A fossil plant smaller than a fingernail, collected more than a century ago from a Scottish rock bed, is reshaping the story ...

Over 500 million years ago, the Cambrian Period sparked an explosion of skeletal creativity. Salterella, a peculiar fossil, defied conventions by combining two different mineral-building methods.

Fossils unearthed in Morocco are the first from a little-understood period of human evolution and may be remains of a ...

Researchers in Alberta uncovered a fossil fish that rewrites the evolutionary history of otophysans, which today dominate freshwater ecosystems. The new species, Acronichthys maccognoi, shows early ...

A study published in Science on the evolution of molluscan forms and genomes offers a fascinating glimpse into the complex and diverse biology of mollusks, shedding light on how they have evolved over ...

It was a gray morning on the steppes of central Mongolia when paleontologist Tsogtbaatar Chinzorig spotted something glinting on a distant slope. It was not a rock. As he drew closer, he realized he ...

May 21 (Reuters) - A new fossil of the Cretaceous Period dinosaur Psittacosaurus, a dog-sized herbivore with a parrot-like beak, that was donated to a Chinese university came with a surprise - one ...

Creepy collector she is not; Cooke's quest for canines, incisors, and molars is driven by a desire to better understand Earth's past. Give this intrepid paleontologist a fossilized tooth, and there's ...

An ancient crab fossil dubbed by researchers as the "Forbidden Dorito," has helped to unlock some mysteries of crab evolution. Dr. Javier Luque, a senior research associate at the University of ...

If you’ve always thought echidnas and platypuses were distant cousins who went their separate ways on land and water, think again. A single fossilized arm bone, found in a remote corner of ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about biodiversity and the hidden quirks of the natural world. Fossil discoveries unlock chapters of our planet’s storied ...