Rare fossil at Montana museum records Tyrannosaurus attack A fossil on display at Montana State University's Museum of the Rockies reveals how dinosaurs in the Tyrannosaurus genus may have subdued prey, and the specimen is the focus of a new collaborative res...

phys.org/news/2026-02...

Today in 1831: The Voyage of The Beagle Begins From Today In Science History : In 1831, Charles Darwin set sail from Plymouth harbour on his voyage of scientific discovery aboard the H...

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Premiered This Day (1933): Son of Kong. Rushed into production for a Christmas release after the success Kong (1933), the sequel could not help but fall short. But, it still features amazing animation by Willis O’Brien and is the perfect movie for those too young to see the admittedly scary, Kong.

Discovered This Day (1938): First Living Coelacanth. Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, curator of the museum in East London, South Africa, examined a daily fish haul made at 70-m depth. In the trash heap she spotted a blue, 5-ft fish with iridescent silver markings – the first extant coelacanth!

Born This Day: Hermann Muller (21 Dec, 1890 – 4 Apr, 1967) was the first to increase the mutation rate using heat, later using 50 kilovolt X-rays to induce an even greater incidence of mutations. Muller was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1946.

Born This Day: Sewall Wright (21 Dec, 1889–3 Mar, 1988) was one of the founders of modern theoretical population genetics. He applied statistical techniques to evolutionary theory and is best known for his concept of genetic drift, called the Sewell Wright effect.

Jurassic Dinosaur Fossils Shed Light on Evolution of Flight | Sci.News Anchiornis huxleyi is a species of non-avian theropod dinosaur from the Late Jurassic Tiaojishan Formation in northeastern China

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Born This Day: Richard Leakey (19 Dec 1944–2 Jan 2022). Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist and politician. Director of the National Museum of Kenya, founded the NGO WildlifeDirect, chairman of the Kenya Wildlife Service. Co-founded the Turkana Basin Institute with Stony Brook University, where he was an anthropology prof.

Born This Day: Richard Leakey (19 Dec 1944–2 Jan 2022). Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist and politician. Director of the National Museum of Kenya, founded the NGO WildlifeDirect, chairman of the Kenya Wildlife Service. Co-founded the Turkana Basin Institute with Stony Brook Univ.

Key proteins reveal how evolution of locomotion shapes bone remodeling processes An international collaboration study reveals how evolution and locomotion patterns, such as bipedalism, shaped bone structures through proteins present in the bone matrix. The findings of the study, l...

phys.org/news/2025-12...

Paleontologists Discover First-Known Instance of Ancient Bees Nesting inside Vertebrate Fossils | Sci.News Bees are well known for their species and remarkable behavioral diversity, ranging from solitary species that nest in burrows to social species that construct highly compartmentalized nests.

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Back to the beach: Why did evolution return some animals to the water? In most narratives, the story of evolution is the story of organisms emerging from the ocean and eventually populating the land. But for some species, that evolution also involved a return trip. Dozen...

phys.org/news/2025-11...

Decapitated fossil fish with guts still intact reveal ancient predatory habits In a study appearing in Fossil Record, researchers Martin Ebert and Martina Kölbl-Ebert analyzed the remains of a unique fossil type: the decapitated head of Aspidorhynchus, with its gastrointestinal ...

phys.org/news/2025-11...

Rich dinosaur site discovered in Transylvania The Hațeg Basin in Transylvania is world-famous for its dinosaur remains, which have been unearthed from dozens of sites over the past century. Despite the high number of fossil localities, dinosaur f...

phys.org/news/2025-11...

Early Long-Necked Marine Reptile Unearthed in China | Sci.News The exceptionally long neck of Lijiangosaurus yongshengensis contained 42 cervical vertebrae, according to a research team led by paleontologists from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Pale...

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Earth's earliest life 3.3 billion years ago revealed by faint biosignatures A new study uncovered fresh chemical evidence of life in rocks more than 3.3 billion years old, along with molecular traces showing that oxygen-producing photosynthesis emerged nearly a billion years ...

phys.org/news/2025-11...

