Paleontology

Credit: Illustration by Ding-hau Yang A new study co-led by researchers in the U.S. and China has pushed back the first-known physical evidence of insect flower pollination to 99 million years ago, during the mid-Cretaceous period.…

Hip joint study could help explain why apes, humans, and Old World monkeys move so differentlyCredit: Sergio Almécija In terms of their body plan, Old World monkeys--a group that includes primates like baboons and macaques--are…

Early dispersal for quadrupedal cetaceans: an amphibious whale from the middle Eocene of the southeastern PacificCredit: O. Lambert. Scientists have a relatively precise idea about where whales and their closest terrestrial…

Credit: C.T. Gee The long-necked, big bodied sauropod dinosaurs comprise some of the largest terrestrial vertebrates to walk the earth. These behemoths were herbivores that survived solely on plant material. There has been long…

Credit: Field Museum Mammals' backbones are weird. Compared to other four-legged animals like reptiles, mammal spines are a complex mix of sections of differently-shaped bones. Our Frankenstein's monster backbones are a key…

Researchers supported by FAPESP proposed a procedure based on analyses of quartz and feldspar grains transported to the Atlantic Ocean by the Parnaíba River in Brazil's Northeast region.Credit: Vinícius Mendes The analysis of marine…

They have identified a small genetic imprint of the inhabitants of the region in Palaeolithic times, thus ruling out the theory that recent migrations from other regions completely erased the genetic traces of ancient North AfricansCredit:…

Credit: Rowan Martindale/The University of Texas at Austin Jackson School of Geosciences. Some of the world's most exquisite fossil beds were formed millions of years ago during time periods when the Earth's oceans were largely without…

By creating protocells in hot, alkaline seawater, a UCL-led research team has added to evidence that the origin of life could have been in deep-sea hydrothermal vents rather than shallow pools. Previous experiments had failed to foster…

Credit: Joep Schaeffer A big problem with dinosaurs is that there seem to be too many meat-eaters. From studies of modern animals, there is a feeding pyramid, with plants at the bottom, then plant-eaters, and then meat-eaters at…