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The Indonesian and Thailand coasts of the Indian Ocean seem to have experienced tragedies like the 2004 enormous tsunami wave that killed in the hundreds of thousands more often than one might believe. Even more than that, this phenomenon could happen regularly, at a rate of 600 years, as the latest studies show. Acc... |
30 October 2008
05:55 GMT |
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Sixteen years ago, in 1992, a group of scientists, together with their children, was searching Hawaii for fossil evidences. What they stumbled upon surpassed even their boldest expectations. The cave they found proved to be the richest in fossils on all Hawaiian islands and, perhaps, of all sites in the Pacific Islan... |
27 October 2008
08:21 GMT |
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After Hurricane Ike destroyed her house on the beach in Caplen, on the ravaged Bolivar Peninsula in Texas, paleontologist Dorothy Sisk discovered the fossilized remains of a mammoth tooth. Soon after the disaster, Dorothy Sisk asked her colleague, Jim Westgate, a trained paleontologist from the Lamar University ... |
6 October 2008
10:18 GMT |
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The latest fossils found prove that the number of crawling creatures that crowded the Cambrian shores was larger than previously believed. And that they were not alone. About 500 million years ago, during the Cambrian age, all of Earth's life was concentrated in the planetary oceans. Paleontologists assume ... |
25 September 2008
11:51 GMT |
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The recently uncovered 87-million-year-old specimen of praying mantis is believed to be the "missing link" between the giant Cretaceous mantises and today's similar insects. While this is acknowledged to be truly a rare find, the importance of this discovery is yet to be evaluated. The fossil insect is 1.4... |
22 September 2008
08:16 GMT |
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A new species of blind, underground predatory ant has been discovered in the Amazon, and it seems that it descends from the first ant lineages, which appeared 120 million years ago. During his research studies in the Amazonian jungle area, near the city of Manaus, Brazil, Christian Rabeling from the University ... |
17 September 2008
06:09 GMT |
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In 2005, a team of paleontologists rushed to claim that they had discovered soft tissue in a dinosaur fossil belonging to a Tyrannosaurus rex that lived more than 65 million years ago. Now, a new study contests the findings of the previous one by revealing that the so-called soft tissue sample is in fact only a biofi... |
30 July 2008
06:36 GMT |
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The fossilized skeleton of a dinosaur closely related to the famous giant carnivorous Tyrannosaurus, unearthed in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia in 2006 by Japanese and Mongolian scientists, is now presented by the Hayashibara Museum of Natural Sciences as one of the most complete fossils of this species ever found. The... |
25 July 2008
03:14 GMT |
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A new fossil found in the Dry Valleys in the eastern regions of Antarctica, known to have lived some 14 million years ago in an ancient lake, now provides scientists with new evidence that indeed the south polar region of the planet was much warmer in the past. The fossil is a class of crustacea known as ostracods an... |
23 July 2008
02:38 GMT |
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The fossils of a fish that might have lived in the shallow reef waters of Europe some 50 million years ago, have been recently identified by researchers as belonging to a possible ancestor for modern flatfish. But unlike modern flatfish which have the eyes on one side of the head and which swim on their sides along t... |
11 July 2008
07:32 GMT |
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The long debate over a complexly colored fossilized feather belonging to a species of bird that flew in the Earth's skies some 100 million years ago has been settled recently by scientists after they revealed that the coloring patterns were of biological origin, and might contain clues to some of the hues displa... |
9 July 2008
04:38 GMT |
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During a tour of a region where nearly eight years ago a mummified duckbill was found, a public relations coordinator from the Texas museum discovered the fossil of a duckbilled dinosaur that roamed the Earth some 75 million years ago. Leonardo, as the mummified specimen found in Montana was named, is currently on di... |
4 June 2008
05:45 GMT |
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The fossil of an animal that lived on Earth some 290 million years ago, having features resembling those of frogs and salamanders alike, has been found during the 1990s in Texas by a paleontologist and colleagues from the Smithsonian Institution. The fossil remained in the collection of the National Museum of Natural... |
