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Amphibians, Reptiles, & Natural History
Amphibians, Reptiles, & Natural History
An international team of researchers, led by paleontologists of the University of Liège, has investigated the biting capabilities of extinct predatory marine reptiles, revealing how these formidable predators could coexist within the same ecosystem. This work sheds new light on the hunting strategies of long-extinct predators that dominated the seas during the Age of Dinosaurs. The research is published in the journal Palaeontology.
A newly discovered fossil site in southwest China has transformed our understanding of how complex animal life emerged on Earth, revealing that many key animal groups had already evolved before the start of the Cambrian Period. The study, led by researchers at Oxford University’s Museum of Natural History and Department of Earth Sciences as well as Yunnan University in China, has been published in Science.
Butterfly fossils are rare, and finds that preserve fine anatomical details and wing patterns are an absolute exception. An international research team from Sweden, the U.S., and Germany, led by Dr. Hossein Rajaei, lepidopterist at the State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart, and with the participation of Prof. Dr. Torsten Wappler from the Hessian State Museum Darmstadt, has now described an exceptionally well-preserved butterfly fossil, approximately 34 to 28 million years old.
It had been a long day of teaching for Rudy Lerosey-Aubril. As a reward, he returned to cleaning an intriguing Cambrian arthropod fossil he had recently received for review. At first, the specimen showed all the expected characteristics of its time—yet, something was off. In place of an antenna, there appeared to be a claw. “Claws are never in that location in a Cambrian arthropod,” said Lerosey-Aubril, “It took me a few minutes to realize the obvious, I had just exposed the oldest chelicera ever found.”
In a study published in The Anatomical Record, researchers have identified a new species of large-bodied gorgonopsian from the middle Permian. The discovery pushed back the known origins of when these apex predators began evolving large bodies and their unique later skull morphologies.
Neanderthals split into distinct regional groups that developed genetic differences far sooner than modern human populations typically did, according to a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. These findings were based on the analysis of a newly sequenced 110,000-year-old Neanderthal genome, which researchers compared with previously mapped DNA from several other Neanderthal remains.
Some of the most ancient fossils collected to date were traced back to the Ediacaran period. This is the time interval ranging from around 635 to 541 million years ago, shortly before the time when scientists predict that a wide range of animals started appearing.
The bond between humans and dogs is one of nature’s most enduring partnerships, but exactly when it began has long been a mystery. Now, a new study has turned back the clock. The study, titled “Dogs were widely distributed in Western Eurasia during the Palaeolithic,” is published in the journal Nature.
A German-Bulgarian research team led by SNSB paleontologist Christian Bartel has discovered a new species of harvestman in 35-million-year-old Ukrainian and Baltic amber. The animal is related to harvestmen that are now extinct in Europe. The researchers published their findings in the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica.
In a study published in Science, an international research team from the Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Center (Egypt) and the University of Southern California (U.S.) describe Masripithecus moghraensis, a newly identified fossil ape that lived about 17–18 million years ago, during the Early Miocene. Recovered from the Wadi Moghra fossil site in northern Egypt, the remains represent the first definitive fossil ape known from North Africa. The finding not only extends the geographic range of early apes, but also places Egypt—and the wider Middle East region—at the heart of a pivotal evolutionary transition leading to modern apes.
Scientists at Curtin University have solved a long-standing mystery about how some of the world’s best-preserved fossils formed in ancient oxygen-free ocean floor settings. The research, published in Communications Earth & Environment, focuses on a 183-million-year-old ichthyosaur—a dolphin-like marine reptile, preserved three dimensionally inside a carbonate concretion from Germany’s Posidonia Shale.
How did ancient fish perceive their environment in the deep sea? An international team led by scientists from the Natural History Museum of Geneva (MHNG) and the University of Geneva (UNIGE) reveals that some coelacanths—fish living 240 million years ago—used their lungs to detect sounds underwater.
A paleontologist from The University of Texas at Austin has discovered the fossilized remains of Ice Age animals that have never been found in Central Texas before—and he came across the bones while snorkeling for fossils in an underground stream. The new fossils are from a giant tortoise and an armadillo relative called a pampathere that was about the size of a lion.
The mass extinction at the boundary between the Cretaceous and Paleogene periods was catastrophic, wiping out much of life on Earth. Vertebrate groups that dominated at the time, such as dinosaurs and many large marine reptiles, fell victim to the effects of the asteroid impact about 66 million years ago. However, the catastrophe did not affect all organisms to the same extent: turtles, for example, survived with only minimal losses. Their chance of survival was apparently linked to their diet: species with a preference for hard-shelled organisms survived the catastrophic event.
