fossil

A team of researchers in Australia have imaged fossilized soft organs of early jawed vertebrates for the first time, finding that our ancient fish ancestors’ hearts, livers, and stomachs are strikingly similar to ours.

Researchers mapped ear canal shape to body temperature to predict when ancestors of mammals first became endothermic.

Fossil findings shed light on a little-known group of Cretaceous-era beasts—and indicate that the combination of a large head and diminutive arms was no evolutionary fluke.

A newer dating technique using cosmogenic isotopes finds Australopithecus remains from the Sterkfontein caves to be about 1 million years older than previous estimates, potentially changing scientists’ understanding of humanity’s origins.

These Pleistocene Epoch giants likely traveled great distances each year to reach breeding grounds.

An analysis of skull and vertebrae fossils suggests that an early relative of giraffes butted heads to compete for mates, which may reveal why modern giraffes are so throaty.

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.

Endothermy was widespread among both avian and non-avian dinosaurs, a study suggests, so the metabolic strategy is unlikely to account for birds’ survival through the mass extinction event that wiped out their dinosaur cousins.

The new fossil from Laos helps answer the question of how some people from Oceania carry DNA from the ancient hominin.

See some of the coolest images recently featured by The Scientist

The land’s first known singer may have sounded like a raspier version of today’s familiar insect fiddlers.

In a chapter entitled “Predators, Silence, Wings,” author David George Haskell explores the soundscapes of bygone eras of animal communication.

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

Selected images from the-scientist.com

A new analysis of fossil footprints suggests that the 2-meter-tall, 4- to 5-meter-long carnivores that left them could run nearly 45 kilometers per hour, bolstering the evidence that at least some dinosaurs were speedy, agile hunters.

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.

A handful of high schoolers prompt scientists to develop a new approach for calculating the size of the ancient behemoth.

Spores found in 480 million-year-old rock bring the fossil record in line with molecular estimates of when plants first adapted to life on land.