At Los Angeles’ La Brea Tar Pits, scientists found they could watch large mammals disappear from the fossil record—and could trace the ecosystem through the catastrophe
New research hints at how sauropod dinosaurs got to be so gargantuan
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” says a paleontologist not involved in the discovery of a 40-million-year-old fossilized whale
An extraordinary fossil captures the moment when a hungry mammal attacked a dinosaur
Fatlike compounds in ancient rocks point to a vast array of previously unknown microbes that once dominated complex life on Earth
Officially, these prehistoric birds are the dromornithids, but everyone who studies them calls them thunderbirds—and for good reason.
The elephant bird was the heaviest bird to ever walk the earth. Also, its eggs were 150 times the size of a chicken egg and thick as a dinner plate.
The fossil was a prehistoric bird called Pelagornis sandersi, and its wings stretched out twice as wide as those of the great albatross.
Paleontologists have uncovered a miniature world of sea creatures whose tiny guts, eyes and even brains remain visible 462 million years after they perished
An extensive system of air sacs, evolved over and over, let dinosaurs grow larger without sacrificing strength
This ancient creature swam in surprisingly modern seas
Two newly identified primatelike mammals once lived in the Arctic, which could help us understand how species there today may adapt as the climate heats up
A rare flower encased in amber is the largest one ever found and dates from around 40 million years ago
Fossil trackways may show tyrannosaur tykes teaming up
Two-million-year-old DNA, the world's oldest, reveals that mastodons once roamed forests in Greenland’s far northern reaches
Watching fish rot for more than two months disproves a long-standing fossilization theory
Walking on all fours helped shape the panda's “thumb”
Geneticist Svante Pääbo reconstructed the genome of long-extinct human relatives, showing we have more in common with Neandertals than previously thought
Svante Pääbo’s work on sequencing the DNA of Neandertals and Denisovans, which won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, revealed surprising interbreeding among human species...
Fish fossils from Western Australia preserve the oldest 3-D hearts, livers, stomachs and intestines in a jawed vertebrate
