paleontology

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New Twist on Why Dinosaurs Got So Big So Fast

Those with funky-looking skulls grew most quickly

(Newser) - For years, paleontologists have theorized that many of the world's largest dinosaurs sported head ornaments (think horns, knobs, and crests) as a means of intimidation and defense, and that these giants evolved to be so big because size helped them be more effective killers. But now new research published...

100-Year First: 'Extremely Rare' Dodo Skeleton Sold

It fetched $431K at auction in the UK

(Newser) - All that's left of the dodo bird is a smattering of bones—a nearly complete set of which has just sold for $431,000 at auction. This "extremely rare" version is one of the most complete with about 95% of bones present, reports the BBC . Only a portion...

Meet the Guy With World's Largest Collection of Hard Poop

George Frandsen nabs Guinness World Record with fossilized feces

(Newser) - One of George Frandsen's prize possessions weighs over 4 pounds, hails from the Miocene Epoch, and is named "Precious." This paleontological treasure also happens to be a huge piece of fossilized coprolite—aka prehistoric poop—and nearly 1,300 similar samples like Precious have catapulted Frandsen to...

Bus-Sized Dino Comes With a Surprise

It suggests migration from South America, not Asia

(Newser) - An Australian sheep farmer has discovered a beast far bigger than he's ever handled—along with new clues as to how dinosaurs ended up Down Under. Paleontologists, together with dinosaur enthusiast/sheep farmer David Elliot, say they've uncovered a new monster of a dinosaur belonging to the titanosaur subgroup...

For T. Rex, Size Originally Didn't Matter

Horse-sized ancestor reveals evolutionary path, and intellect came before size

(Newser) - Though one of the most well-known dinosaurs, Tyrannosaurus rex is actually somewhat of a mystery, having suddenly emerged as a fearsome beast some 80 million years ago. As a 20-million-year gap in the fossil record preceded T. rex, paleontologists have known little about its evolutionary path—until now. The discovery...

Meet &#39;Earth&#39;s First Animal&#39;
 Meet 'Earth's First Animal' 
NEW STUDY
Feb 28, 2016 9:07 AM CST

Meet 'Earth's First Animal'

Sea sponges have been around for 640M years, says MIT study

(Newser) - Way before humans, sharks, or dinosaurs, the sea sponge was very likely the first animal on Earth. That's according to a PNAS study out of MIT concluding that a molecule in 640 million-year-old rocks came from the simple creature. Assuming the researchers are right, that means the multi-celled organisms...

Stadium Crew Scores a Mammoth in End-Zone Dig

Oregon workers find bones belonging to Ice Age critter

(Newser) - Construction crews have scored big—and we mean big—in the end zone of Oregon State University's Reser Stadium. But this was no touchdown. While working on the Valley Football Center expansion, crews uncovered the remains of a mammoth that roamed the region at least 10,000 years ago...

Workers on New Homes Make an Ancient Discovery

Lots of old animal fossils

(Newser) - Workers grading a Carlsbad, California, site in preparation for hundreds of new homes earlier this summer were shocked to find the neighborhood's previous residents still there. The San Diego Union-Tribune reports work was stopped as paleontologists removed fossils—some as old as 200,000 years—belonging to ancient mammoths...

First Big Predator Was 'Angry' Water Bug

You wouldn't want to swim with 'Pentecopterus decorahensis'

(Newser) - Earth's first big predatory monster was a weird water bug as big as Tom Cruise, newly found fossils show. Almost half a billion years ago, way before the dinosaurs roamed, Earth's dominant large predator was a sea scorpion that grew to 5 feet 7 inches, with a dozen...

Scientists Can Finally Tell Animal's Head From Its Butt

What experts thought was Hallucigenia's head turned out to be fluid from its anus

(Newser) - A strange sea creature's embarrassment is over. More than a century after the now-extinct Hallucigenia was first found, scientists say they've discovered which end is its face and which is its butt. In Hallucigenia's defense, all fossils of the tiny creature—which was thinner than a hair...

