All articles tagged with #fossil
A fossilized Late Cretaceous egg found in Antarctica is the largest soft-shelled egg ever discovered and the second-largest egg of any non-avian dinosaur. Named Antarcticoolithus bradyi, the egg likely came from a mosasaur, suggesting these marine reptiles could lay very large eggs and may have been viviparous, though the exact parent species remains uncertain. The egg’s preservation in anoxic sediments helped keep its leathery shell intact.
Analysis of a 236-million-year-old cynodont fossil from Argentina reveals a neonatal bone line indicating live birth, with a newborn mass around 1.68 kg (about 10–20% of an adult), suggesting viviparity originated in the mammalian lineage far earlier than thought (roughly 90–95 million years ago) and proposing two plausible evolutionary scenarios for this trait's emergence.
A rare fossil shows a pliosaurid tooth embedded in an ichthyosaur vertebra, providing direct evidence of a predation event in the Upper Jurassic. CT imaging confirms the tooth’s origin and suggests it was ripped from the predator during a fatal bite, with provenance traced through Victorian-era museum records, illustrating how old collections can reveal dramatic moments from ancient oceans.
Archaeologists in Spain recovered RVH-1, a thick parietal bone fragment from Ruidera, dated to up to 224,000 years ago using uranium-series dating and luminescence. The fragment's features resemble archaic Homo forms seen in Ceprano and Caune de l’Arago, indicating diverse Middle Pleistocene populations persisted in Iberia. The researchers classify RVH-1 as Homo sp. rather than a single species, cautioning against drawing broad conclusions from a partial bone and highlighting a non-linear, multi-population view of European human evolution.
Australian paleontologists report that a 6–7 m ichthyosaur, Platypterygius australis, had two pterosaur jaw fragments preserved in its stomach, the first direct evidence of an ichthyosaur preying on a pterosaur, with Kronosaurus queenslandicus likely delivering a lethal bite to the carcass, capturing a rare three-tier predator sequence in the Cretaceous Eromanga Sea.
Researchers describe a 245-million-year-old marine reptile fossil from China, Austronaga minuta, with well-preserved stomach, liver and intestines. The find shows a simple single-chamber stomach and the organization of the gut, representing the oldest well-preserved digestive tract in a reptile and shedding light on how archosaur digestion evolved ahead of birds and crocodilians.
A 2.8–2.2 million-year-old fossil honeybee from Hyogo, Japan, named Apis aibai, is the youngest known extinct honeybee and the oldest fossil in the Apis subgenus, bridging gaps between the fossil record and genomic dates; its wing and leg morphology closely matches the living Apis nigrocincta, implying a broader ancient distribution and possibly ancestral ties to Apis cerana; the find supports timing estimates for the subgenus’s origin and was published in ZooKeys.
A 67-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton named Gus sold for $50.1 million at Sotheby’s, setting a new fossil price record and highlighting a booming yet controversial market that could restrict researchers' and the public's access to irreplaceable specimens.
A 67-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex fossil named Gus sold for $50.1 million at Sotheby’s in New York, a new record for a fossil sale after a ten-minute, seven-bidder auction. Gus is about 61% complete, stands 12.5 feet tall and 38 feet long, and was discovered in Harding County, South Dakota, with excavations conducted from 2021 to 2023.
A 67-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex named Gus sold for £37.4m ($50.1m) at Sotheby’s in New York—the most ever paid for a dinosaur. The nearly 60% complete fossil was discovered in 2021 on a South Dakota ranch and required three summers of digging plus three years in the lab to reassemble, with bite marks and healed ribs indicating a life on the hunt. The buyer remains undisclosed; the sale surpasses the previous record and signals growing ultra-wealthy interest in fossil collecting, with Gus potentially heading to a museum in the future.
UNAM researchers describe Ambystoma quetzalcoatli, the first formally identified fossil salamander from Mexico and the oldest Ambystoma record in the country, based on scans of specimens from Hidalgo. The fossils show distinctive skull and skeleton features, including an elongated skull opening, a unique palate, and 17 trunk vertebrae, setting it apart from living axolotls. By comparing with 13 extant Ambystoma species and modern CT data, they concluded the species likely exhibited neoteny and lived in a Pliocene-era lake system, expanding our understanding of axolotl evolution and Mexico’s ancient biodiversity.
A rare titanosaur tail bone from Antarctica, found in 1985 on James Ross Island and stored for decades, has been identified by researchers; the fossil suggests Antarctica once hosted lush forests and a hospitable habitat for dinosaurs, though the exact species remains unidentified.
A Titanosaur vertebra found in 1985 by a British Antarctic Survey team and stored in a museum drawer for decades has been reclassified as Antarctica’s first dinosaur fossil, dating to about 82 million years ago. The bone belongs to a small-to-mid-sized titanosaur, suggesting these long-necked giants once inhabited Antarctica’s forested past and hinting that southern continents remained connected via Gondwana for dinosaur dispersal.
A rare Titanosaur dinosaur fossil from Antarctica was found tucked away in a drawer, a surprising discovery that sheds light on the continent’s prehistoric life.
A 4.4‑million‑year‑old female fossil named Ardi (Ardipithecus ramidus) shows a mosaic of ape‑like and human‑like traits, including a grasping big toe and an ankle bone adapted for weight transfer, suggesting upright walking evolved from an African ape‑like ancestor and predating Lucy by about a million years.