Geological history of Earth

Archaeologists working in central Alaska have found over 1,000 fish specimens that potentially indicate the early presence of subsistence farming among Ice Age North Americans.Who is La Borinqueña as a Character? | io9 InterviewBy studying the remains of fish found at six archaeological sites across eastern Beringia (eastern Alaska), the archaeological team identified salmon, burbot, whitefish, and northern pike that appears to have been harvested between 13,000 and 11,800 years ago. The team’s research was published…

Behold the newest snarling, scurrying, foraging, and feasting dinosaurs and other extinct creatures of Prehistoric Planet.The show’s second season begins May 22 on Apple TV+, featuring over two dozen new species from various branches of the tree of life as it existed some 66 million years ago, give or take a few million (well, don’t take more than a couple.)I spoke with showrunner Tim Walker and Darren Naish, a paleozoologist and the series’s chief scientific consultant, to learn what to expect from the new season and,…

Theropods like T. rex and Velociraptor had sheaths of scaly skin covering their long, pointy teeth, according to a team of paleontologists who recently studied the ancient predators.Exclusive Jurassic World Dominion Bonus Feature ClipThat’s a big shift from the imagery most dinosaur-related media has put out in the last century. Popular films like Jurassic Park have given the public inaccurate ideas about what dinosaurs actually looked like (and pterosaurs, and mosasaurs), something that some modern dino-media aims to…

About 20 to 40 million years ago, entelodonts—immense, snaggletoothed, pig-like beasts—trotted throughout Eurasia and North America. But despite their 3-foot jaws studded with an alarming number of triangular teeth, these barnyard nightmares apparently had a typically porcine diet.New findings, published recently in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, shed a light on feeding habits of these strange, extinct mammals and some of their closest relatives, revealing clues about the changing world…

In December 2021, a team of paleontologists published data suggesting that the asteroid impact that ended the reign of dinosaurs could be pinned down to a season—springtime, 66 million years ago—thanks to an analysis of fossilized fish remains at a famous site in North Dakota.Now, a different group of researchers is accusing the former group of faking their data; the journal that published the research has added an editor’s note to the paper saying the data is under review.The situation was first reported by the…

The 70-odd-million-year-old remains were found in southern Mongolia.Illustration: Yusik Choi.Paleontologists discovered a 71-million-year-old carnivorous dinosaur in Southern Mongolia that they believe had a body built for swimming and diving for prey. Though it looks a lot like a modern bird, it’s actually a non-avian dinosaur, meaning it’s likely an example of convergent evolution, a phenomenon in which unrelated creaturesevolve similar traits. The dinosaur is called Natovenator polydontus, or “swimming hunter with…

A dinosaur skeleton at auction.Photo: ANGELA WEISS / AFP (Getty Images)A team modeling the aftermath of the asteroid impact that doomed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago say that the collision also created a global tsunami that devastated coastlines from North America to New Zealand.The researchers studied ancient sediments from over 100 sites around the world, to see how extreme waves resulting from the impact may have disrupted the geological record. Their workwas presented at a meeting of the American Geophysical…

Paleontologists have discovered a bizarre worm-like creature from the Cambrian Period that has features associated with three groups of living animals. Just a half-inch long and covered in bristles, the armored Wufengella is providing clues as to how ancient filter-feeders evolved.Wufengella is about 518 million years old, timing it toward the tail-end of the Cambrian explosion. The Cambrian explosion was a period of remarkable evolutionary diversification in animal life. Life on the seafloor particularly flourished:…

Juvenile Lystrosaurus murrayi skeleton with enveloping layer interpreted as mummified skin. Photo: Courtesy Roger SmithIt was a time of catastrophic change. Most of life on Earth had been wiped out, global temperatures had increased dramatically, and the weather raged in extremes. That anything survived in this hostile environment is remarkable, and yet, some plants and animals persisted. One such survivor was Lystrosaurus, a four-legged herbivore with a beaked snout and two pointy tusk-like teeth. And now, over 250…

150 million years ago, a prehistoric reptile unlike modern lizards slinked around what is now Wyoming. An ancient rhynchocephalian, the insect-eating animal’s discovery could shed light on the persistence of its living relative, the tuatara.The reptile is named Opisthiamimus gregori. It looks like a lizard, but like New Zealand’s tuatara, it is not one. Lizards are squamates, an order of reptiles that includes snakes and worm lizards. Rhynchocephalians are a distinct group that diverged from lizards in the Triassic…