All articles tagged with #fossils
Scientists report the discovery of 55-million-year-old primate fossils in southwestern Wyoming, with unusual features that could reveal greater early primate diversity and offer fresh clues about primate evolution.
A Wyoming fossil study shows forests during the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum lost about 60% of their canopy as temperatures spiked, with canopy recovery taking over 100,000 years. By analyzing fossil leaf cuticles and soils, researchers linked leaf cell shape to canopy density, revealing how forest structure controlled light, temperature, water flow, and carbon storage. The finding is a cautionary tale for today: higher CO2 can boost growth only within the trees’ temperature and moisture limits, and rapid modern warming may push forests beyond thresholds that require millennia to recover.
Fossil Park in Sylvania, just outside Toledo, is a five-acre, free former limestone quarry turned hands-on fossil-hunting site. Visitors can dig for Devonian-era fossils (about 375 million years old), including brachiopods, coral, and crinoids, with no digging tools required. Open for fossil hunting mid-April to late October, it also offers the Quarry Ridge Bike Trail year-round. The park opened in 2001 and is a short drive from downtown Sylvania and about 20 minutes from central Toledo.
New excavations at Gran Dolina cave in Spain uncover more Homo antecessor fossils, including adults, with cut marks indicating cannibalistic processing about 850,000 years ago, providing a clearer view of the biology, demography, and behaviour of Europe’s earliest humans.
An excavation at Moa Eggshell Cave near Waitomo, New Zealand, yielded 12 bird species and 4 frog species preserved between two volcanic ash layers dated about 1.55 million and 1.0 million years ago, providing a clean Early Pleistocene window. The find fills roughly a 15-million-year gap in New Zealand’s fossil record between the St Bathans fauna and the pre-human era, revealing extinct relatives such as Strigops insulaborealis (a kakapo relative), an extinct takahē ancestor, and a pigeon related to bronzewings. Evidence from bone and wear marks suggests diverse lifestyles, while climate shifts and volcanic eruptions repeatedly reshaped habitats—showing natural upheaval drove diversification and extinctions long before humans arrived.
In Queensland's north-west, researchers uncovered a 100-million-year-old fossil site where a kronosaurus likely ripped into an ichthyosaur, leaving more than 30 bite marks while the ichthyosaur's stomach preserved remains of a pterosaur, forming what scientists call a marine reptile crime scene—the most complete snapshot yet of a three-species interaction in the Eromanga Sea.
Two scientists explore the Silurian hypothesis—the idea that an advanced, energy-hungry civilization may have existed on Earth millions of years ago and altered the planet's climate, leaving traces in geology, fossils, and sediment chemistry that could outlive us. While direct evidence would be hard to detect after plates shift and fossils are rare, the study outlines what signals to look for—chemical shifts in sediments, plastics and metals, and other long-lasting footprints—that could reveal a pre-human technosphere. The goal is not to prove such a civilization existed, but to understand how long civilizations survive and how their energy use might leave lasting planetary records.
Researchers reexamining a rock specimen from Osaka collected in 1990–1992 uncovered four fossil bones that may belong to an undiscovered mosasaur. The find includes a confirmed premaxilla—the first mosasaur premaxilla identified in Japan—and unusual basisphenoid features that could indicate a new species, though confirmation requires further study. The case highlights how museum collections can reveal new insights with advancing techniques.
Record-breaking fossil sales (including T. rex specimens like ‘Gus’) are propelling a booming market, but buyers face little third-party verification, opaque restoration practices, and confusion over composites, prompting calls for universal grading and greater transparency to protect science and investors.
One of the most complete T. rex skeletons, nicknamed Gus, goes to Sotheby’s in New York with a $20–30 million estimate, spotlighting a growing tension between selling fossils as high‑value collectibles and preserving them for research; scientists caution that private sales can cut access for study, while others point to museum loans and donations as potential paths to public science, with calls for fossils to eventually reside in public trusts or museums rather than in private hands.
A re-examination of Spriggina floundersi fossils from the Ediacaran period shows the animal had a head and exhibited a right-side bending bias, indicating an early nervous system and behavioral handedness dating to about 550 million years ago.
Everest’s summit rocks are Ordovician limestone from the Qomolangma Formation that formed in an ancient sea and host fossils of trilobites, ostracods and crinoids, anchoring the summit to a marine environment long before the Himalayan uplift. The fossils survive in rocks that were squeezed and lifted during the India–Asia collision, reinforcing a long-running geological narrative rather than a single new discovery.
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.