Fossils

Fossils

This dinosaur was no bigger than a hummingbird

The skull of one of these ancient birds — the tiniest yet known — was discovered encased in a chunk of amber originally found in Myanmar.

Fossils

Let’s learn about dinosaur extinction

Dinosaurs disappeared 66 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous. What made them go extinct?

Earth

Scientists Say: Fossil

Under the right conditions, living things or traces they’ve left behind can be preserved in rock for a long time — millions or billions of years.

Animals

Small T. rex ‘cousins’ may actually have been growing teens

Dinosaurs once thought to be mini cousins of Tyrannosaurus rex may have been merely adolescent members of the famous species, a new study suggests.

Animals

Blood vessels in their heads kept big dinos from overheating

Giant dinosaurs evolved several ways to cool their blood and avoid heatstroke.

Animals

Fossils show mammals’ rise to dominance after the dino-killing asteroid

What happened to mammals after an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs? Newfound fossils show how they grew in size, eventually dominating much of life on Earth.

Fossils

Scientists Say: Paleontology

This is the study of prehistoric life based on fossils of microbes, plants, and animals found in rock.

Animals

A flexible bone that aids mammals in chewing arose during the Jurassic

A flexible bony structure that helps with chewing may have helped give rise to the Age of Mammals, a new fossil suggests.

Animals

Ancient crocodiles may have preferred chomping plants, not meat

Fossil teeth of ancient crocodilians suggest that some ate plants and that such green diets evolved in crocs at least three times more than 60 million years ago.

Earth

Reliving the last day of the dinosaurs

The Chicxulub crater is helping reveal what happened on the day a 12-kilometer-wide asteroid slammed into the Gulf of Mexico, 66 million years ago.

Animals

This tiny dinosaur is officially T. rex’s cousin

A newly identified dinosaur species fills a gap in the tyrannosaur family tree.

Animals

Paleontologists find the first fossilized egg inside an ancient bird

For the first time, paleontologists have found an unlaid egg inside an ancient bird fossil. That egg may have caused its mother’s death.