fossil

Crews digging 12 feet below a California infrastructure project uncovered 40- to 45-million-year-old bones of a large hoofed mammal; paleontologists spent seven days extracting the fossil from hardened rock

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Crews digging 12 feet below a California infrastructure project uncovered 40- to 45-million-year-old bones of a large hoofed mammal; paleontologists spent seven days extracting the fossil from hardened rock

A routine infrastructure project in Oceanside, California, has uncovered a glimpse of a world that existed tens of millions of years before humans. The City of Oceanside first announced the discovery on September 22, while reporting from the Los Angeles Times, NBC 7 San Diego and the San Diego Union-Tribune provided additional details about the … Read more

55-million-year-old fossil bird reveals how trogons evolved their unusual feet; reversed toe came before the big toe shrank

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55-million-year-old fossil bird reveals how trogons evolved their unusual feet; reversed toe came before the big toe shrank

PC: Journal of Systematic Palaeontology A fossil bird from Denmark is helping researchers understand how the unusual feet of modern trogons evolved. The fossil belongs to a species called Daniatrogon kochi, which lived about 55 million years ago during the Early Eocene. Researchers found the fossil in 1989 on the Danish island of Mors in … Read more

T. rex had a body temperature of 36.3°C, almost the same as humans; fossil tooth chemistry reveals the 66-million-year-old predator was warm-blooded and could survive in cold climates

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T. rex had a body temperature of 36.3°C, almost the same as humans; fossil tooth chemistry reveals the 66-million-year-old predator was warm-blooded and could survive in cold climates

Representative Image via Canva For 66 million years, the body temperature of Tyrannosaurus rex (T.rex) lived only in speculation. Now, a new study has taken the dinosaur’s temperature using chemistry locked inside its fossilised teeth, finding an average of about 36.3°C (97.3°F), strikingly close to the human norm. The researchpublished in Science Advances, offers one … Read more

A 66-million-year-old gastropod fossil was found at a 5,000-year-old settlement in Ankara; ancient inhabitants may have brought it there

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A 66-million-year-old gastropod fossil was found at a 5,000-year-old settlement in Ankara; ancient inhabitants may have brought it there

PC: Anadolu Agency of Turkey A 66-million-year-old gastropod fossil has been discovered at an archaeological site in Ankara, Turkey. Excavators uncovered the fossil during work at Kulhoyuk in the Oyaca neighbourhood of Ankara’s Golbasi district. Researchers believe it dates to one of the final phases of the Tethys Sea, an ancient body of water that … Read more

A 240-million-year-old fossil disappeared for 20 years, then its rediscovery revealed a new reptile related to dinosaurs and crocodiles

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A 240-million-year-old fossil disappeared for 20 years, then its rediscovery revealed a new reptile related to dinosaurs and crocodiles

A fossil found in southern Brazil is giving researchers a closer look at the reptiles that lived near the beginning of the archosaur lineage, the group that would eventually include dinosaurs and crocodile-line animals. The animal has been named ‘Silescelida acristata’ and is identified as an early-diverging eucrocopodan archosauriform from the Middle Triassic. A recent … Read more

Scientists reconstructed a Wyoming forest from 56-million-year-old fossil leaves; it lost about 60% of its canopy during ancient warming and took more than 100,000 years to recover

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Scientists reconstructed a Wyoming forest from 56-million-year-old fossil leaves; it lost about 60% of its canopy during ancient warming and took more than 100,000 years to recover

Wyoming tetons Representative image from Canva Deep in the rock record of Wyoming, a layer of fossil leaves tells a quiet but powerful story about what happens to forests when the planet warms rapidly. About 56 million years ago, during a spike in global temperatures known as the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a lush … Read more

Scientists used fossil wings, lasers and AI to recreate the calls of insects from 165 million years ago; some Jurassic species were already communicating above human hearing

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Scientists used fossil wings, lasers and AI to recreate the calls of insects from 165 million years ago; some Jurassic species were already communicating above human hearing

The research focused on nine extinct insect species related to modern crickets and katydids. For 165 million years, the sounds made by insects living alongside dinosaurs were lost to time. Scientists have now recreated some of those calls using fossilised wings, studies of living insects, computer modelling and artificial intelligence.According to Smithsonian Magazine, the research … Read more

A 324-million-year-old fossil from Texas preserves an early insect with 24 legs and paddle-like limbs on its abdomen, suggesting insects did not leave water for land in one sudden evolutionary jump

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A 324-million-year-old fossil from Texas preserves an early insect with 24 legs and paddle-like limbs on its abdomen, suggesting insects did not leave water for land in one sudden evolutionary jump

Palaeoecological reconstruction of the Carboniferous stem-insect Chosha praecursor. (Image by NIGPAS) An international research team has identified a remarkable insect fossil from western Texas that could represent a crucial missing link in the story of insect evolution. The fossil, from the Late Mississippian period approximately 324 million years ago, belongs to a stem group of … Read more

In 2025, 11-year-old Touren Pope spotted a fossil exposed on the ground in Wyoming; it turned out to be a nearly complete 48-million-year-old turtle shell, and he was allowed to name it

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In 2025, 11-year-old Touren Pope spotted a fossil exposed on the ground in Wyoming; it turned out to be a nearly complete 48-million-year-old turtle shell, and he was allowed to name it

11-year-old Touren Pope finds 48-million-year-old turtle fossil in WyomingPhoto credit: Craig Thomas, BLM Rock Springs Field Office What began as a routine family rock-hounding trip in southwest Wyoming turned into a paleontological headline when 11-year-old Touren Pope noticed something unusual poking out of the ground. What he’d spotted was the fossilized shell of a softshell … Read more

Meet Ni Jingchen: The 12-year-old Beijing student who posted a strange fossil online and helped reveal Asia’s first Jurassic amphibian footprint

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Meet Ni Jingchen: The 12-year-old Beijing student who posted a strange fossil online and helped reveal Asia’s first Jurassic amphibian footprint

Representative Image of a child examining ancient fossil footprints preserved in rock in Mentougou, Beijing (AI-generated image) In early 2025, 12-year-old Ni Jingchen was out exploring with his parents in Beijing’s Mentougou district when he noticed two tiny marks on a slab of exposed rock. Ni already loved fossils and knew enough to realise that … Read more