Tag Archives: Fossils

In 1861, scientists discovered Archaeopteryx, a dinosaur with feathers, in 150-million-year-old limestones in Solnhofen, Germany. They didn’t know it at the time, but that fossilized skeleton — and the several that followed — provided a key piece of evidence for the theory of evolution, as well as for the fact that birds were actually dinosaurs. Archaeopteryx specimens have, “maybe more …

More than 500 million years before Matt Groening and “The Simpsons” introduced us to Blinky, a mutated fish with an extra eye swimming through Springfield’s Old Fishin’ Hole, a three-eyed predator chased prey through seas of the Cambrian Period. Once it caught its quarry, a pair of spine-covered grasping claws and a circular mouth covered in teeth would finish the …

For more than a decade, scientists have chased the idea of reviving extinct species, a process sometimes called de-extinction. Now, a company called Colossal Biosciences appears to have done it, or something close, with the dire wolf, a giant, extinct species made famous by the television series “Game of Thrones.” In 2021, a separate team of scientists managed to retrieve …

Ralph Holloway, an anthropologist who pioneered the idea that changes in brain structure, and not just size, were critical in the evolution of humans, died on March 12 at his home in Manhattan. He was 90. His death was announced by Columbia University’s anthropology department, where he taught for nearly 50 years. Mr. Holloway’s contrarian idea was that it wasn’t …

Ten years ago, this was just a big hole in the ground behind a Lowe’s home improvement store in southern New Jersey, an unlikely place to find what might be one of the world’s most important fossil sites. But 66 million years ago, tantalizingly close in time to when the dinosaurs went extinct, a multitude of sea creatures died here …

Amber is coveted the world over as both jewelry and a vessel for prehistoric remnants, with rarer specimens preserving ancient water, air bubbles, plants, insects or even birds. Typically, amber forms over millions of years as tree resin fossilizes, but paleontologists have sped that up, creating amber-like fossils from pine resin in 24 hours. The technique could help reveal the …

Humans, unlike most other species, have a knack for making tools. Six million years ago, our apelike ancestors probably smashed nuts with rocks or caught termites with sticks. Around 3.3 million years ago, hominins began using flakes of stone, perhaps to cut flesh from carcasses or chop plants. And by 1.5 million years ago, they were using more sophisticated tools …

For generations, scientists looked to the East African savanna as the birthplace of our species. But recently some researchers have put forward a different history: Homo sapiens evolved across the entire continent over the past several hundred thousand years. If this Africa-wide theory were true, then early humans must have figured out how to live in many environments beyond grasslands. …

Above the shores of prehistoric seas and lakes, pterosaurs roamed the skies. They were feathered creatures that ranged in size from pigeons to planes, and the first vertebrates known to have been able to fly. And for millions of years, they had long tails ending in a prominent flap of skin called a vane. Paleontologists have long wondered about this …

With serpentine necks, flippers and a mouth full of needle-sharp teeth, plesiosaurs have captured imaginations since paleontologists uncovered the first specimen more than two centuries ago. Their skeletal anatomy is well documented, but their external appearance has largely remained a mystery. Now researchers have conducted the first detailed analysis of plesiosaur soft tissue, offering a more complete look at what …