Fossils & Ruins News

September 9, 2016

New Reptile Species from 212 Million Years Ago

360-Million-Year-Old Tetrapod Rewrites Sea ...

Strange Fossil: Snake Eats Lizard Eats Beetle

How Ancient and Modern Fish Survived Youth

Latest Headlines

updated 1:10am EDT

Historical Coexistence With Dingoes May Explain Bandicoot Avoidance of Domestic Dogs

Sep. 7, 2016 — Domestic dogs and cats were introduced to Tasmania two centuries ago, but bandicoots still fail to recognize these ... read more

13th Century Maya Codex, Long Shrouded in Controversy, Proves Genuine

Sep. 7, 2016 — The Grolier Codex, an ancient document that is among the rarest books in the world, has been regarded with skepticism since it was reportedly unearthed by looters from a cave ... read more

An Exceptional Palaeontological Site Going Back 100,000 Years Is Unearthed in Arrasate

Sep. 6, 2016 — An important site containing at least 40 species reflecting fauna during the Upper Pleistocenewas discovered in 2012 by ... read more

Scientists Unearth Centuries-Old Crocodile Stone

Sep. 1, 2016 — The discovery of a carved stone crocodile by archaeologists has provided a key to revising long-held ideas about the ruins of the ancient city of Lambityeco in what is now ... read more

Clues in Ancient Mud Hold Answers to Climate Change

Sep. 1, 2016 — New research suggests that Africa has gradually become wetter over the past 1.3 million years -- instead of drier as was ... read more

Can Melting of Frozen Methane Explain Rapid Climate Change 56 Million Years Ago?

Sep. 1, 2016 — The release of methane from the seafloor was much slower than previously thought during a rapid global warming event 56 ... read more

Paleontology: A Monster Put in Its Place

Sep. 1, 2016 — An analysis of the fossil known as the Minden Monster has enabled paleontologists to assign the largest predatory dinosaur ever found in Germany to a previously unknown genus, among a group that ... read more

Technology and Innovation Not Driven by Climate Change

Sep. 1, 2016 — Climate change was less important for technological innovation among Stone Age humans than ... read more

Life Thrived on Young Earth: Scientists Discover 3.7-Billion-Year-Old Fossils

Aug. 31, 2016 — A team of Australian researchers has uncovered the world's oldest fossils in a remote area of Greenland, capturing the ... read more

Fossil Pollen 'Sneeze' Caught by Research Team

Aug. 30, 2016 — Researchers have recorded the only known example of prehistoric pollen caught in explosive mid-discharge from a fossil flower. The team describes this "freeze-frame" ... read more

A Rare, Nearly Complete T. Rex Skull Just Arrived In Seattle

Science Unmasks the Woman Degas Painted Over

Mysterious Amulet Messages Discovered in Serbia

X-Ray Reveals Lost Edgar Degas Portrait

Destruction of Old St Paul's Cathedral Highlights Devastating Impact of Great Fire of London

Sep. 1, 2016 — "Thus lay in ashes that most venerable Church, one of the most antient pieces of early piety in the Christian world," wrote John Evelyn in September 1666. On the 350th anniversary of the ... read more

New Theory, Embryo Geometry, Proposes Explanation for How Vertebrates Evolved

Aug. 31, 2016 — A new theory aims to explain how the complex vertebrate body, with its skeleton, muscles, nervous and cardiovascular systems, arises from a single cell during development and how these systems ... read more

Smarter Brains Are Blood-Thirsty Brains

Aug. 30, 2016 — A new project has overturned the theory that the evolution of human intelligence was simply related to the size of the brain -- but rather linked more closely to the supply of blood to the ... read more

A Rare Small Specimen Discovered from the Age of Flying Giants

Aug. 30, 2016 — A rare small-bodied pterosaur, a flying reptile from the Late Cretaceous period approximately 77 million years ago, is the first of its kind to have been discovered on the west coast of North ... read more

Plant Roots Built Beachhead for Life on Land

Aug. 30, 2016 — Plants -- even relatively small ones -- played a crucial role in establishing a beachhead for life on land, according to recent work by an international team of researchers. The group found that ... read more

