Browsing Tag
paleontology
146 posts
The Elephant Trunk’s Tale
Around 20 million years ago, proboscideans, the ancestors of modern elephants, began expanding from Africa and Arabia into…
Friday essay: Giant shark megalodon was the most powerful superpredator ever. Why did it go extinct?
Julius Csotonyi/Hachette John Long, Flinders University Imagine the seas off Peru, 6 million years ago. A group of…
Fossilized Seeds Reveal Ancient Bird’s Fruit Diet, Not Fish
At a Glance Paleontologists studying ancient creatures often rely on fossilized bones to learn about their lives, but…
From Dinosaurs to Quantum Reality: A Reading Guide for Science Enthusiasts
Science is full of mysteries that challenge our understanding of the world, its origins, and even the fabric…
Newly Discovered Fossil Reveals Ancient Walrus Relative From Pleistocene Era
At a Glance Paleontologists have uncovered a new species of extinct marine mammal, named Ontocetus posti, from Lower…
How Big Was Megalodon?
Megalodon, a massive ancient shark, had a cartilaginous skeleton, making its exact size difficult to determine. Most size…
How the Megalodon Went Extinct (Yes, It’s Truly Extinct)
Megalodons reached lengths of up to 20 meters, three times longer than great white sharks, with teeth suggesting…
Did inbreeding cause the woolly mammoth’s extinction? Our research suggests it was more sudden than that
ishibashi seiichi/Shutterstock Marianne Dehasque, Uppsala University and Love Dalén, Stockholm University In science, we usually share our successes…
A ‘trilobite Pompeii’: perfectly preserved fossils of ancient sea critters found buried in volcanic ash
A. El Albani (University of Poitiers) John Paterson, University of New England If you’ve ever visited the fossil…