NEWS CATEGORIES:



NEWS ARCHIVE >>
SOFTPEDIA REVIEWS >>
MEET THE EDITORS >>
Home / News / Tags / fossils

Stories about: fossils


More: next 50 >>

Ancient Crocodiles Roamed Sahara with the Dinosaurs

According to what evidence we have collected from the fossil record, dinosaurs ruled the land over what is now the Sahara desert more than 100 million years ago. But recent investigations have also revealed some of their companions, including an entire ensemble of crocodiles that seems to have accompanied the giant l...

20 November 2009
14:31 GMT

'Missing Link' to Sauropods Discovered

Dinosaurs dominated the Earth, totally or partially, for at least 160 million years before the K-T (Cretaceous–Tertiary) extinction event, which saw the disappearance of the giant lizards. The earliest of these animals were small, two-legged creatures, but some of their predecessors grew to enormous sizes, and ...

11 November 2009
18:31 GMT

Warm Blood May Have Flown Through Dinosaurs

A new scientific idea proposes that the main reason why dinosaurs were so able to endure for millions of years was the fact that most of them were warm-blooded, rather than cold-blooded, as average lizards are. Scientists propose that this trait allowed for them to evolve into the myriad of shapes and sizes that the ...

11 November 2009
16:31 GMT

Fossilized Tiny Animals Provide Clues to Past Climate Change

Tiny aquatic creatures, no larger than a grain of sand, can yield significant details of past climate changes, as long as scientists know what they are looking for. Billions of these tiny organisms can be found on the bottom of the ocean, and they hold inside them information about past sea levels, temperatures, and ...

9 November 2009
10:27 GMT

Laser Technology Preserves Ancient Dinosaur Tracks

Experts at the Southern Methodist University (SMU), in Dallas, have recently managed to electronically preserve a 110-million-year-old dinosaur footprint that was removed from its original location decades ago. The original tracks were excavated from their site, and taken to Texas, where they were built into a bandst...

5 November 2009
06:11 GMT

Sea-Monster Skull Found in Great Britain

While digging at a site on the UK coasts, experts recently came across the bones of a pliosaur. While some may consider it just another dinosaur, for experts, it is one of the most important and amazing finds of the last few years. The aquatic animal was a monster, they say, one that would have made Tyrannosaurus Rex...

27 October 2009
04:01 GMT

New, Fossilized Primate Found in Egypt

A team of paleontologists from three American universities has recently discovered a new species of primates that is not related to humans in any way. The find was made about 40 miles from Cairo, in Egypt. The lead researcher for the new investigation has been paleontologist Erik Seiffert, from the Stony Brook Univer...

22 October 2009
01:45 GMT

New, Flying Dinosaur Preyed on Other Flying Reptiles

Researchers in China and the United Kingdom have identified the first convincing set of pieces of evidence hinting at an unusual and controversial type of evolution, when they have discovered the remains of a peculiar flying lizard. The animal seems to have been in the habit of hunting other flying creatures during i...

14 October 2009
18:11 GMT

New Fossil Mammal Found in China

Maotherium asiaticus is the name Chinese and American researchers gave to a newly discovered fossil species, which lived in the Liaoning Province of China some 123 million years ago. The chipmunk-sized creature was found in the Yixian Formation, a very rich fossil bed that had yielded countless amazing discoveries ov...

9 October 2009
10:01 GMT

How Dinosaurs Moved Down Slippery Slopes

An international team of scientists, consisting of members from the University of Michigan, in the US, the Universidad de Buenos Aires, in Argentina, and the Iziko South African Museum, in Cape Town, South Africa, has recently revealed new clues of how dinosaurs moved down slopes. Apparently, in spite of their massiv...

7 October 2009
04:55 GMT

Uncovering the History of Butterflies

Despite being virtually everywhere, butterflies are some of the least understood creatures on the face of the planet, as far as their evolution goes. They come in a huge variety of shapes, sizes and species, and completely lack fossil evidence on which scientists could build theories. Thanks to a new study, experts n...

6 October 2009
04:50 GMT

New, Horned Tyrannosaurus Discovered

Researchers have recently discovered a new type of Tyrannosaur, one that was much smaller and graceful than its fearsome cousin Rex, while still being a vicious predator. The lizard sported some unusual features for a dinosaur, including a very long snout and a horn on its head. The find shed some light on T. Rex�...

