A study led by the University of Oxford has brought us one step closer to solving a mystery that has puzzled naturalists since Charles Darwin: when did animals first appear in the history of Earth?
Tag: ANIMAL FOSSILS
Discovery of oldest known fossil gnat shows how insects adapted to a postapocalyptic world
A new fossil discovery dating from ‘just’ a few million years after the greatest mass extinction provides the earliest evidence of the insect group that includes mosquitoes and flies
2.9-million-year-old butchery site reopens case of who made first stone tools
Along the shores of Africa’s Lake Victoria in Kenya roughly 2.9 million years ago, early human ancestors used some of the oldest stone tools ever found to butcher hippos and pound plant material, according to new research led by scientists with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and Queens College, CUNY, as well as the National Museums of Kenya, Liverpool John Moores University and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.
Ancient chimaeras were suction feeders, not shell crushers, new research shows
A rare three-dimensional fossil of an ancient chimaera has revealed new clues about the diversity of these creatures in the Carboniferous period, some 300 million years ago.
World’s oldest meal helps unravel mystery of our earliest animal ancestors
The contents of the last meal consumed by the earliest animals known to inhabit Earth more than 550 million years ago has unearthed new clues about the physiology of our earliest animal ancestors, according to scientists from The Australian National University (ANU).
Welsh “weird wonder” fossils add piece to puzzle of arthropod evolution
The most famous fossils from the Cambrian explosion of animal life over half a billion years ago are very unlike their modern counterparts.
Diego bows to ancestral sabretoothed mammal
Morphological analysis of the discovered specimen’s tooth shapes helped to determine that the specimen was one of the earliest nimravids dating back 37 to 40 million years. Sabertoothed nimravids were early members of Carnivoramorpha, but dogs and cats did not evolve from them. Changes in ecosystems may have driven the evolution and rise of nimravids.
Rotting fish help solve mystery of how soft tissue fossils form
New research at the University of Leicester has transformed scientists’ understanding of how spectacular fossils with delicate soft tissues form.