Fossils Blog Posts

An environmental scanning electron microscope image of a carbon spherule from Sheriden Cave. (Credit: Kenneth Tankersley/University of Cincinnati) Herds of wooly mammoths once shook Earth beneath their feet, sending humans scurrying across the la...

Reconstruction of the brain in the young and fully grown Dysalotosaurus lettowvorbecki. (Credit: Stephan Lautenschlager, University of Bristol) Fossil skull of the juvenile specimen of Dysalotosaurus lettowvorbecki Image by Tom...

Giraffes on the Serengeti There is some debate about exactly how many species of giraffe there are alive today. The official answer is 'just the one' (Giraffa camelopardis), but there may be two or even three, depending on how you define a 'species'...

Oviraptorid skeleton and eggs in the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt am Main. (Credit: EvaK via Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons license) A study into the brooding behaviour of birds has revealed their dinosaur ancestors shared the load when it...

Osteology, scales and otolith of †Lepidocottus aries (Agassiz). (Credit: Christoph Gierl et al. An Extraordinary Gobioid Fish Fossil from Southern France. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (5): e64117 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0064117) Fish fossils that are ab...

Kootenichela reconstruction. (Credit: Image courtesy of Imperial College London) A scientist has discovered an ancient extinct creature with 'scissor hand-like' claws in fossil records and has named it in honour of his favourite movie star. The...

Clam fossils from the Devonian Sea, which are now found in the Finger Lakes region of New York, bear the scars from attackers some 380 million years ago. (Credit: Image courtesy of Cornell University) Clam fossils from the middle Devonian era -- s...

Malawania, the Jurassic-style Cretaceous ichthyosaur from Iraq. (Credit: Illustration by Robert Nicholls ; coloring by C. M. Kosemen .) An international team of scientists have revealed a new species of ichthyosaur (a dolphin-like marine reptile fro...

CMN 0210 is the holotype of Euoplocephalus tutus, CMN 8530 is the holotype of Anodontosaurus lambei, MOR 433 is the holotype of Oohkotokia horneri, and ROM 784 is the holotype of Dyoplosaurus acutosquameus. AMNH 5337, AMNH 5405, CMN 0210, ROM 784,...

Life reconstruction of Acrotholus audeti in its environment. (Credit: © Julius Csotonyi) Scientists have named a new species of bone-headed dinosaur (pachycephalosaur) from Alberta, Canada. Acrotholus audeti (Ack-RHO-tho-LUS) was identified from b...

Clint Boyd, Ph.D., of the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology, points to a crocodyliform tooth embedded in the femur of a young dinosaur. (Credit: South Dakota School of Mines & Technology) Release Date Wednesday, February 27, 2013...

Image Credit: panyajampatong / Shutterstock For over 20 years, archeologists have been recovering an unusually high number of large carnivore fossils from a cave near Madrid, Spain. According to a new report in the open access journal PLOS ONE, the...

Darla Zelenitsky from the University of Calgary collaborated with David Varricchio at Montana State University to closely examined the shells of fossil eggs from a small meat-eating dinosaur called Troodon. (Credit: Jay Im (University of Calgary))...

Reconstruction of the dinosaur nest and the two possible theropod egg layers. (Credit: Copyright Julius T. Csotonyi) Public release date: 13-Nov-2008 It has all the hallmarks of a Cretaceous melodrama. A dinosaur sits on her nest of a dozen egg...

The meat-eating dinosaur from the Late Jurassic Period was less than a year old. (Credit: Photo courtesy of James Clark, George Washington University) Fossil remains found by a George Washington University biologist in northwestern China have bee...

A juvenile Orobates pabsti, a reptile-like four-legged amphibian. Philip Anderson of UMass Amherst and colleagues examined images of 89 fossils of early tetrapods and their fish-like forebears ranging in age from about 400 to 300 million years old...

Stromatolites or stromatoliths are layered accretionary structures formed in shallow water by the trapping, binding and cementation of sedimentary grains by biofilms of microorganisms, especially cyanobacteria (commonly known as blue-green algae). St...

Fossil skull of the Cretaceous therizinosaur Erlikosaurus andrewsi (Credit: Image by Emily Rayfield, University of Bristol) Research Reveals New Information On the Evolution of Dinosaur Senses Dec. 19, 2012 — An international team of scientists,...

A Chondrus crispus red alga. (Credit: © Jonas Collén) Mar. 20, 2013 — The first red alga genome has just been sequenced by an international team coordinated by CNRS and UPMC at the Station Biologique de Roscoff (Brittany), notably involving r...

This shows the backbone of a whale skeleton on seafloor. (Credit: UK Natural Environment Research Council ChEsSo Consortium) Mar. 18, 2013 — Marine biologists have, for the first time, found a whale skeleton on the ocean floor near Antarctica,...