6 October 2009
01:45 GMT

Martian Rocks Could Be Preserving Signs of Life

In a study that could change the way planetary scientists look at rocks forever, French researchers recently reported, in the September issue of the journal Geobiology, that they discovered how microorganisms become fossils in laboratory conditions. This may provide geologists with leads into understanding how microb...

3 October 2009
04:02 GMT

4.4-Million-Year-Old Hominid Fossil Found

A newly discovered hominid fossil, found in Ethiopia, Africa, demonstrates that humans did not evolve from knuckle-walking chimpanzees, as anthropologists widely believe. Apparently, our species evolved along a separate lineage from a common ancestor that we shared with a species of great apes that has long since bee...

2 October 2009
04:36 GMT

65-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Eggs Found in India

In a groundbreaking discovery that could potentially unlock the mystery surrounding the disappearance of dinosaurs, experts in India have uncovered an ancient dinosaur spawning ground, featuring hundreds of clusters of eggs. Initial estimates place the fossilized remains at about 65 million years in the past, althoug...

2 October 2009
03:59 GMT

Famous T. Rex Killed by Parasite

In 1990, the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation, in South Dakota, provided the world with the most complete Tyrannosaurus Rex fossil to date, a beautiful specimen named Sue. The remains went on to be sold for the highest sum ever paid for a dinosaur, and became a permanent exhibit at the Field Museum of Natural Histor...

30 September 2009
03:13 GMT

HIV Ancestor Is 100 Million Years Old

According to new scientific evidence, it would appear that the retroviruses from which the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) evolved have been plaguing the animal world since 100 million years ago. The new time frame is about 85 million years 'older' than first thought, which brings into focus the need to ...

28 September 2009
05:51 GMT

150-Million-Year-Old Feathered Dinosaur Found

Accord to leading paleontologists, a new, exceptionally preserved dinosaur fossil discovered in north-eastern China represents the earliest known feathered animal at this point. Estimated to have lived about 150 million years ago, the animal was petrified in mint condition, thus providing experts with the ability to ...

25 September 2009
14:31 GMT

Immense Fossil Supervolcano Found in Italian Alps

Back in the days when our planet was very young, the continents and oceans did not resemble anything we know and see today. The outer layer of the planet, the crust, was in a constant process of rearrangement, and volcanic eruptions were a common thing. But, from time to time, crust explosions at a grand scale took p...

21 September 2009
20:51 GMT

New Debate on the African Origins of Anthropoids

While excavating at a dig site in Algeria, archaeologists came across the well-preserved remains of two primate species. Both are some 50 million years old, and belong to the small primate Algeripithecus, often considered to be the oldest African anthropoid. From this group, both apes and men evolved. According to a ...

15 September 2009
10:00 GMT

40-Million-Year-Old Glowing Feathers Found

Bird species are widely known for their exquisite plumages, which are used to attract mates and show who is the boss within a group. For a long time, paleontologists and ornithologists wondered where this behavior originated, or exactly how old this “marketing mechanism” was. Recent analyses of fossilized...

26 August 2009
10:50 GMT

Anniversary: 100 Years of Burgess Shale

The Burgess Shale Formation is one of the most well-preserved archaeological sites in the world. It features a wealth of fossils, from a world that disappeared some 500 million years ago, when the area of the Canadian Rocky Mountains where it's located was a seabed teeming with life. Despite thousands of millenn...

21 August 2009
14:51 GMT

Experts Find 150-Million-Year-Old Squid Ink

While digging for fossils in the town of Chippenham, Wiltshire, in the United Kingdom, archaeologists stumbled upon the preserved remains of a squid, estimated to have lived some 150 million years ago. Inside it, much to their amazement, experts discovered ink. The substance was so well maintained, that its finders c...

20 August 2009
09:09 GMT

Pterosaurs Preferred Landing on Prehistoric 'Runways'

Paleontologists have recently managed to uncover a first-of-its-kind prehistoric "runway" for pterosaurs, the ancient, bird-like animals. The tracks, found at a location dubbed Pterosaur Beach, in southwestern France, are the first evidence to show how these animals landed, which is something that is apparently very ...

19 August 2009
06:46 GMT

Large T. Rex Skeleton Goes on Auction in October

Tyrannosaurus Rex fossils are not exactly easy to come by, and nearly complete skeletons are even more uncommon. Only a few of these exist, but most of them miss a large number of bones. That is precisely why the collector community has saluted a recent decision, to put one of the largest and most complete T. Rex ske...

