fossil record

A team of scientists have discovered an ancient arthropod that may show the origins of branched limbs and the first gill-like breathing structures in the clade.

Octopuses were around 82 million years earlier than scientists previously thought—and had two extra limbs at the time.

Researchers determined the season during which the meteor struck by studying the bones of fish excavated from a contentious field site.

More than two-thirds of mammals in Africa and the Arabian Peninsula went extinct during the Eocene-Oligocene transition some 30 million years ago, a study finds.

A report of preserved fragments of nuclei and chromatin in a fossilized femur of a 125-million-year-old Caudipteryx dinosaur elicits skepticism.

The material, now part of an African mountain range, bolsters the idea that hydrothermal veins supported early forms of life.

A tooth and six bone fragments are the oldest confirmed Homo sapiens fossils in Europe.

This marine animal looks like a sea star, but don’t be fooled.

Paleontologists find microscopic fungi in Arctic Canada that is reported to be about twice as old as the previously oldest known fossils of fungi.

Paleontologists find tracks from a four-footed animal thought to be of an Ichniotherium species in the Grand Canyon.

Fanged kangaroos in Australia were thought to have gone extinct 15 million years ago, but new evidence suggests they were around for at least 5 million more years.