C.Marsicano Gaiasia jennyaea newly discovered freshwater predator with a body length of 4.5 meters, lurked in the swamps and lakes about 280 million years ago. Its broad, flattened head had powerful jaws full of enormous fangs, ready to catch any prey that had the misfortune to swim by. The problem is that, as far as … Read more
Valerii Plotnikov (left) of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Sakha, Yakutsk, Russia, and Daniel Fisher of the University of Michigan examine a woolly mammoth excavated during a 2018 expedition. Love Dalen hide caption switch caption Love Dalen Scientists have recreated the three-dimensional structure of the woolly mammoth’s genetic material. The achievement, described … Read more
B. eremicarminis specimen a) Overview of skeleton (photo by Stephanie Abramowicz); b) Color-coded interpretation of skeleton (drawing by Dr. Nicole Klein). Credit: Photo by Stephanie Abramowicz; drawing by Dr. Nicole Klein The surprising discovery of a new species of extinct crocodile from the Triassic Favret Formation in Nevada, USA, changes the story of coastal life … Read more
FONA herzogae, a recently discovered dinosaur species in Utah’s Cedar Mountains, is named after a Chamorro goddess. The grandparents of paleontologist Haviv Avrahami, a member of the research team, are from Guam. He gave the dinosaur its genus name, Fona, based on the ancient Chamorro creation myth. The species name, herzogae, is in honor of … Read more
High on the Tibetan Plateau, in the Baishiya Karst Cave, a fascinating ancient story of human survival unfolds. A recent study reveals that the Denisovans, an extinct species of humans, called this place home for thousands of years. Apart from their significant genetic contribution to modern humans, very little is known about the Denisovans. Somehow, … Read more
Scientists have identified and named more than a million animal species, and there are millions more yet to be discovered on Earth’s seven continents. But which continent has the most animal species? For hundreds of years, scientists have been cataloging and geolocating species around the world. Before the digital age, most of our information about … Read more
In 2016, scientists published a newspaper with a bold claim: that the giraffe, first described as a species by the Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus in 1758, is actually always four kinds. Unlike Linneaus, the researchers had access to modern genetic tools, which showed that giraffes fall into distinct clusters based on differences in their DNA, … Read more
More than 500 million years ago, something in the ocean changed. [–> Some creatures evolved to build their own hard-shelled exterior. Others grew to sizes never seen before as the amount of oxygen on the planet’s surface finally reached a level high enough for complex creatures to exist. [–> Most important, for about 10 million … Read more
A new species of dinosaur, with unusually graceful horns on its head and behind its neck, lived with at least four other species of rhino- or elephant-like dinosaurs 78 million years ago in what is now northern Montana, researcher Joseph Sertich said. Sertich, an affiliate faculty member at Colorado State University, and Professor Mark Loewen … Read more
In the late Cretaceous period, a remarkable bloom of horned dinosaurs occurred along the coastal floodplains of western North America. Two different families – each with every conceivable combination of spikes, horns and fringes – spread across the landscape, using their headgear to signal friends and challenge rivals. Seventy-eight million years later, members of that … Read more