19 August 2009
02:45 GMT

Giant Ancient Spiders Get 3D Models

In a new research published in yesterday's issue of the journal Biology Letters, experts have used modern 3D reconstruction techniques to model some of the largest and most dangerous spiders that lived 359 to 299 million years ago for the first time. About the size of a 20 penny piece, the spiders were revealed ...

5 August 2009
05:53 GMT

4,500-Year-Old Warrior Skeleton Found in Italy

Italian archaeologists have recently unearthed the fossilized skeletal remains of a 4,500-year-old warrior on a beach just South of the capital city of Rome. The man, who experts believe was killed by an arrow strike to the chest, was found by an aerial police patrol, of all things. As the authorities surveyed the ar...

3 August 2009
15:11 GMT

Early Animals Lived in Lakes, Not Oceans

According to a new set of investigations conducted by experts at the University of California in Riverside (UCR) in South China, it may be that the earliest animals whose fossils were preserved to this day could have originated in inland lakes, and not necessarily in the open oceans, as previous knowledge had it. Stu...

28 July 2009
05:13 GMT

Humans May Have Originated from Asian Monkeys

According to new anthropological and archaeological studies, it may be that humans, apes and monkeys all originated from an Asian ancestor, rather than an African or a European one. The find comes shortly after the entire world was buzzing less than one month ago, as researchers presented Ida, the fossil that was &ld...

2 July 2009
03:03 GMT

Cell Structure Imprints Found on Dinosaur Fossil

Never underestimate the power of sediments, anthropologists always say, as they can save valuable details over millions of years. And few are the circumstances in which they were more right. In their study of the fossilized remains of a duck-billed hadrosaur family specimen, they noticed cell-like structures imprinte...

1 July 2009
10:12 GMT

Experts Identify Oldest Elephant 'Relative'

Elephants are, at this point, the largest land mammals on Earth, and are only surpassed in size by some species of whales, which dwarf them. But they weren't always at the top of the size chart. Dinosaurs and mammoths were just a few of the creatures that made elephants look like babies, but now researchers have...

23 June 2009
19:51 GMT

Neanderthal Skull Fragment Dredged from North Sea

A 60,000-year-old fossilized bone fragment, belonging to a young Neanderthal adult, has been dredged up from the bottom of the North Sea, researchers from the Netherlands have recently disclosed to the public. After a careful analysis of the isotopes found on and inside the bone, the scientists from Leiden concluded ...

16 June 2009
07:11 GMT

Arctic Animals Endured the Darkness Since Life Appeared

Despite the fact that the Arctic regions have passed through numerous changes over the millennia, one thing has remained the same – the fact that they are left in darkness for six months each year. One would be inclined to think that this would not allow for the development of a large number of species there, b...

8 June 2009
02:45 GMT

Fossil Teeth Give Clues of Animals' Evolutionary Abilities

Lately, with the influence of global warming rising worldwide, animal experts said that the rise in temperatures might catch many species off-guard, as in unable to modify their behavioral patterns fast enough to survive. They also said that this situation would lead to a massive extinction among species, especially ...

4 June 2009
04:17 GMT

Spanish Researchers Identify New Hominid

Researchers at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona Institut Catala de Paleontologia (ICP) believe they may have found a new genus of hominid primate, in the els Hostalets de Pierola, l'Anoia region. The fossil, which displays some very interesting characteristics, is described in the most recent issue of the s...

2 June 2009
10:41 GMT

Archaeologists Find 5-Million-Year-Old Sloth Fossil

Workers digging at the foundation of a Peruvian home to install a new set of water pipes came across the oldest known sloth fossil in history. The animal was found buried together with a massive armadillo, which was estimated to be about the same age as the peaceful herbivorous mammal. Initial estimates say that the ...

26 May 2009
03:57 GMT

New Dinosaur Species Stemmed from Competition

According to the results of two years' worth of excellent archeology, experts can now argue that a newly discovered “pocket of life” in Northwestern Alberta, Canada, is a missing link between species that lived further to the North, and others that lived elsewhere in what is now the country. Many fos...

15 May 2009
05:54 GMT

Experts Discover Cave Paintings of Marsupial Lions

By 30 millennia ago, all of the big land predators in Australia had disappeared without a trace, but archaeological evidence has over the years revealed some interesting insight into what type of animals lived on the Southern continent before their extinction. One of the most peculiar was the marsupial lion, a leopar...

