New Bird-Like Dinosaur Related to Archaeopteryx

A new fossil dinosaur skeleton from China has revised the history of bird evolution. Again. The new dinosaur, Aurornis xui, appears to be related to Archaeopteryx. What's more, the wel...Read More

Three Feathered Tyrannosaurs Discovered

Scientists today announced the spectacular find of three new feathered tyrannosaur skeletons, recently unearthed in China. While smaller than T. rex, the animals are the largest feathered dinosaurs (a...Read More

Woolly Mammoth DNA Adapted for Ice Age Survival

Genetics researchers may not clone a woolly mammoth any time soon but they are learning much about the ice age creatures by studying their DNA. One recent study sequenced the gene for mammoth hemoglob...Read More

Rare Find: Three New Dinosaurs From Australia

Australia has historically not been a great place to find dinosaur skeletons. In fact, it's been almost 30 years since the last large skeleton was discovered, making the recent finding of three new di...Read More

Flute Belonged to Early Humans

New evidence shows humans ancestors from 30,000 years ago were musically proficient. Three flutes from this time period were recently recovered from a cave in Germany. One of the flutes was made from ...Read More

Jurassic Dino Provides Clues to Bird Wing Evolution

A team lead by Chinese paleontologist Xing XU has announced a new dinosaur skeleton from the Gobi Desert. The 155 million year old skeleton may be a link between dinosaurs and birds. S...Read More

Hobbit-Like Human Ancestor Found

In 2004 scientists discovered a small human ancestor on the Indonesian island of Flores. The remains dated about 12,000 years old. Debate has raged about the position of this species in the human fami...Read More

Evolution Can Occur in Less Than Ten Years

How fast can evolution take place? In just a few years, according to a new study on guppies led by UC Riverside’s Swanne Gordon, a graduate student in biology. Gordon and her colleagues...Read More

Gigantic Trilobite Fossils Found in Portugal

Scientists recently announced the discovery of the largest Trilobites ever seen. Trilobites were primitive marine arthropods distantly related to modern-day horseshoe crabs. They lived for millions of...Read More

Woolly Mammoth DNA Sequenced

For the first time, scientists have mapped most of the genetic code of an extinct animal. Researchers from Penn State University today announced they have decoded about eighty percent of the woolly ma...Read More

Jurassic Dinosaur Had Feathers for Display, Not Flight

A newly described dinosaur fossil found in Mongolia by Chinese paleontologists has an odd mix of attributes. The skeleton is clearly that of a small dinosaur, but like many other recent finds from the...Read More

Glacial Cycles May Be Tied To Ice Sheets

In recent geologic time, Earth's climate ebbs and flows in predictable 100,000 year cycles. But before 2.7 million years ago, these cycles came and went in less than half that time. New...Read More

The Poison of Evolution: Snake Fangs

One of the greatest strengths of the evolutionary model is its ability to explain puzzles of animal development. Snake fangs are the latest example of a longstanding question that has succumbed to the...Read More

Floundering Eyeballs: New Transitional Flatfish Fossil

Evolution has tweaked the skeletons of flatfish like flounder and halibut to the extreme. In order to conceal themselves from prey, these fish lie on their sides on the sea floor. Flatfish are born wi...Read More

Evidence of Martian Waters Viewed From Space

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has given us detailed images of the red planet. Now a specialized instrument on the spacecraft has provided scientists with a more detailed understanding of the a...Read More

Fossil Link in Evolution of Slimy Things

The evolution of many groups of animals are wonderfully well represented in the fossil record. Others, like frogs, are less understood simply because few fossils exist of these creatures and their anc...Read More

Volcanic Magma One Source of Earthquakes

In addition to hot ash, lava, and lightning, volcanoes typically produce earthquakes as magma surges through the mountain on its way to eruption. In fact, volcanic eruptions are so often preceded by f...Read More

Found: Million-Year-Old Human Ancestor from Western Europe

A newly discovered fossil confirms human ancestors lived in Europe one million years ago. The fossil jaw bone fragment and a few teeth were discovered along with stone tools in Atapuerca in northern S...Read More

Carbon-Based Methane Detected on Distant Planet

For the first time, a planet outside our solar system has been discovered to harbor an organic compound in the form of methane gas. While methane in abundance can indicate life, most p...Read More

Intermediate Fossil Feathers Found

A piece of amber formed of tree sap from 100 million years ago has preserved crucial evidence of feather evolution. Evolution has long predicted the evolution of birds from reptiles, an...Read More

