fossils

1. Navaornis in hand CREDIT STEPHANIE ABRAMOWICZ.png

Small fossil has big implications for bird brain evolution

11:07am November 13, 2024

Birds descended from the dinosaurs, but researchers have known relatively little about how the bird's brain took shape over millions of years. A new fossil sheds light on that mystery.

Dinosaurs unearthed in China may have ended with a collapse, not a catastrophe

8:30am November 09, 2024

There's an area in China that's home to a huge trove of dinosaur fossils. It used to be thought it was formed through a Pompeii-like volcanic eruption, stopping dinosaurs in their tracks. But new evidence has come to light about how it likely came to be.

Queue Listen Now

In Lebanon, the 'Amber Man' digs up golden time capsules from the age of the dinosaurs

6:00am June 28, 2024

by Ari Daniel

When dinosaurs reigned some 130 million years ago, flowering plants were taking over the world. That change is sealed in ancient amber specimens on the slopes of Lebanon that Danny Azar knows so well.

Queue Listen Now

This illustration depicts a washed-up Ichthyotitan severnensis carcass on the beach.

Science

Largest-ever marine reptile found with help from an 11-year-old girl

5:00am May 06, 2024

by Ari Daniel

A father and daughter discovered fossil remnants of a giant ichthyosaur that scientists say may have been the largest-known marine reptile to ever swim the seas.

Phillip Stearnes holds a fossilized Megalodon shark tooth. 2

Science

That giant extinct shark, Megalodon? Maybe it wasn't so mega

8:58am January 26, 2024

by Ari Daniel

The ancient extinct shark that starred in the film The Meg is thought to be the largest shark that ever swam the Earth. But there's debate over what it really looked like.

Queue Listen Now

Kelp forests are tiered like terrestrial rainforests and serve as key habitats for many marine animals.

Science

New fossils suggest kelp forests have swayed in the seas for at least 32 million years

2:27pm January 23, 2024

by Ari Daniel

A new study of kelp forests from the coast of Washington state show that kelp forests, which host all manner of marine life, developed tens of millions of years ago.

Queue Listen Now

Scientists studying fossil human footprints in New Mexico say their age implies that humans arrived in North America earlier than thought.

Science

Fossil footprints in New Mexico suggest humans have been here longer than we thought

5:00am October 07, 2023

by Alice Fordham

A new study of fossil footprints in White Sands National Park bolsters the argument that humans may have lived in North America longer than thought.

Queue Listen Now

A blue morpho butterfly sits on a leaf. A new study finds that butterflies likely originated somewhere in western North America or Central America around 100 million years ago.

Butterflies originated in North America after splitting from moths, new study suggests

9:03am May 16, 2023

by Ari Daniel

Butterflies likely split from nocturnal moths around 100 million years ago in present-day western North America or Central America, a new study of the winged insects finds.

A photo of the the Mill Canyon Dinosaur Tracksite in Moab, Utah. A construction project at the site recently damaged some of the tracks and trace fossils.

A construction project caused damage to 100-million-year-old dinosaur tracks in Utah

3:24pm April 04, 2022

by Joe Hernandez

A project to replace the boardwalk at the Mill Canyon Dinosaur Tracksite in Moah, Utah, cause minor damage to tracks and trace fossils at the site, a Bureau of Land Management paleontologist found.

Fossilized section of the giant millipede Arthropleura, found in a sandstone boulder in the north of England.

Science

An extinct millipede the length of a car once roamed northern England

7:02pm December 20, 2021

by Scott Neuman

A group of geologists stumbled on the fossil of the giant creature, known as Arthropleura, during a "social trip" to England's Northumberland region in 2018. It's the largest such fossil ever found.