10 May 2009
05:20 GMT

Some Dinosaurs May Have Survived Asteroid Impact

New archaeological data that have emerged following digs in New Mexico and Colorado seem to infirm the hypothesis that states that the catastrophic chain of events that triggered the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) extinct event killed off all dinosaur species on Earth, alongside some 70 percent of all other animals and fo...

29 April 2009
10:59 GMT

African Fossil Cache Discovered with Google Earth

University of Michigan paleontologists Philip Gingerich, Gregg Gunnell and Bill Sanders can take great pride in the way they have managed to make important archaeological finds in the vastness of the Egyptian desert. Their story may seem a bit far-fetched at first, but the trio say that there has been no scam involve...

29 April 2009
05:33 GMT

Baby Tuatara Sighted First Time in Two Centuries

Wildlife experts in New Zealand were thrilled to discover a hatchling baby tuatara in the New Zealand forests this week, officials announced on Thursday. The reptiles are highly endangered and extremely rare, and individuals haven't observed them in the wild for more than 200 years. Needless to say, everyone at ...

21 March 2009
06:31 GMT

Tiny Fossil Pieces Combine into Marine Monster

The UNESCO World Heritage Site Burgess Shale, in the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia, is home to one of the greatest sources of fossils from the Cambrian Age. Complex and well-preserved remains are constantly excavated from this location, and one of the digs seems now to hold a big surprise for its discoverers. ...

20 March 2009
04:40 GMT

Ultimate Predator Fossils Found in the Arctic

The remote Arctic archipelago of Svalbard has been home to one of the most disturbing archaeological finds in years, and namely that of a super-sized marine hunter, dubbed Predator X. And scientists haven't called it super-sized for nothing, as its skull is about twice as large as that of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Th...

18 March 2009
05:49 GMT

Unearthed Dinosaur Group Died Together

Archaeologists and other researchers from China and the US are currently working together to uncover a mass grave, dating back more than 90 million years ago, which contains the remains of a large dinosaur group that got trapped in mud on the banks of a freshwater lake in the Gobi desert, Inner Mongolia. Nearly all o...

16 March 2009
07:44 GMT

Fish Fossil Preserves 300 Million-Year-Old Brain

Since the beginning of archeology and anthropology, scientists working in these fields have been looking for the oldest brain on the planet, whichever its origins may be. It would appear that now their prayers have been answered, as a 300 million-year-old fossil, recently found in Kansas, revealed the contents of its...

3 March 2009
03:43 GMT

Two Pictures Show the 100-Foot 'Borneo Monster'

Two photographs have been recently released from unknown sources in Borneo, depicting the weirdest of occurrences – a 100 foot-long snake-like creature cruising in the waters of the Baleh river. Natives are understandably scared of that, as they believe that the alleged monster is the mythical Nabau creature, a...

20 February 2009
03:33 GMT

Ice Age Fossils Unearthed in Los Angeles

The La Brea Tar Pits, one of the most famous places in the world for archaeological digs, is, these days, again home to one of the most important discoveries of the year – an important cache of Ice Age fossils, which will undoubtedly keep scientists occupied for a long period of time. The site is located in Los...

18 February 2009
09:44 GMT

Fossil Reveals the Origins of Claws

A 390 million year-old fossil of a long-extinct animal sheds new light on the evolution of scorpions and horseshoe crabs, and especially on how they developed their frontal claws. The perfectly-preserved specimen is the only one known of its species, and has been named Schinderhannes bartelsi. Investigators from the ...

6 February 2009
04:54 GMT

First Whales Spawned on Dry land

A breakthrough discovery made near Pakistan offers scientists confirmation for one of their theories about the origins of whales, a hypothesis that they had no way of testing considering the lack of fossils from the respective time frame. Now, a unique fossil of a pregnant female, estimated to be some 47 million year...

4 February 2009
03:43 GMT

Tuatara Fathers Offspring at Age 111

Henry is a tuatara that has been living in captivity since 1970, at the Southland Museum, in the New Zealand city of Invercargill. It's currently known that he is 111 years old, and yet, this is the first batch of eggs he's fathered in his life. Although his caretakers have no way of knowing what the very r...

26 January 2009
08:26 GMT


More: next 50 >>

Windows tabGames tabDrivers tabMac tabLinux tabScripts tabMobile tabHandheld tabGadgets tabNews tab

SUBMIT PROGRAM   |   ADVERTISE   |   GET HELP   |   SEND US FEEDBACK   |   RSS FEEDS   |   ENTER NEWS SITE   |   ENGLISH BOARD   |   ROMANIAN FORUM