Scientists Find First Evidence of Dinosaurs in Wash. State

80M-year-old femur belonged to a theropod

(Newser) - It appears that around 80 million years ago, a theropod dinosaur roughly the size of a transit bus died near the sea and was jostled by waves, and at some point part of its femur became wedged into a rocky outcrop alongside clam fossils in Washington state's San Juan...

Researcher Says He's First to Tell Male, Female Dinos Apart

It all comes down to a stegosaurus's plates

(Newser) - If the sight of broad, wide plates along the back of a stegosaurus fails to drive you wild with desire, that's probably because you're not a female stegosaurus. In what the University of Bristol calls the "first convincing evidence for sexual differences in a species of dinosaur,...

The Brontosaurus Really Did Exist, Study Says

Scientists say it's deserving of its own genus after all

(Newser) - It's big news, quite literally. New research indicates that the Brontosaurus really did exist, some 112 years after scientists declared the opposite was true. The backstory: Paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh and his team discovered the fossils of two long-necked dinosaurs in the Western US in the 1870s and had...

Giant Upright 'Butcher' Croc Ruled NC

Beast that lived 231M years ago was 'a bit of a Frankenstein'

(Newser) - A giant crocodile that walked on its hind legs roamed the warm, wet region of what's now North Carolina 231 million years ago, ripping through the armored shells of its prey like cake. Thankfully, the 9-foot-long Carnufex carolinensis, or "Carolina Butcher," went extinct by the end of...

'Dragon' Dino Had Neck Like a Crane

Qijianglong might have inspired tales of dragons in ancient China

(Newser) - Scientists are seriously excited about a new long-necked dinosaur species found near China's Qijiang City. For one thing, fossils of the beast, which lived 160 million years ago in the Late Jurassic period, show a skull still attached to its neck—a rare find among dinosaurs like this as...

N. America's Oldest Horned Dino Was Size of Bunny

Triceratops relative from early Cretaceous period also picky eater: scientists

(Newser) - When paleontologists on a National Geographic Society expedition dug up a 100-million-year-plus sample sticking out of the dirt in Montana in 1997, they initially thought it was a rock—until they saw it had teeth. Now, 17 years later, they've finally gotten around to naming and describing the creature,...

'Punxsutawney Phil on Steroids' Is Unearthed

'Vintana sertichi' dwarfed other mammals of its day

(Newser) - Back in the dinosaurs' day, mammals were the size of mice. But towering above them was one beefy rodent that one scientist calls "Punxsutawney Phil on steroids"—with super senses to boot. The 20-pound Vintana sertichi was accidentally found in a giant slab of sandstone in Madagascar, reports...

Thigh Bone Reveals Timing of Human-Neanderthal Sex

We were probably getting it on between 50K and 60K years ago

(Newser) - It's no surprise that modern humans and Neanderthals used to get it on —most people of Eurasian descent are, genetically, 1.6% to 2.1% Neanderthal. The question has long been when they did, with a wide estimate putting it between 37,000 and 86,000 years ago...

Newly Found Dinosaur Survived 'Horrific' Extinction

Tachiraptor fossils discovered in Venezuela

(Newser) - A newly discovered dinosaur in Venezuela may help us understand how species survived a mass-extinction event about 200 million years ago, phys.org reports. Based on two leg-bone fossils, paleontologists say Tachiraptor admirabilis was fairly small (5 or 6 feet, tip to tail), ran on two feet, and ate meat....

Giant Shark-Eating Dinosaur Found

Spinosaurus was able to swim, say researchers

(Newser) - Move over, T. rex: Fossils unearthed in the Sahara Desert have revealed that Spinosaurus was not only a bigger carnivore, it dined on giant sharks. The creature from 95 million years ago, now believed to be the first swimming dinosaur ever found, was first discovered around a century ago, but...

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