59+ min ago   (431+ words) Paleontologists have identified the earliest-known cephalopod equipped with a siphuncle — a tubular extension of the mantle found in shelled cephalopods — pushing back the fossil record of this key evolutionary feature to the Early Cambrian, roughly 520 million years ago. Life reconstruction…...

2+ day, 23+ hour ago   (505+ words) Paleontologists have announced the discovery of a new fossil honeybee species that fills a long-standing gap in the evolutionary record of the genus Apis. Fossil honeybees are exceedingly rare, and most known specimens come from Oligocene and Miocene deposits in…...

5+ day, 23+ hour ago   (243+ words) Paleontologists at the University of New South Wales have described a new genus and species of dasyurid marsupial from the Early Miocene of Australia, offering the first solid evidence that the family Dasyuridae -- which today includes quolls, Tasmanian devils and…...

6+ day, 20+ hour ago   (909+ words) Paleontologists have unearthed a remarkably preserved fossil snake in Brazil that is reshaping ideas about how the earliest snakes lived and complicating the long-running debate over whether their ancestors burrowed underground, swam in the sea or crawled the surface. Life…...

1+ week, 21+ hour ago   (500+ words) An artist’s impression of a pliosaur. Image credit: Megan Jacobs, University of Portsmouth. “Liopleurodon ferox is a well-known thalassophonean pliosaurid from the Middle Jurassic (Callovian) Oxford Clay Formation of England and equivalent strata in northwest France,” said University of Portsmouth…...

1+ week, 1+ day ago   (756+ words) In a new study of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and bonobos (Pan paniscus), scientists found that embraces, touches and other reassuring gestures before competition for food were linked to more peaceful sharing, suggesting the roots of human social touch stretch back…...

1+ week, 1+ day ago   (184+ words) Paleontologists in India have unearthed a partial skeleton of a diminutive, previously unknown neosauropod dinosaur from the Middle Jurassic rocks of Gujarat’s Kachchh Basin....

1+ week, 2+ day ago   (530+ words) A new genus and species of cryptobranchid salamander that lived in lakes in Japan about 3.5 million years ago has been identified from three fossil vertebrae, filling a major gap in the fossil record of one of the world’s oldest amphibian…...

1+ week, 2+ day ago   (199+ words) Paleontologists have described a new genus and species of ancient gecko found in two pieces of amber from the 99-million-year-old (mid-Cretaceous) amber deposits in Kachin province, Myanmar....

2+ week, 2+ hour ago   (359+ words) Researchers have identified and formally described a new species of the African monkey genus Colobus living in the remote interior of the Democratic Republic of Congo, marking only the fifth new monkey species found on the continent in the past…...