Witwatersrand say the 250-million-year-old reptile, known as Palacrodon, fills in an important gap in our understanding of reptile evolution.

New Curtin-led research has discovered that a group of flowering plants with more than one thousand species worldwide is 150 million years older than botanists previously believed.

The discovery of three anicent bodies on Indonesia's Alor Island tells new stories of the earliest humans in island Southeast Asia. If three ancient bodies buried in Indonesia could talk, researchers from The Australian National University (ANU) say they would tell stories of the earliest humans in island Southeast Asia.

Fossils of a giant killer mosasaur have been discovered, along with the fossilised remains of its prey.

The discovery of an exceptional prehistoric site containing the remains of animals that lived in a tropical sea has been made in a farmer's field in Gloucestershire. Discovered beneath a field grazed by an ancient breed of English Longhorn cattle, the roughly 183-million-year-old fossils are stunningly well preserved like they were frozen in time.

This discovery of plesiosaur fossils in an ancient riverbed suggests some species, traditionally thought to be sea creatures, may have lived in freshwater.

Writing in The Conversation, Dr Marc Jones and Professor Susan Evans (UCL Cell & Developmental Biology) and Professor Richard Benson (University of Oxford) write about their research into a newly-identified extinct salamander species found in Scotland.

Plesiosaurs, which lived about 210 million years ago, adapted to life underwater in a unique way: their front and hind legs evolved in the course of evolution to form four uniform, wing-like flippers.

Based on the many fossil finds of false gharial relatives from North Africa and Europe, palaeontologists believe that this crocodile species originated more than 50 million years ago in the western Tethys, a precursor to today's Mediterranean Sea.

The fossilised remains of Chile's first complete ichthyosaur have been unearthed from a melting glacier deep in the Patagonia area of the South American country.

The diversity seen in whale skulls was achieved through three key periods of rapid evolution, reveals a new study led by researchers at UCL and the Natural History Museum. The study, published in Current Biology , gathered the most expansive 3D scan data set ever for Cetacea (whale) skulls spanning 88 living species (representing 95% of extant cetacean species) and 113 fossil species and covering 50 million years of evolution.

An artist's reconstruction of the Gansu hyena, perhaps a meat eater on its way to becoming an insect eater, like today's aardwolf.

A lifesize cast of T. rex in the atrium of UC Berkeley's Valley Life Sciences Building shows how peculiarly short the forearms were, given that the creature was the most ferocious predator of its day.

Giant crocodiles once roamed northeastern British Columbia. A recently published article in Historical Biology features the first detailed trace fossil evidence ever reported of giant crocodylians. The sites are from the Peace Region of northeastern British Columbia, north of Tumbler Ridge. The trace fossils include swim traces , made when the crocodiles were scraping the muddy bottoms of lakes and river channels with their claws.

Curtin-led research has revealed an increase in levels of both acid and hydrogen sulfide in the ocean was the double whammy that wiped out marine life during a mass extinction event 201 million years ago.

Their legs may get more attention, but a new study says a crab's eyes have much to offer, too - at least scientifically.

A new bird-like dinosaur has been found by paleontologists combing through fossils found on the Isle of Wight.

Palaeonitella trifurcate is the name of a new fossil species of a freshwater plant from the Lower Cretaceous found and reconstructed by a team of geologists of the University of Barcelona. The reconstruction of the plant, dating from between 125 and 120 million years ago, has been conducted using the plant organs found separately in a stratum of limestone from the Natural Park of Garraf, in Olivella (Barcelona).

An artist's rendition of Quetzalcoatlus northropi, a type of pterosaur and the largest flying animal that ever lived on Earth.

New findings of amber in the site of Ariño in Teruel have enabled the reconstruction of a swampy paleoenvironment with a rich coastal resin forest from 110 million years ago, from the era of dinosaurs. This place featured conifers and understories of gymnosperms and ferns, and flower plants, where insects, turtles, crocodiles, mammals and dinosaurs such as the species Proa valdearinnoensis and E uropelta carbonensis lived.

A new 130-million-year-old marine reptile fossil sheds light on the evolution of hypercarnivory of these last-surviving ichthyosaurs A team of international researchers from Canada, Colombia, and Germany has discovered a new marine reptile.

The ocean's dark depths hold many secrets. For more than three decades, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute has been exploring the deep waters off the coast of central California.

A remarkably well-preserved fossil elephant cranium from Kenya is helping scientists understand how its species became the dominant elephant in eastern Africa several million years ago, a time when a

Modern snakes evolved from ancestors that lived side by side with the dinosaurs and that likely fed mainly on insects and lizards.

The skeleton fragments of a new horned dinosaur, Sierraceratops turneri, have been discovered in North America.

UW, Burke researchers discover four dinosaurs in Montana: Fieldwork pieces together life at the end of 'Dinosaur Era' A team of paleontologists from the University of Washington and its Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture excavated four dinosaurs in northeastern Montana this summer.

Australia's largest flying reptile has been uncovered, a pterosaur with an estimated seven-metre wingspan that soared like a dragon above the ancient, vast inland sea once covering much of outback Queensland.

One of the largest and most important finds of exquisitely preserved Jurassic echinoderms - spiny-skinned marine animals such as starfish and sea urchins - has been uncovered by a University of Birmingham Research Associate.

A beetle bores a tree trunk to build a gallery in the wood in order to protect its lay. As it digs the tunnel, it spreads ambrosia fungal spores that will feed the larvae. When these bore another tree, the adult beetles will be the transmission vectors of the fungal spores in another habitat. This mutualism among insects and ambrosia fungi could be more than 100 years old -more than what was thought to date- according to an article published in the journal Biological Reviews .

Jack Tseng loves bone-crunching animals - hyenas are his favorite - so when paleontologist Joseph Peterson discovered fossilized dinosaur bones that had teeth marks from a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex ,