All articles tagged with #fossils
Thai scientists announce Uragasaurus kalasinensis, a newly identified plant-eating dinosaur thought to have lived about 150 million years ago and about the length of a cricket pitch.
Scientists have identified the second-ever crinoid fossil with preserved soft tissues, dating to about 450 million years ago; found in a Montreal museum, the specimen offers rare insights into ancient crinoid biology and behavior and was detailed in Royal Society Open Science.
A 125-million-year-old fossil of a freshwater mussel (Margaritifera valdensis) from the Isle of Wight preserves soft tissues and developing young inside a brood chamber, yielding the earliest fossil evidence of parental care in shellfish. The reproduction involves eggs fertilized in gills with larvae that later infect fish, shedding light on ancient reproductive strategies and mollusk evolution, while underscoring threats facing modern freshwater mollusks.
A Danish-led study revisits Otodus megalodon’s size using 11-million-year-old vertebrae rediscovered in Denmark, reinforcing estimates that these giants exceeded 24 meters, with a newborn around 3.6 meters and a lifespan near a century, while also illustrating how fossils can be lost or misplaced in museums and later recovered, offering new research opportunities.
New fossils from China’s Jiangchuan biota (about 554–539 million years ago) reveal the oldest deuterostomes—our invertebrate relatives—closely tied to cambroernids, suggesting complex animals, including lineages related to humans, existed in the late Ediacaran and persisted toward the Cambrian explosion, expanding the timeline of early animal evolution.
A Waitomo cave in New Zealand yielded a million-year fossil cache—including 12 bird species, four frog species, and an ancient parrot related to the kākāpō—trapped between two volcanic ash layers dated at about 1.55 and 1.0 million years ago. This makes the site the oldest known North Island cave and offers a pre-human avifauna markedly different from later communities, illustrating how volcanic eruptions and rapid climate shifts reshaped ecosystems long before humans arrived (with estimates that 33–50% of species disappeared in that interval). The find fills a major gap in New Zealand’s fossil record and reshapes understanding of the islands’ natural history.
A new Science study of embolomere fossils and early tetrapodomorphs finds no evidence of the tadpole larval stage in the life cycles of early land vertebrates, implying direct development (bypassing metamorphosis) was common, challenging the long-held view that amphibian-like metamorphosis aided the water-to-land transition.
Scientists diving in the Diamantina Fracture Zone, about 20,000 feet deep in the Indian Ocean, have found the world’s largest whale graveyard, recording nearly 500 whale bones and estimating up to 10 million dead whales across a 660-mile area. The site supports a thriving community of deep-sea life around whale falls, including fossils up to 5.3 million years old and potential undiscovered species, reinforcing the idea that whale carcasses act as evolutionary hotspots and stepping stones for sulfide-dwelling organisms.
New fossil hatchlings from the fin-to-limb transition era show early tetrapods lacked a metamorphosis, suggesting amphibian-style metamorphosis emerged after land colonization and that these species retained similar body plans throughout life.
Scientists have uncovered evidence of a prehistoric scorpion in Britain roughly Labrador-sized, suggesting ancient arthropods reached impressive sizes and offering new clues about Britain’s ancient ecosystems.
Exceptionally preserved Cambrian-era bryozoan fossils from China reveal these colonial invertebrates existed during the Cambrian explosion and preserve soft tissues, suggesting bryozoans predated or early-diversified in the timeline and prompting updates to the early animal family tree.
Researchers revisiting a century of fossils at London's Natural History Museum reidentified the early Devonian creature Praearcturus gigas as a 1-meter-long scorpion, overturning a crustacean misclassification and suggesting an amphibious lifestyle that hunted primitive fish; CT scans and comparisons with Eramoscorpius brucensis helped define its anatomy, including unusually large pincers and lateral epimera, and the finding prompts updates to paleobiology databases and a reevaluation of giant arthropod diversity in the Devonian.
An 11-year-old Kansas boy, Corbin Bullard, on a Sedgwick County 4-H Geology Club field trip in September 2025, helped uncover a nearly complete 15-foot tylosaurus fossil from the Smoky Hill Chalk formation, dating to about 82–87 million years ago. The fossil, including the skull and much of the skeleton, will be showcased as Bullard, now 12 and entering seventh grade, prepares to display the skull at the Sedgwick County Fair.
UK researchers identify Praearcturus gigas as the largest known scorpion, measuring over a meter and sporting 16 cm pincers, from Early Devonian fossils in Britain. Using CT scans and imaging, they confirm its scorpion identity and suggest it may have hunted in water and on land within a developing terrestrial ecosystem, offering insight into early arthropod evolution and the move from sea to land.
A Devonian-era scorpion named Praearcturus is estimated to have grown over three feet long with six-inch pincers, making it the largest scorpion known in the fossil record. Researchers used CT scans, 3D modeling and better-preserved fossils to confirm its identity after decades of uncertainty, and evidence suggests it may have lived partly in water, offering new insights into early arachnid evolution.