In the mid-1970s a team of palaeontologists led by Mary Leakey found numerous footprints in a layer of solidified volcanic ash at Laetoli, Tanzania. Those found in a location called Site G have been studied in detail. They are so like human footprints that some scientists have commented they could have been made by people […]
An international group of scientists researching a fossil site at Villaggio del Pescatore in north-eastern Italy have found the remains of the “biggest and most complete dinosaur ever found in the country”. This specimen, nicknamed Bruno, along with a smaller specimen named Antonio have been identified as belonging to the species Tethyshadros insularis – a […]
Modern crab in dinosaur age amber found entombed in amber from Burma. A group of scientists led by Javier Luque of Harvard University and Lida Xing, China University of Geosciences, Beijing, have studied the fossil crab and found it was complete, and so exquisitely preserved they were able to study it in detail using micro […]
Trilobite “hyper-eyes” found according to ScienceDaily 30 September 2021, Science Alert 3 October 2021 and Scientific Reports 30 September 2021 doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-98740-z. Trilobite eyes have long been known for precision optics, and now one kind of trilobite has been found to have more complex eyes than previously thought. Trilobites of the suborder Phacopina have two […]
Fossil fancy tail feathers found, according to reports in ScienceDaily and Field Museum of Natural History Chicago 16 September 2021 and Current Biology 16 September 2021 doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.08.044. Chinese and American scientists have studied the fossil of an extinct bird found in the Jehol Biota in northeastern China. The fossil has been named Yuanchuavis kompsosoura […]
Dino skin found, but no feathers, according to University of New England News 10 September 2021, also reported in Science Alert and SciTech Daily 13 September 2021, and Cretaceous Research, published online 13 August 2021 doi:10.1016/j.cretres.2021.104994. Palaeontologists Phil Bell of University of New England (UNE) Australia, and Christophe Hendrickx of Unidad Ejecutora Lillo in San […]
“Dino fight clubs” reported in Live Science and Science (AAAS) News 10 September 2021 and Paleobiology 6 September 2021, doi: 10.1017/pab.2021.29. Scientists at Royal Tyrell Museum and University of Alberta, Canada, have studied 528 skull bones of theropod dinosaurs and found 122 had bite scars from other dinosaurs. Overall, about 60% of the adult tyrannosaurids […]
Stone tools show lush green Arabia, according to Science (AAAS) News 1 September 2021 and Science Alert 2 September 2021 and Nature 1 September 2021, 10.1038/s41586-021-03863-y. An international team of researchers have studied two sites in the Nefud Desert in northern Saudi Arabia and found thousands of stone tools, along with many animal fossils. The […]
Did you fry in July? It “was Earth’s hottest month on record” according to a report from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) 13 August 2021. Similar alarmist headlines were also published on ScienceDaily 13 August 2021, BBC News and ABC News 14 August 2021, and Science Alert 16 August 2021 (and numerous other news […]
Horseshoe crab brains haven’t changed, according to a report in Science Alert 28 July 2021, Natural History Museum (NHM) Science News 5 August 2021, and Geology, doi: 10.1130/G49193.1, published online 26 July 2021. An international group of scientists from Australia, UK and USA have studied an “exceptionally preserved” fossil horseshoe crab named Euproops danae, found […]