paleontology

Indian paelontologists are facing a myriad of issues in terms of both excavation of fossils, and preservation of them. Despite being home to some remarkable paleontological resources, such as the site where the first ever dinosaur fossils in Asia were discovered, it is a field facing widespread neglect.

An international team of scientists has found evidence of an interaction between Ice Age humans and now-extinct giant ground sloths. White Sands footprints tell the story of a group of humans tracking and hunting a giant ground sloth. Image credit: Alex McClelland, Bournemouth University. The team found ...

Charig continued his career in paleontology, but never completed his work on this reptile. In recent years, new expeditions to Tanzania have found additional fossils, which have remained in Tanzania. Combined with the older discoveries, these are shedding light on exciting topics such as early dinosaur ...

Paleontologists believe that all non-avian dinosaurs were wiped out when a giant asteroid or comet collided with Earth some 65 million years ago, resulting in huge clouds of dust that blocked the Sun's rays from reaching Earth's surface. But the origins of dinosaurs have been less understood. In a new ...

The University Prairie Research Institute Center for paleontology will host a fundraiser Friday at the Lincolnshire Fields Country Club for the annual summer fossil dig in Montana. Jon Lee, one of the fundraiser's hosts, said the trip, which by 2017 had occurred every year for about a decade, was originally ...

A partial skeleton of a megaraptorid dinosaur unearthed over a decade ago in northwestern Patagonia, Argentina, has been recognized as belonging to a new species. Tratayenia rosalesi crosses a stream in what is now Patagonia, Argentina roughly 85 million years ago. Image credit: Andrew McAfee, ...

New research by a team of scientists from the University of Exeter and elsewhere offers an illuminating insight into iridescent colors found on the earliest known lepidopterans, which lived on our planet 200 million years ago (Mesozoic era). Ecological restoration of moths in the Cretaceous Burmese amber ...

According to a study released this week in the journal PLoS ONE, an isolated bone from the lower jaw of a prehistoric marine reptile found in Somerset, UK, belongs to one of the largest animals ever. Giant ichthyosaurs Shonisaurus. Image credit: Nobumichi Tamura. Fossil collector Paul de la Salle found ...

On Nov. 10, Dr. Michael Rischbieter and Mrs. Diane Rischbieter of PC's Biology department took Dr. Rischbieter's Paleontology class on a fossil-hunting expedition to Alabama. The group visited several geologic sites throughout the state, all of which were rich with fossils from millions and millions of years ...

His contributions to the science of paleontology include many specimens donated to the Courtenay Museum. This is an opportunity for the public to learn more about VIPS and the interesting fossils of our area. The lecture is at 7 p.m. in the Rotary Room of the Filberg Seniors Centre 411 Anderton Ave, ...

With few legal protections, sites often fall victim to looting and development. And although funds are scarce for all science in India, the plight of paleontology is particularly acute. Little money is available for excavations and for acquiring and curating specimens, and the country lacks a national institution in ...

An international team of paleontologists from the University of Edinburgh, Staffin Museum and Chinese Academy of Sciences has discovered a new dinosaur tracksite at Rubha nam Brathairean (Brothers' Point) on the Isle of Skye, Scotland. Photograph and line drawing of a sauropod footprint, one of the ...

According to a new study, Saniwa ensidens — an extinct monitor lizard that lived in what is now Wyoming 51-49 million years ago (Eocene epoch) — had four eyes, a first among known jawed vertebrates. The third and fourth eyes refer to pineal and parapineal organs, eye-like photosensory structures on ...

The ODNR called him a leading publisher of scientific work on Ohio's fossils, including more than 60 papers on paleontology, and cited his role in training many students in the state's geology. The discovery early in his BGSU career of the 10,000-year-old skeleton of a pig-like peccary that lived near ...

Paleontologists excavating in Montana's famous Hell Creek Formation have uncovered the score of a lifetime—one of the most preserved and complete juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons ever found. Although digging up remains of a T. rex in the area is not an uncommon feat, what makes this find ...

A team of paleontologists from Yale University, Smithsonian Institution and Johns Hopkins University has discovered a new species of reptile that lived 200 million years ago during the Triassic period, in what is now Connecticut in the United States. An artist's rendering of Colobops noviportensis. Image ...

But that's not a bad thing for paleontology. “As the source of fossil material from the late Ice Age, it's a wonderful snapshot of the vertebrate fauna of this area. Now, these bones are not extremely abundant and the fact is that we would not probably know about them were it not for the gravel mining,” Wilson ...

Archaeopteryx is an iconic fossil species with feathered wings from the Late Jurassic of Germany. The question of whether this dino-bird was an elaborately feathered ground dweller, a glider, or an active flyer has fascinated paleontologists for many years. European Synchrotron Radiation Facility ...

