Paleontologists

Researchers have discovered the oldest known fragment of fossilized skin, over 21 million years older than previous findings, from an early Paleozoic reptile. The study highlights the skin’s resemblance to modern reptile skin and its importance in understanding the evolutionary transition to land. (Artist’s concept.) Credit: SciTechDaily.comA groundbreaking discovery reveals the oldest fossilized reptile skin, showing significant evolutionary features and offering a unique perspective on early terrestrial animal life.…

Not far from the bank of Wapiti River, just 11 kilometres from Grande Prairie, there's a paleontological goldmine: an ancient riverbed that contains fragments of skeletons of hundreds, possibly thousands, of animals from the late Cretaceous period, some 70 million years ago. Discovered in 2014,  the bonebed is known as a DC site, or, more formally, Wapiti Unit 3.It yields a wide range of fossils and teeth from many species of prehistoric vertebrates, said Corwin Sullivan, a University of Alberta paleontologist who does…

How can you tell if a dinosaur is female or male? It’s one of the most basic aspects of biology and yet, for the most part, it continues to be a mystery in paleontology. We don’t yet know the sex of most extinct species, even if those in museum displays have gender-specific names like Sue the T.rex or Cliff the Triceratops. But this past October at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontologists, one scientist offered insight into the work he and his team are doing to uncover hormones in fossil bones.…

The ancient seas of the Late Cretaceous period would’ve been scary places to swim. Between 66 million and 100 million years ago, the world’s waterways were chock-full of real-life sea monsters. Not least of which were the sometimes bus-sized, possibly venomous, predatory lizards known as mosasaurs.Get Ready For Another Summer of Invasive Lanternflies | Extreme EarthThe marine reptiles, which went extinct in the same catastrophic event that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs, are thought to have been a diverse group of…

The most marine-centered event at GSA was also one of the loudest voices in the chorus for pro-ammonite games. The final night of the conference, I stumbled up to a Hyatt Regency ballroom for the long-awaited social event “Friends of the Cephalopods.” Under a vaulted ceiling, academics, museum workers, and the octopus-curious passed around a flagon of Kraken Rum. They drank to cephalopods and laughed whenever a vertebrate came up in conversation. Among them, in Sable-like cloaks, was Olivia Jenkins, art and programming…

A species of giant panda lived in eastern Europe 6 million years ago, according to scientists who studied the animal’s fossilized teeth.The discovery came from forgotten fossilized teeth, originally discovered in the late 1970s in Bulgaria’s Sredna Gora mountain range. The teeth—an upper carnassial tooth and an upper canine—had been collecting dust on a shelf in the Bulgarian National Museum of Natural History until now.A team of researchers recently studied the teeth and determined they belong to the genus Agriarctos,…

Paleontologists have unearthed a new dinosaur species with tiny arms. The species, newly named Meraxes gigas, is a carnivorous species that would have gone extinct at the start of the Late Cretaceous period, roughly 90 to 95 million years ago. Scientists found a new dinosaur with tiny arms Meet Meraxes gigas, the newest member of the carcharodontosaurid theropod radiation! Based on a well preserved skeleton, this giant carnivore was over 35 feet long and weighed around 9000 lbs. Published today in…

Scientists have found evidence of what might have once been the largest terrestrial hunter in Europe, thanks to a fossil discovery on an island off the south coast of England.Paleontologists suspect the remains of a huge two-legged carnivore, recently unearthed on the Isle of Wight, might be the largest theropod discovered on the continent to date.  The only rival is a possible megalosaurid known from an unpublished description of a large vertebra uncovered in the Jurassic geology of France.Theropods were a dominant…