A major gap in South Korea’s prehistoric record has been filled with the discovery of Onggwanoolithus aphaedoensis, the first known bird-type dinosaur eggs from the Cretaceous period of South Korea. The find, which is detailed in a paper published in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, is a significant milestone because it is the first physical evidence of the bird-like dinosaurs thought to have left behind many of the region’s fossil footprints.
Cute, green, and sporting two sprigs of hair on his head, a mischievous baby dinosaur named Dooly is one of the most beloved cartoon characters in South Korea. So, when researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and the Korean Dinosaur Research Center discovered a new species of baby dinosaur from Korea’s Aphae Island, they knew exactly what to call it: Doolysaurus.
A new study analyzing two fossilized whale skulls from around 5 million years ago has revealed fragments of sharks’ teeth lodged inside them. This provides rare evidence of how sharks fed on whales in north European waters in prehistoric times.
A unique collection of prehistoric bowhead whale bones, dating back 11,000 years, reveals a previously untold story of the relative impacts of humans on nature. The time series of ancient fossils show that commercial hunting of bowhead whales, which spanned 400 years and ceased less than a century ago in 1931, has left irreversible destructive traces in the species’ genetics. This could have serious consequences for the long-term vulnerability of the species.
What do we really know about how oviraptors—bird-like but flightless dinosaurs—hatched their eggs? Did they use environmental heat, like crocodiles, or body heat from an adult, like birds? In a new Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution study, researchers in Taiwan examined the brooding behavior and hatching patterns of oviraptors. They also modeled heat transfer simulations of oviraptor clutches and compared hatching efficiency to modern birds. To do so, they experimented with a life-sized oviraptor incubator and eggs.
Neumark-Nord in northeastern Germany was a lake landscape in the last interglacial period. It is rich in archaeological finds discovered during lignite mining. The area in Saxony-Anhalt is one of the most important European paleontological sites for the European straight-tusked elephant Palaeoloxodon antiquus. Fossil remains of more than 70 elephants have been found there—animals that were once hunted in this region by Neanderthals. Because of this unusually large number of finds, the site provides a unique insight into the relationship between these massive animals and the humans of the Pleistocene.
The oceans of the Cretaceous of North America teemed with life. Gigantic fish and enormous marine reptiles hunted the Western Interior Sea. A unique new fossil demonstrates rare evidence of direct conflict between these apex predators.
Tyrannosaurus rex is one of the most recognizable names of the dinosaur world, a hulking and terrifying meat-eating behemoth. While fossil remains have been extensively studied, not much is known about its family history and where it came from. That could be about to change with the discovery of a massive tyrannosaur tibia in New Mexico.
More than 3 million years ago, when our ancient ancestors embodied by the iconic Lucy were roaming the African landscape, they would have feared a big, bad crocodile with a prominent lump on its head, patiently lurking in rivers and lakes to attack them. According to a research team led by the University of Iowa, that crocodile is a new species.
Thirteen million years ago, a group of medium-sized monkeys known for guarding their territory among the treetops with fearsome “howls” started doing something new. These monkeys, among the oldest known ancestors of the modern howler monkey, started eating leaves, causing them to evolve a larger body size and differentiate themselves from other primates, says a team of researchers led by a scientist at Johns Hopkins Medicine.
Analysis of a volcanic ash tuff layer, only a few millimeters thick and discovered during excavations in 2024, revealed that the fossil-bearing Bromacker rocks are 294 million years old—four million years older than previously thought. These findings have now been published in the journal Gondwana Research.
For the first time, scientists have used DNA preserved in ancient sediments to examine how a major natural disaster affected animal populations. A new study of a catastrophic volcanic eruption during the Ice Age has found that mammoths, bison, and other large grazers in the region were remarkably resilient and thrived even after their entire world had been covered in a thick layer of ash.
The article presenting the research results was published online at the end of February in the journal Ichnos. The study focuses on two trackways (T1 and T2) preserved as convex hyporeliefs on the underside of a Late Jurassic sandstone layer, approximately 152 million years old, from the cliffs east of Playa de España (Villaviciosa). The specimens are now part of the museum’s collection and are on display in the gallery dedicated to the Asturian Jurassic.