Scientists studying a Caribbean island cave have unearthed something unexpected: ancient bees very much unlike the hive-dwelling insects we’re most familiar with. For the first time ever, paleontologists have found fossil traces of burrowing bees nesting inside the buried bones of other animals. These fossils, thousands of years old, are the end result of a […]
Ancient Bird Swallowed 800 Rocks and Choked to Death, Scientists Say
Around 120 million years ago, a bird swallowed over 800 tiny stones and choked to death as a result. Paleontologists aren’t sure why. Like many recent fossil “discoveries,” researchers with the Field Museum were browsing through a collection of old fossils when they noticed something that appeared to be an entirely new species. They found […]
Anacondas Are the Rare Prehistoric Giants That Never Shrank, Ssssstudy Reveals
During the Middle to Upper Miocene period (12.4 to 5.3 million years ago), giant animals walked—and slithered—the Earth thanks to warmer temperatures, larger wetlands, and greater amounts of food. Many of their descendants today are significantly smaller, but anacondas (Eunectes) have proven to be unexpectedly stubborn. Researchers investigated 12.4-million-year-old fossils from Venezuela to understand how […]
This Is the First Extinct Species Ever Found in Fossilized Barf—and It’s a Pterosaur
Around 110 million years ago, an apparent dinosaur ate two pterosaurs and four fish and, for whatever reason, threw them back up. A rare mix of geological conditions preserved this dinosaur vomit for human researchers to dig up—only for said researchers to catalogue it as a blob of fish remains, nothing special. It wasn’t until […]
Rediscovered Fossil Redraws the Map of Woolly Mammoth Territory
Sometimes the greatest discoveries are actually rediscoveries. In Canada, for example, researchers revealed North America’s most northeasterly woolly mammoth find after taking a second look at a mammoth tooth first discovered in 1878. In a study published last month in the journal Canadian Science Publishing, researchers analyzed a worn mammoth tooth found almost 150 years […]
Meet Nanotyrannus, a Tiny Tyrannosaur Previously Mistaken for a Teenage T. Rex
Researchers claim to have finally identified a small-bodied dinosaur that fueled decades of paleontological contention, with significant consequences for everyone’s favorite extinct carnivore—the Tyrannosaurus rex. Scientists have long debated whether a skull unearthed in 1946 in Montana’s approximately 65.5-million-year-old Hell Creek Formation was a young T. rex or a newly discovered species, which researchers named […]
Rare Dinosaur ‘Mummies’ Show Their Features as We’ve Never Seen Them Before
In the badlands of Wyoming lies the “mummy zone.” This section of rocks dating back to the Cretaceous Period has produced several strikingly well-preserved dinosaur specimens over the last century, and now, scientists have used two of them to definitively determine what one long-lost species looked like. In the early 2000s, researchers found two specimens […]
Freaky Jurassic Reptile Is a Weird Mix of Snake and Lizard
When paleontologists only have so many clues to infer a fossil’s original form, it’s all too easy to make honest mistakes. Sometimes, supposedly reasonable assumptions set researchers on the wrong path—as demonstrated by a “rediscovered” creature sporting an unlikely mix of reptilian features. A Nature paper published today introduced to the world Breugnathair elgolensis, a […]
Prehistoric Skull Found Fused to Cave Wall May Have Belonged to Mysterious Ancient Hominid
In 1960, a villager found something terrifyingly creepy in Greece’s Petralona cave—a humanoid cranium with a protrusion on its forehead, fused to the cave wall. Since then, researchers have been trying to date the strange specimen and understand how it got there, but these efforts so far have yielded only a frustratingly broad age range […]
This Ancient Roman Artifact Is Also a 453 Million-Year-Old Fossil
Despite how Ross’ paleontology career is treated by his companions in Friends, there’s something special about finding the remains of creatures that lived millions if not billions of years before us. In fact, humanity’s interest in paleontology isn’t a modern development. Ancient Romans were just as fascinated by fossils. According to the ancient Roman historian […]