Emoticons in Ancient Egypt

Aug. 30, 2016 — The advent of script has never managed to eliminate the use of symbols. This is the finding of research carried out on Ancient Egyptian identity ... read more

New Species of Pterosaur Discovered in Patagonia

Aug. 30, 2016 — Scientists today announced the discovery of a new species of pterosaur from the Patagonia region of South America. The cranial remains were in an excellent state of preservation and belonged to a new ... read more

Ancient Dental Plaque Sheds New Light on the Diet of Mesolithic Foragers in the Balkans

Aug. 29, 2016 — Micro-fossils trapped in dental calculus reveal that Late Mesolithic foragers were consuming domesticated plant foods c. 6600 BC, almost 400 years earlier than previously ... read more

Fish Were More Prominent in Early Alaskans' Diets, Isotope Study Determines

Aug. 29, 2016 — Ice age inhabitants of Interior Alaska relied more heavily on salmon and freshwater fish in their diets than previously thought, according to a new study. A team of researchers made the discovery ... read more

Cracking the Coldest Case: How Lucy, the Most Famous Human Ancestor, Died

Aug. 29, 2016 — Lucy, the most famous fossil of a human ancestor, probably died after falling from a tree, according to a new study. Researchers have found that the injury Lucy sustained was consistent with a ... read more

A Mammoth Undertaking: Can De-Extinction Be Ecologically Responsible?

Aug. 25, 2016 — Can the woolly mammoth be brought back from the dead? Scientists say it's only a matter of time. A conservation ecologist and colleagues have examined ecologically responsible de-extinction, and ... read more

300 Teeth: Duck-Billed Dinosaurs Would Have Been Dentist’s Dream

Aug. 25, 2016 — Imagine how much dental care you'd need if you had 300 or more teeth packed together on each side of your ... read more

Looking to Saliva to Gain Insight on Evolution

Aug. 25, 2016 — There's no need to reinvent the genetic wheel. That's one lesson of a new study that looks to the saliva of humans, gorillas, orangutans, macaques and African green monkeys for insights ... read more

One of the Most Significant Etruscan Discoveries in Decades Names Female Goddess Uni

Aug. 24, 2016 — Archaeologists translating a very rare inscription on an ancient Etruscan temple stone have discovered the name Uni -- an important female goddess. The discovery indicates that Uni -- a divinity of ... read more

Endangered Cuban Solenodon Evolved After the Extinction of Dinosaurs

Aug. 24, 2016 — The Caribbean islands form a natural laboratory for the study of evolution due to their unique biological and geological features. There has been heated discussion since the early 20th century on how ... read more

Whales in the Desert?

Aug. 24, 2016 — In Cerro Colorado, located in the Ica Desert of Peru, sedimentary sequences dating back nine million years have been found to host the fossil skeletons of hundreds of marine vertebrates. In 2008, ... read more

The Demise of the Maya Civilization: Water Shortage Can Destroy Cultures

Aug. 23, 2016 — Water reservoirs provide relief during short periods of drought. They can, however, make a society even more vulnerable to major catastrophes, if the population keeps growing without changing their ... read more

New Tiny Species of Extinct Australian Marsupial Lion Named After Sir David Attenborough

Aug. 23, 2016 — The fossil remains of a new tiny species of marsupial lion which prowled the lush rainforests of northern Australia about 18 million years ago have been unearthed in the Riversleigh World Heritage ... read more

The Cave Bear: A Vegan Gone Extinct

Aug. 23, 2016 — Scientists have studied the feeding habits of the extinct Cave Bear. Based on the isotope composition in the collagen of the bears' bones, they were able to show that the large mammals subsisted ... read more

New Insights Into the Relationship Between Erosion and Tectonics in the Himalayas

Aug. 23, 2016 — Earth's climate interacts with so called surface processes -- such as landslides or river erosion -- and tectonics to shape the landscape that we see. In some regions, the sheer force of these ... read more

Thursday, September 1, 2016