Ancient DNA News

September 9, 2016

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

How Ancient and Modern Fish Survived Youth

World's Oldest Fossils: 3.7 Billion Years Old

Fossil Pollen 'Sneeze' Caught by Researchers

Latest Headlines

updated 1:01am EDT

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

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 ... 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

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

Paleontologists Discover Major T. Rex Fossil

Aug. 18, 2016 — Paleontologists have discovered a Tyrannosaurus rex, including a very complete skull. The find, which paleontologists estimate to be about 20 percent of the animal, includes ... read more

Scientists Take Big Step Toward Recreating Primordial 'RNA World' of 4 Billion Years Ago

Aug. 15, 2016 — Scientists have succeeded in creating a ribozyme that can basically serve both to amplify genetic information and generate ... read more

Twenty-Five Little Bones Tell a Puzzling Story About Early Primate Evolution

Aug. 15, 2016 — A cache of exquisitely preserved bones, found in a coal mine in the state of Gujarat, India, appear to be the most primitive ... read more

Textbook Story of How Humans Populated America Is 'Biologically Unviable,' Study Finds

Aug. 10, 2016 — Using ancient DNA, researchers have created a unique picture of how a prehistoric migration route evolved over thousands of ... read more

New Piltdown Hoax Analysis Points to Work of 'Lone Forger'

Aug. 10, 2016 — Latest analysis of the famous Piltdown Man forgeries points the finger of suspicion even more firmly at their discoverer, Charles ... read more

Tracing the Evolution of Bird Reproduction

Aug. 10, 2016 — What really came first -- the chicken or the egg? Birds' reproductive biology is dramatically different from that of any other living vertebrates, and scientists have long ... read more

Shackled Remains at Ancient Greek Site Tell Tale of Intrigue

Huge Dinosaur Track Found in Bolivia

Scientists Find New Stubby-Armed Dinosaur in Argentina

It's Surprisingly Easy To Brew The Building Blocks Of Life In A Puddle

Deer Evolution: Ancient DNA Reveals Novel Relationships

Aug. 9, 2016 — Researchers have sequenced mitochondrial DNA from museum specimens of rare species of deer. Analysis of partial nucleotide sequences has enabled the team to refine our picture of the evolutionary ... read more

Whales' Ultrasonic Hearing Has Surprisingly Ancient History, Fossilized Ear Shows

Aug. 4, 2016 — All living toothed whales rely upon echoes of their own calls to navigate and hunt underwater, a skill that works best in conjunction with high-frequency hearing. Now, researchers who studied one of ... read more

New Light Shed on How Vertebrates See: Details in Eyes of 300-Million-Year-Old Lamprey and Hagfish Fossils

Aug. 2, 2016 — New research has overturned a long-standing theory on how vertebrates evolved their eyes by identifying remarkable details of the retina in the eyes of 300 million year-old lamprey and hagfish ... read more

New Fossil Evidence Supports Theory That First Mass Extinction Engineered by Early Animals

July 29, 2016 — Newly discovered fossil evidence from Namibia strengthens the proposition that the world's first mass extinction was caused by 'ecosystem engineers' -- newly evolved biological ... read more

New Zealand Wren DNA Analysis Reshapes Geological Theory

July 27, 2016 — A DNA analysis of living and extinct species of mysterious New Zealand wrens may change theories around the country's geological and evolutionary ... read more

DNA Analyses Reveal Genetic Identities of World's First Farmers

July 25, 2016 — Conducting the first large-scale, genome-wide analyses of ancient human remains from the Near East, an international team of scientists has illuminated the genetic identities and population dynamics ... read more

New Dinosaur Species May Give Clues to Evolutionary Origin of Megaraptorid Clade

July 20, 2016 — A new species of megaraptorid dinosaur discovered in Patagonia may help discern the evolutionary origins of the megaraptorid ... read more

New Theropod Dinosaur Suggests That Small T. Rex-Like Arms Evolved Multiple Times

July 14, 2016 — The discovery of a theropod dinosaur with Tyrannosaurus rex-like arms suggests that these unusual forelimbs may have evolved multiple ... read more

The Success of the Plant-Eating Dinosaurs

July 14, 2016 — Plant-eating dinosaurs had several bursts of evolution, and these were all kicked off by innovations in their teeth and jaws, new research has ... read more

Terrified Insect Escapes a Permanent Tomb -- 50 Million Years Ago

July 14, 2016 — Thousands of insects, plants and other life forms have been found trapped in ancient amber deposits, but a new discovery shows a rarity of a different type -- the one that got away. This insect ... read more

Evolution May Have Moved at a Furious Pace on a Much Warmer Earth

July 6, 2016 — The rate of a certain chemical change in DNA -- a key driver of spontaneous mutation and thus of evolution's pace -- increases rapidly with temperature, researchers have discovered. The ... read more

Cannibalism Among Late Neanderthals in Northern Europe

July 6, 2016 — Grisly evidence has been uncovered by researchers that Neanderthals butchered their own kind some 40,000 years ago, opening up many possibilities regarding the way late Neanderthals dealt with their ... read more

Ostrich Relative Lived in North America About 50 Million Years Ago

July 5, 2016 — The new species is named Calciavis grandei -- with "calci" meaning "hard/stone," and "avis" from the Latin for bird, and "grandei" in honor of famed ... read more

Mammals Diversified Only After Dinosaur Extinction Left Space

July 5, 2016 — Humans' early mammal relatives likely diversified 66 million years ago, after the extinction of dinosaurs opened up space for animals such as big cats, horses, elephants and eventually apes to ... read more

Our Ancestors Evolved Faster After Dinosaur Extinction

June 28, 2016 — Our ancestors evolved three times faster in the 10 million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs than in the previous 80 million years, according to researchers. The team found the speed of ... read more

Insects Were Already Using Camouflage 100 Million Years Ago

June 24, 2016 — Those who go to a masked ball consciously slip into a different role, in order to avoid being recognized. Insects were already doing something very similar in the Cretaceous: They cloaked themselves ... read more

Exploring the Prehistory of Palawan Island Through Human Remains

June 24, 2016 — Researchers are excavating human remains from caves in Palawan Island in the Philippines to learn more about the diversity of burial and other cultural practices over the past 10,000 ... read more

Researchers Find Highland East Asian Origin for Prehistoric Himalayan Populations

June 20, 2016 — Researchers have conducted the first ancient DNA investigation of the Himalayan arc, generating genomic data for eight individuals ranging in time from the earliest known human settlements to the ... read more

Ancient DNA Shows Perfect Storm Felled Ice Age Giants

June 17, 2016 — Giant Ice Age species including elephant-sized sloths and powerful sabre-toothed cats that once roamed the windswept plains of Patagonia, southern South America, were finally felled by a perfect ... read more

Historic Fossils Find New Life Telling the Story of Ancient Proteins

June 15, 2016 — A few snippets of protein extracted from the fossil of an extinct species of giant beaver are opening a new door in paleoproteomics, the study of ancient ... read more

Tuesday, August 9, 2016