A New Fossil Link For Bat Evolution

Bats evolved flight before they evolved echolocation, say scientists who discovered the oldest bat species known. The nearly complete bat skeleton is based on two fossils from the Green River Formatio...Read More

Scientists Simulate Dinosaur Guts in Lab

In studying the effectiveness of dinosaur digestion, scientists from Germany and Switzerland have determined long-neck (sauropod) dinosaurs derived more nutrition from ancient plants than previously t...Read More

Fossil Evidence Reveals Whale Ancestor

Whales and dolphins breathe air and give birth to live young, just as other mammals including humans. But they live out their lives in the oceans. How did land-dwelling animals return to the sea? Acco...Read More

Motion, Not Location Propelled Flight Evolution

From the evidence of bird-like dinosaur fossils bearing feathers, we know that dinosaurs evolved into birds. Thus we know at some point these primitive birds must have taken flight, but until now, sci...Read More

New Images of Planet Mercury from Spacecraft

As NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft approached Mercury on January 14, 2008, it captured this view of the planet's rugged, cratered landscape illuminated obliquely by the sun. This image was taken from a di...Read More

Eight Foot Long Sea Scorpion Discovered

Scientists have discovered a 390 million-year-old fossilized claw belonging to the largest eurypterid ever found. At over 8 feet long (2.5 meters) it's also the largest member of the arthropods, the g...Read More

The Indian 500

Like a race car, the chunk of crust under modern India sped along the surface of the earth during the Cretaceous period. Even today, the massive India/Asia crunch continues to push up the largest moun...Read More

Complete Genetic Code from Bacteria Found Inside Fly DNA

For the first time ever, scientists have found the genome of one species inside the genome of another's. Lifeforms on earth evolve due to DNA mutations and copying errors. Sometimes, g...Read More

Scientists report discovery of ferocious ice age wolf

"Alaska was home to a previously unknown and 'highly carnivorous' subspecies of ice age wolf with jaws so powerful it could snap a mammoth’s thigh bone in two." Read the full article at...Read More

Gigantoraptor Dwarfed Other Birdlike Dinosaurs

An enormous feathered dinosaur has recently been unearthed from the plentiful fossil beds of northern China. Named Gigantoraptor erlianensis, the dinosaur grew to 26 feet in length and was eas...Read More

July 2007 Museum Events

The Wonderful World of Agates International Show Weis Earth Science Museum, Menasha, WI July 10-13, 2008 Darwin Field Museum of Natural History ...Read More

Bone Diggers premieres next week on NOVA

In Bone Diggers, NOVA takes viewers to the stark Australian outback in search of the elusive bones of one of the world's most bizarre prehistoric creatures--a giant predatory marsupial called Thylacol...Read More

Some Dinosaurs Were Swimmers

Okay, so they probably didn't do the backstroke, but new evidence from Spain suggests some meat-eating dinosaurs did swim. Scientists report finding tracks from a fossil lake-bed which...Read More

Mammals Were on the Rise Before Dinosaurs Checked Out

A recent study published in the journal Nature finds mammals began to diversify 30 million years before dinosaurs went extinct. And the number of mammal species continued to rise steadily through the ...Read More

Marsupial Lion Among New Australian Fossils

The Australian outback holds a reputation as a wild, untamed place, but a new discovery shows it was once even more wild. Dozens of animals, including a marsupial lion, eight new specie...Read More

Biggest European Dinosaur Discovered

The massive skeleton of a new sauropod (long-neck) dinosaur has recently been examined by researchers. The scientists found the bones in Spain and say it is the largest dinosaur of any kind found in E...Read More

Neanderthals More like Modern Humans

Human children take years to mature into adults. In contrast to other mammals, human children can't walk, or even eat and drink on their own for the first months of their lives. This seeming deficienc...Read More

First Long-Necked Plesiosaur Skull from Montana

A fossil-hunting trip to celebrate a son’s homecoming resulted in the recent discovery of an ancient sea monster in central Montana. Believed to be approximately 70 million years old, i...Read More

Recent Geologic Activity on Earth's Moon

A new study finds the surface of the moon may be more active than previously thought. Scientist Peter Schultz along with other researchers recently proposed unusual features on the moon's surface resu...Read More

Bloodsuckers from the Paleozoic

Travel deep into earth's layers, and you'll find fewer and fewer modern animals. Eventually, you'll come across the lamprey, an early vertebrate with no solid bones and no jaws but simply a circular m...Read More

Snowball Earth Model Finds New Support

Was earth ever so cold the oceans froze over? Glacial deposits from equatorial rocks dating to 600 million years ago say "yes." However, some have challenged these rocks were not truly ...Read More