22 May 2008
05:33 GMT |
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It is becoming increasingly clear now that people inhabited Americas earlier than what has been previously believed. A study published in April, based on human coprolites (fossilized feces) found in a cave in Oregon, came up with a date for the remains, of about 14,300 years, which is with more than 1,000 years earli... |
9 May 2008
02:50 GMT |
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So far, China has provided us with a trove of dinosaur discoveries, including their evolutionary offshoot, the birds. Those fossils explain a lot of the evolution of the first birds. An impressively preserved new Chinese fossil bird fills a gap in this evolution. Eoconfuciusornis ("early Confuciusornis"), described i... |
5 May 2008
03:34 GMT |
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Mammals evolved from reptiles, that's for sure. Primitive living mammals, the monotremes (platypus and spiny anteaters) clearly show this, via many traits, like egg-laying, bones, and... even their penises. But the reptiles from which mammals evolved no longer exist. In fact, if birds evolved from dinosaurs, the... |
19 April 2008
06:39 GMT |
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Mammals are supposed to have bloomed after the disappearance of the dinosaur, 65 million-year ago. During the dinosaur times, all mammals must have been shrew-like creatures hiding during the day and only getting out in the night to hunt for insects. But a fossil jawbone of Teinolophos, an 122 million-year old fossil... |
18 April 2008
09:15 GMT |
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Chinese researchers from the University of Xi'an found in 1999, in Kunming area, Yunan (southern China) vertebrate fossils older than 500 Ma.Myllokunmingia and Haikouichthys had muscles with a "W" shape (myomeres) in transversal section of the body and a cartilaginous skull and spine. The previous oldest vertebr... |
16 April 2008
11:03 GMT |
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Today we associate elephants with forests and savannas. But a new research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that an elephant ancestor called Moeritherium made its home in rivers and swamps. In fact, the closest relatives of the elephants are the sea cows (manatees and dug... |
15 April 2008
03:47 GMT |
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Today, amongst all living snakes, only male boas and pythons keep vestiges of limbs: two tiny spurs located near their cloaca, used for gripping the female while having sex. But snakes evolved from legged reptiles, like monitor lizards, with which they share some traits (like similar tongues and venom) about 150 Ma a... |
11 April 2008
03:00 GMT |
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Opaque amber looks like a stone. The naked eye cannot see anything in this material. But, because it is a fossil resin, it can incorporate fossils like any other amber. So far, palaeontologists have found in amber from fossil insects and microbes to small vertebrates (like frogs), feathers, plant organs and pollen. N... |
3 April 2008
03:23 GMT |
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One of the most familiar dinosaur images is that of the veggie horned rhino called ceratopsid dinosaur. A new member has been added to this gallery: a Mexican species with large neck frill and three giant horns that lived on a lush beach environment 72 Ma ago (in the Late Cretaceous). The species was found in Coahuil... |
28 March 2008
05:34 GMT |
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Crocodiles are the closest living relatives of dinosaurs (if we exclude birds). Surprisingly or not, they evolved from land animals, fact revealed for example by their longer hind limbs. The first crocodiles during the Triassic (early Mesozoic) even ran on two feet!Now, a Brazilian team has described in a study publi... |
27 March 2008
05:29 GMT |
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Millions of years ago, we started our evolution in Africa. Then, at a given moment, we began to colonize the rest of the world. When did humans enter Europe for the first time? In June 2007, archaeologists discovered the oldest European human fossils in the Sima del Elefante Cave, 60-ft (18 m) long, at the Sierra Ata... |
27 March 2008
03:59 GMT |
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Of all the domestic animals, the horses have been permanently associated with the progresses of human culture and civilization. It boosted human trade, migrations and conquests. The era of the technology let the role of the horse obsolete. The horse was domesticated in the Asian steppes. Today, the genus Equus, compr... |
26 March 2008
11:32 GMT |