New Filter-Feeding Pterosaur Species Discovered in Brazil | Sci.News Named Bakiribu waridza, the newly-identified species is the first filter-feeding pterosaur from the tropics.

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Giant North American 'hell pigs' could crunch bones like lions 30 million years ago, tooth analysis reveals Archaeotherium, or North American "hell pigs," had different feeding strategies depending on their size, according to preliminary research presented at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology 2025 annu...

www.livescience.com/animals/exti...

Premiered This Day (1975): The Land That Time Forgot. Directed by Kevin O’Connor, and starring Doug McClure.

Oldest known docodontan fossil found in Greenland narrows the evolutionary gap In a recent study by Dr. Sofia Patrocínio and her colleagues, published in Papers in Palaeontology, a new specimen of Docodonta is described.

phys.org/news/2025-08...

Mystery Archaic Hominins Lived in Sulawesi 1.04 Million Years Ago | Sci.News The dispersal of archaic hominins beyond mainland Southeast Asia (Sunda) represents the earliest evidence for humans crossing ocean barriers to reach isolated landmasses.

www.sci.news/archaeology/...

Gigantic Megalosauroid and Allosauroid Dinosaurs Had Weak Bites, Study Suggests | Sci.News While tyrannosaurid dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex  had skulls that were optimized for high bite forces, other gigantic carnivorous dinosaurs such as megalosauroids and allosauroids had much weaker ...

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Ancient trilobite limbs reveal unique walking and burrowing abilities in prehistoric seas The Burgess Shale in British Columbia is renowned for its exceptional preservation of soft tissues in fossils, including limbs and guts. While trilobites are abundant in the fossil record thanks to th...

phys.org/news/2025-08...

An ancient predator's bone-crunching diet shift offers clues on surviving climate change About 56 million years ago, when Earth experienced a dramatic rise in global temperatures, one meat-eating mammal responded in a surprising way: It started eating more bones.

phys.org/news/2025-08...

Paleontologists Unveil New Species of Plesiosaur | Sci.News Paleontologists have identified an unusual new genus and species of early-diverging plesiosauroid plesiosaur from a nearly complete skeleton found in the Lower Jurassic Posidonia Shale of Holzmaden, G...

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Born This Day: Jean-Baptiste de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck (Aug 1, 1744 – Dec 18, 1829). In 1809 Lamarck published his theory of evolution (in Philosophie zoologique). Lamarck's theory found little favour among his contemporaries and he died blind and in poverty

Australopithecus Males Were Much Larger than Females, Paleoanthropologist Says | Sci.News Two extinct hominins, Australopithecus afarensis and Australopithecus africanus, were significantly more dimorphic than chimpanzees and modern humans; Australopithecus afarensis were also significantl...

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95-Million-Year-Old Plant-Eating Dinosaur Discovered in Argentina | Sci.News Paleontologists in Patagonia, Argentina, have unearthed a portion of a postcranial skeleton that belonged to a previously unknown rebbachisaurid sauropod dinosaur.

www.sci.news/paleontology...

Ancient Romans likely used extinct sea creature fossils as amulets At the Roman settlement of A Cibdá de Armea in northwestern Spain, archaeologists uncovered evidence suggesting that ancient Romans adorned their amulets with fossils of extinct marine arthropods, lik...

phys.org/news/2025-07...

'They've become extinct, and are we next?': How Jurassic Park made dinosaurs into film stars In June 1993, Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Michael Crichton's novel brought prehistoric monsters to life. Crichton spoke to the BBC about why dinosaurs continue to fascinate us.

www.bbc.com/culture/arti...

Fossil of Triassic Sauropodomorph Dinosaur Discovered in Switzerland | Sci.News Paleontologists have discovered the skeletal remains of an entirely new, yet-to-be-named species of massopodan sauropodomorph dinosaur in the Klettgau Formation in Canton Aargau, Switzerland.

www.sci.news/paleontology...