We all know that fossils, by their very nature, are dead. Of course, nothing can survive the conditions of pressure, depth and time required to petrify wood, see saplings mature into massive trees,...
Has the search for the modern relatives of Flores Island’s Homo floresiensis turned into a hoax-hunt? Everything that scientists thought about human evolution changed in 1856 after the first fossil...
Believe it or not, but 100 million years ago the area of the present-day scorching hot Sahara Desert was a lush swamp home not just to dinosaurs, but also to several kinds of prehistoric crocodilians...
The skeleton of a ginormous 82-foot (25-meter) long late-Jurassic dinosaur skeleton was found in central Portugal, which was accidentally unearthed in a man’s backyard in the city of Pombal back in...
A 30,000-year-old baby mammoth has been discovered perfectly preserved in permafrost in the far reaches of Canada’s northwest Yukon province. Covered in skin and patches of hair, the Yukon baby...
The idea that scientists might be able to recover dinosaur DNA from fossilized remains seems absurd. But now, the concept has moved beyond the realms of the absurd to the absolutely possible, thanks...
The National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), Mexico, a part of the Ministry of Culture, along with the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), launched a project in 2013, to “...
Researchers have sequenced the oldest known DNA in the world. Using material from the Early and Middle Pleistocene sub-epochs, the ancient DNA analysis shatters the record for the world’s oldest...
American history is peppered with famous duels. On July 11, 1804, Alexander Hamilton, the former secretary of the treasury and leading federalist, squared up with Aaron Burr, Thomas Jefferson´s vice...
Once much of Eurasia was dominated by Neanderthals, our archaic human ancestors. And the extinction of Neanderthals is one of the great mysteries in science. An evolutionary biologist and...
When people first arrived in what is now Queensland, they would have found the land inhabited by massive animals including goannas six meters long and kangaroos twice as tall as a human. We have...
The fossilized remains of 22 Ice Age, elephant sized sloths have been found preserved in 20,000-year-old asphalt in Ecuador. The discovery of this giant sloth death pit is revealing a virtual Bible...
By Lars Schmitz & Jingmai Kathleen O'Connor / The Conversation In 2016, our colleague Xing Lida held up a small piece of polished, deeply yellow amber. As sunlight shone through the ancient resin...
Scientists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks have identified a new species of thalattosaur, a marine reptile that lived more than 200 million years ago. The new species, Gunakadeit joseeae , is...
In 1924, a 3-year-old child’s skull found in South Africa forever changed how people think about human origins. The Taung Child, our first encounter with an ancient group of proto-humans or hominins...
Nick Longrich / The Conversation 300,000 years ago, nine human species walked the Earth. Now there’s just one. The Neanderthals, Homo neanderthalensis , were stocky hunters adapted to Europe’s cold...