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One group of huge marine reptiles that dominated the seas during the dinosaur eras (Jurassic and Cretaceous, 200 to 65 Ma ago) was represented by the plesiosaurs, long-necked small-headed carnivore animals with flippers resembling those of the sea turtles. These were the animals that inspired the legend of the Loch N... |
25 March 2008
04:51 GMT |
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Walking on two feet is one of the main traits of the human being. A new study published in the journal "Nature" shows that the six-million-year-old Kenyan hominin could have been the first species able to walk bipedally, based on bone anatomy."This provides really solid evidence that these fossils actually belong to ... |
21 March 2008
04:30 GMT |
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One of the wonders of the American southwest is found in northeastern Arizona: an enormous petrified forest, a real geological treasure the scientists learned about to the end of the 19th century. Petrified Forest National Park from Arizona comprises a surface of 218,533 acres (341.5 sq mi; 885 km) of petrified wood... |
20 March 2008
10:19 GMT |
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There are mummies which can be older than those of the ancient pharaohs. Some even older than 65 Ma. An amazingly preserved "dinosaur mummy", containing a lot of tissues and bones inside skin wrapping, is being brought to light in North Dakota's state museum. Dakota is an Edmontosaurus, one of the largest duckb... |
20 March 2008
03:42 GMT |
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Today, North America is a land of prairies and oak or coniferous forests. But once, it was a tropical paradise and like any tropical environment, monkeys were present. Now, a research published in "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" describes the earliest-known primate to inhabit North America. The 55.... |
17 March 2008
04:40 GMT |
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Turtles are grandmas amongst present-day reptiles. And it's not only about their slower movements. They appeared 250 Ma ago, before snakes, crocodiles and dinosaurs emerged. But even the oldest known turtles already had a well developed shell. Modern turtles differ a lot from those early ancestors, but many rush... |
14 March 2008
04:56 GMT |
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These were the first flying vertebrates, and the largest: some had a wingspan of over 10 m (33 ft). But pterosaurs were precocious also from other points of view: they had teen sex, before reaching full size. These are the results of a research published in the journal Biology Letters, which analyzed the growth rings... |
13 March 2008
04:06 GMT |
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Nowadays, relict populations of the pygmy race are found not only in central Africa, but also in many parts of southern Asia: Aeta in Philippines, Semang in Malaya, Mani in Thailand, the Andamanese tribes from the Andaman archipelago, Rampasasa from Flores island, and many pygmy tribes also inhabited the mountains of... |
11 March 2008
04:02 GMT |
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The flight-adapted fragile bones of the bats are hard to fossilize. That's why scientists have been complaining about the scarce number of bat fossils, for obtaining clues about how mammals evolved for flight. After the description of the oldest known bat species, Onychonycteris finneyi, 52.5 million years old, ... |
10 March 2008
04:46 GMT |
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The small 18,000-year-old human skull discovered in Flores Island, Indonesia, in 2003, provoked quite a stir. Many people came up with hypotheses of a new hominid species, Homo floresiensis, that evolved locally from Homo erectus and co-existed with modern humans, Homo sapiens. Others suggested that the skull could h... |
10 March 2008
03:58 GMT |
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The rose is by far the flower most charged of symbolism and meaning. 25 Ma years old petrified fossils of roses (Rosa sp) have been found. The oldest known human representation of a flower is that of a rose. It appears on a silver medal found in a tomb from the Altay Mountains region (southern Siberia) and it seems t... |
29 February 2008
09:46 GMT |
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When Toumai ("Hope of Life" in the local Goran language) was found in Chad in 2001, that changed all the theories about human evolution. This ape-like human lived in a forested area, sharing its habitat with other monkeys and apes. It probably spent some time in the trees and perhaps walked upright.A French team has ... |
29 February 2008
04:13 GMT |
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180 Ma ago, northern dinosaurs were separated, on a supercontinent called Laurasia, from the southern dinosaurs, located on a supercontinent called Gondwana. About 10 new species of dinosaurs are found annually, and the hotbed of southern dinosaur discoveries is represented by Patagonia (the southern part of Argentin... |