A provocative paleontology paper out today suggests researchers can be in too much of a rush to name new species from highly fragmentary fossils, citing traits in ichthyosaurs (above) that could be interpreted as natural variation within a species, rather than the defining characteristics of separate species.

The animal's wings resemble those of pheasants, but it couldn't flap quite like today's birds. Picture of fossil. View Images. The Munich specimen of the feathered dinosaur Archaeopteryx. Photograph by Pascal Goetgheluck, ESRF. By Michael Greshko. PUBLISHED March 13, 2018. The feathered dinosaur Archaeopteryx is ...

WATERLOO — Ask Matt Lamanna when his interest in paleontology was born, and he provides the answer quickly. ... from the end of the age of dinosaurs are hard to find in Africa,” explained Lamanna, the assistant curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh.

A 27-foot-tall dinosaur that lived about 100 million years ago could soon have something in common with the cactus wren, the palo verde and even the Colt single action revolver: becoming part of “official” Arizona. Members of the House Government Committee on Thursday gave their unanimous ...

An international research team led by Swedish Museum of Natural History scientists has found that stromatolites (solid, laminar structures of biological origin) from the 1.6-billion-year-old Chitrakoot Formation in India contain abundant fossilized oxygen bubbles. Fossilized bubbles and cyanobacterial fabric ...

After reading Othenio Abel's Principles of Vertebrate Paleontology, she had her calling: the study of ancient animals through their bones. She would go on to become one of the most significant paleontologists of the 20th century, and the first woman to be elected president of the Society of Vertebrate ...

University of Pennsylvania paleontologist Steven Jasinski has announced the discovery of a previously unknown species of fossil turtle in the Gray Fossil Site, an area rich with fossils in eastern Tennessee, the United States. Trachemys haugrudi represents a new species of fossil turtle that lived in what is ...

A groundbreaking new technique for studying lake sediments can tell scientists more about the frequency and intensity of past and future insect epidemics, their impact on the forest environment and how they are linked to climate change. A well-preserved scale extracted from a lake sediment core.

For the past few years, Chase Brownstein, a research associate of paleontology at the Stamford Museum & Nature Center in Stamford, Connecticut, has been investigating this issue. The paleontologist tallied up reports of dinosaurs from across the eastern part of the continent as presented in publications ...

Columbian mammoths (Mammuthus columbi) may have moved like modern elephants with infants in matriarchal groups. That's according to a team of U.S. paleontologists who analyzed numerous footprints of adult, juvenile and infant mammoths recently found at the Pleistocene locality of Fossil Lake in ...

My dad was part of a group of innovators in paleontology who identified as “paleobiologists”—meaning that they approached their science not as a branch of geology, but rather as the study of the biology and evolution of past life. Since Charles Darwin's time, paleontology—especially the study of the ...

Paleontologists have discovered a new species of fossil fish from 90 million-year-old (Cretaceous period) deposits in Colombia. A paper reporting this discovery is published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. Candelarhynchus padillai. Image credit: Oksana Vernygora. Dubbed Candelarhynchus ...

Named "Mansourasaurus Shahinae" after the team's university and for one of the paleontology department's founders, the find is the only dinosaur from that period to have been discovered in Africa, and it may even be an undiscovered genus. In the article the authors say the team's findings "counter ...

The 200 million-year-old specimen is only the second known example of Wahlisaurus massarae, a species of ichthyosaur announced recently by a University of Manchester paleontologist. Reconstruction of Wahlisaurus massarae. Image credit: James McKay. Ichthyosaurs were predatory sea-going ...

“Mansourasaurus shahinae is a key new dinosaur species, and a critical discovery for Egyptian and African paleontology,” said co-author Dr. Eric Gorscak, from the Field Museum. “This dinosaur helps us address longstanding questions about Africa's fossil record and paleobiology — what animals were ...

LOCKESBURG, Ark. (AP) - A scientific journal has given its imprimatur to Arkansas' state dinosaur, noting that its kind flourished in Asia but are not well-represented in North America. Details about the Arkansaurus fridayi were published Monday in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Joe Friday ...

A new study shows how a group of ancient reptiles called captorhinids could detach their tails to avoid predation. This is an illustration of Captorhinus, a captorhinid reptile that lived during the Permian period, showing breakable tail vertebrae. Image credit: Robert Reisz. Captorhinids, also known as ...

Among more than 2,000 ancient fossils found in an African excavation, paleontologists have discovered new species of some of the earliest dinosaurs. Paleontologists didn't know much about the early Triassic below the equator before conducting this research. Through a decade of research, nine different ...

Paleontology, like much else in the cultural landscape, has a strong western influence and bias. Students are more likely than not to be given textbooks and external readings from Europe and North America no matter where they are in the world. I often think about my own experiences as a paleontology ...