Fossils

Fossils

The real sea monsters

No known dinosaurs lived in the oceans. But there were lots of big aquatic reptiles that were every bit as ferocious and awesome.

Fossils

New analysis halves massive dino’s weight

No question about it, Dreadnoughtus schrani was enormous. But a new estimate concludes this dino weighed just half as much as first thought.

Fossils

That’s no dino!

Not all ancient reptiles were dinosaurs. Some soared, many swam the seas and still others looked like dinos—but actually weren’t.

Fossils

Fossil find adds a relative to our family tree

Lucy is the best known of our early ancestors. Now, a new fossil from Ethiopia suggests a second pre-human species lived alongside her kind.

Animals

Picture This: The real ‘early bird’

Long before dinosaurs went extinct, birds were emerging on Earth. These hummingbird-size wading birds are the earliest known ancestors of today’s birds.

Fossils

Ritual cannibalism occurred in Stone Age England

Stone Age human bones from a cave in England show signs of cannibalism. The people had been eaten during burial rituals nearly 15,000 years ago, experts say.

Fossils

‘Frankenstein’ dino showed a mashup of traits

New species unearthed in Chile is “an anatomical Frankenstein,” declares one of its discoverers.

Fossils

There really was a Brontosaurus, study claims

A new analysis finds evidence that the Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus were separate groups of animals, which deserve their own names and places on the dino family tree.

Fossils

Snakes may have slithered amongst Jurassic dinos

Newly analyzed fossils suggest snakes lived at the same time as the golden age of dinosaurs. These early snakes appear to have had flexible skulls and likely also had four small limbs.

Fossils

Scientists Say: Coprolite

Every living thing and signs of its existence — right down to their wastes — can fossilize under the right conditions. When poop fossilizes, it gets a special name.

Earth

Dino double whammy

Most scientists think an asteroid helped kill off the dinosaurs. But new calculations suggest that asteroid might have gotten some help from a long series of volcanic eruptions in what is now India.

Fossils

Dinos: Some were ‘marathoners’

The arrangement of major muscles in a duck-billed dinosaur’s legs would have helped them outrun predators such as T. rex, a new analysis suggests.