28 February 2008
10:13 GMT |
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72 millions year ago, the Mexican beaches were not roamed by tourists and mariachi, but by dinosaurs. One of them has been described in the "Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology": a large duck-billed veggie dinosaur with a sail-shaped crest. Velafrons coahuilensis lived just 7 million years before the dinosaur demise. ... |
27 February 2008
05:37 GMT |
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Bunnies may look like fluffy eared rodents, but they are not. They have their own zoological order called Lagomorpha, which comprises hares, rabbits and a Guinea pig-like family of mammals called pikas. Now, scientists have found what appears to be the oldest remains of an ancestor of today's rabbits and hares.... |
26 February 2008
05:33 GMT |
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There are around 800 species of dinosaurs described worldwide. Dinosaur fossils have been found in all continents, Antarctica included. But, if you ask somebody about dinosaurs, the most popular are those discovered in North America, like Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops. Other hotbeds of dinosaur discoveries are Argent... |
21 February 2008
10:08 GMT |
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Classical theory says Homo sapiens left Africa 50-60,000 years ago, entering Asia. But a new human skull, dated to be 80,000 to 100,000 years old, found in China, could rewrite the human evolution. The shattered fossil has been found in the Henan province, by a team led by Chinese archaeologist Li Zhanyang. While the... |
21 February 2008
03:01 GMT |
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World's largest frog is the African Goliath frog (Conraua goliath) from central Africa: 13 in (33 cm) in body length (legs excluded), and weighs up to 7 lb (3 kg). But a newly discovered fossil frog from Madagascar dwarfed it: the armored amphibian had a body 16-inch (40 cm) long (and probably weighed around 5 ... |
19 February 2008
02:49 GMT |
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Crayfish are found an all continents and adapted to diverse freshwater environments, but even if they resemble tiny lobsters, the freshwater decapods cannot survive in the saltwater of the sea, that's why biologists have been puzzled for 150 years by their wide range. Now, extremely old fossils explain this on t... |
7 February 2008
04:56 GMT |
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The oldest known bird, Archaeopteryx, lived 150 million years ago, but this species and its relatives can be hardly differentiated from dinosaurs. And for about 90 million years on, fossil birds had been toothed, being very different from the modern types. Fossils resembling modern birds started to appear around the ... |
6 February 2008
03:25 GMT |
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Crocodiles are the living relatives of the only surviving Archosauria group of reptiles (birds are directly evolved from dinosaurs, thus living dinosaurs). But what you may have not suspected is that crocodiles evolved from land animals (even if you are accustomed with the image of the beast stalking in the water), f... |
1 February 2008
03:19 GMT |
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These weird creatures are called horseshoe crabs, but they have nothing to do with the actual crabs. They are not crustaceans, but related with the extinct trilobites, sea scorpions (that could reach 3 m or 10 ft in length) and with the living scorpions. They are amongst the largest living arthropods and are consider... |
29 January 2008
03:41 GMT |
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This is more than bones and fossilized feces: the fossilized skin of this dinosaur found in northeastern China (Liaoning Province) even had a wound, and it is by now the best sample of dinosaur skin. The 130-million-year-old Psittacosaurus (parrot lizard) was a sheep sized beaked dino, forebear of the later more famo... |
17 January 2008
02:49 GMT |
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There are more described beetle species than all the other described animal species. And it is believed that there are even more undescribed species, by the order of millions, to be included into the beetles' Coleoptera Order, with 17 "superfamilies" and 168 families. Many will disappear before description, as w... |
27 December 2007
05:46 GMT |
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The blue whale can be up to 33 m (100 ft) in length and weigh 181 tons, yet its recently described ancestor was just a large cat sized deerlike hoofed mammal. The semiaquatic creature, called Indohyus, inhabited southern Asia some 48 million years ago, and has been described in a research published in the journal "Na... |
20 December 2007
02:55 GMT |
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