The skeletal remains of an individual that lived 40,000-30,000 years ago were found in northern Italy and are believed to be that of a human/Neanderthal hybrid. If further analysis proves the study correct, the remains belong to the first known such hybrid, providing direct evidence that humans and Neanderthals interbred. The present study focuses on [...]
A mass extinction that occurred over 200 million years ago, killed off a slew of huge predators, including hefty beasts that looked like crocodiles and enormous armadillos, according to new research. Some of the prehistoric predators – animals known collectively as the early pseudosuchians – likely preyed on certain dinosaurs, which later evolved some of [...]
The fossilized remains of a giant pelican-like bird dating back some 35 million years have been uncovered in Peru’s Ica desert, paleontologists said Friday. Klaus Honninger, who heads the team that made the find, said the bird resembled a giant pelican that stood more than two meters (6.6 feet) tall dating from the Oligocene epoch. [...]
A South Dakota School of Mines & Technology assistant professor and his team have discovered a new species of herbivorous dinosaur and today published the first fossil evidence of prehistoric crocodyliforms feeding on small dinosaurs. Research by Clint Boyd, Ph.D., provides the first definitive evidence that plant-eating baby ornithopod dinosaurs were a food of choice [...]
It is rather difficult to imagine, but approximately 635 million years ago, ice may have covered a vast portion of our planet in an event called “Snowball Earth.” According to the Snowball Earth hypothesis, the massive ice age that occurred before animal life appeared, when Earth’s landmasses were most likely clustered near the equator, precipitated [...]
Apparently, cavemen (and cavewomen?) were dirty, filthy, ragged people. But they had very nice teeth. The dirty, ragged part is understandable. After all, in the Mesolithic period there were no washing or sewing machines. And, unless your cave was near a convenient waterfall, a shower was out of the question. That much can be gleaned [...]
As she scraped cold dirt from the remains of an extinct bison, Pam Groves wrinkled her nose at a rotten-egg smell wafting from gristle that still clung to the animal’s bones. She lifted her head to scan the horizon, wary of bears that might be attracted to the flesh of a creature that gasped its [...]
The world has a finite number of Tyrannosaurs rexes. All that there will ever be have lived and long since died. And all of those that could have become fossilised have done so. What remains for palaeontologists is to find what of these are out there, but the number is constantly being reduced. In order [...]
A cheese-shop owner and his son have turned unlikely paleontologists after stumbling across a major cache of hadrosaurid — or duck-billed dinosaur — bones in Catalonia. Pere Galceran got in touch with the Conca Della Museum and the Miquel Crusafont Catalan Institute of Paleontology several weeks ago after his son, Lo Pere Xic, found the [...]
Scientists from the Wits Institute for Human Evolution based at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg have announced the discovery of a large rock containing significant parts of a skeleton of an early human ancestor. The skeleton is believed to be the remains of ‘Karabo’, the type skeleton of Australopithecus sediba, discovered at the [...]
Science
