Summaries | Headlines

Early Apes Walked Upright 15 Million Years Earlier Than Previously Thought, Evolutionary Biologist Argues (October 10, 2007) -- An extraordinary advance in human origins research reveals evidence of the emergence of the upright human body plan over 15 million years earlier than most experts have believed. More dramatically, ... > full story

Fossil Data Plugs Gaps In Current Knowledge, Study Shows (October 6, 2007) -- Researchers have shown for the first time that fossils can be used as effectively as living species in understanding the complex branching in the evolutionary tree of life. While many scientists feel ... > full story

Huge New Dinosaur Had A Serious Bite (October 3, 2007) -- The newest dinosaur species to emerge from Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument had some serious bite, according to researchers. 'It was one of the most robust duck-billed dinosaurs ever,' ... > full story

Saber-toothed Cat Was More Like A Pussycat Than A Tiger (October 2, 2007) -- In public imagination, the sabre-toothed cat Smilodon ranks alongside Tyrannosaurus rex as the ultimate killing machine. Powerfully built, with upper canines like knives, Smilodon was a fearsome ... > full story

Fish Diet Linked To Evolution, Ten Million Year Old Chipped Teeth Show (September 30, 2007) -- Chips from 10 million years ago have revealed new insights into fish diets and their influence on fish evolution, according to a new article in Science. The chips were found, along with scratches, on ... > full story

DNA Extracted From Woolly Mammoth Hair (September 27, 2007) -- Scientists discovered that hair shafts provide an ideal source of ancient DNA -- a better source than bones and muscle for studying the genome sequences of extinct animals. They sequenced the entire ... > full story

New Light Shed On The 'Hobbit' (September 25, 2007) -- Researchers have completed a new study on Homo floresiensis, commonly referred to as the "hobbit," a 3-foot-tall, 18,000-year-old hominin skeleton, discovered four years ago on the Indonesian island ... > full story

Extraterrestrial Impact Likely Source Of Sudden Ice Age Extinctions (September 25, 2007) -- What killed the woolly mammoths? Scientists now suggests that a comet or meteorite exploded over the planet roughly 12,900 years ago, causing the abrupt climate changes that led to the extinction of ... > full story

New Dinosaur Species Found In Montana (September 24, 2007) -- A dinosaur skeleton found 24 years ago near Choteau has finally been identified as a new species that links North American dinosaurs with Asian dinosaurs. The dinosaur would have weighed 30 to 40 ... > full story

Velociraptor Had Feathers (September 20, 2007) -- Finding of quill knobs on fossilized velociraptor bone demonstrates that even large dinosaurs were feathered and may have descended from animals capable of flight. Scientists have known for years ... > full story

Who Went There? Matching Fossil Tracks With Their Makers (September 18, 2007) -- Fossilized footprints are relatively common, but figuring out exactly which ancient creature made particular tracks has been a mystery that has long stumped paleontologists. Scientists have now ... > full story

Extra Gene Copies Were Enough To Make Early Humans' Mouths Water (September 14, 2007) -- To think that world domination could have begun in the cheeks. That's one interpretation of a recent discovery which indicates that humans carry extra copies of the salivary amylase gene. Humans have ... > full story

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Trace fossil -- Trace fossils are those details preserved in rocks that are indirect evidence of life. While we are most familiar with relatively spectacular fossil hard part remains such as shells and bones, trace ... > full article

Paralititan -- Paralititan stromeri was a giant titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur discovered in coastal deposits in the Upper Cretaceous Bahariya Formation of Egypt. The fossil represents the first tetrapod reported ... > full article

Fossil -- Fossils are the mineralized or otherwise preserved remains or traces (such as footprints) of animals, plants, and other organisms. The totality of fossils and their placement in fossiliferous ... > full article

Mastodon -- Mastodons or Mastodonts are members of an extinct genus Mammut of the order Proboscidea; they resembled, but were distinct from, the woolly mammoth. While mastodons were furry like woolly mammoths, ... > full article

Hadrosaurus -- Hadrosaurus is a hadrosaurid dinosaur genus. In 1858, a skeleton of a dinosaur from this genus was the first full dinosaur skeleton found in North America, and in 1868 it became the first ever ... > full article

Stegosaurus -- Stegosaurus, meaning "plated lizard", because of the plates on its back was a genus of large herbivorous dinosaurs from the Upper Jurassic of North America. It is among the most easily identifiable ... > full article

Feathered dinosaurs -- The realization that dinosaurs are closely related to birds raised the obvious possibility that some dinosaurs had feathers. Fossils of Archaeopteryx include well-preserved feathers, but it was not ... > full article

Jurassic -- The Jurassic period is a major unit of the geologic timescale that extends from about 200 Ma (million years ago) at the end of the Triassic to 146 Ma at the beginning of the Cretaceous. The Jurassic ... > full article

Archaeopteryx -- Archaeopteryx lithographica is the earliest and most primitive known bird. In the 1990s, the discovery of a number of well-preserved feathered dinosaurs solidified the link between dinosaurs and ... > full article

Extinction event -- An extinction event (also extinction-level event, ELE) occurs when a large number of species die out in a relatively short period of time. Since life began on Earth, a number of major mass ... > full article

Cretaceous -- The Cretaceous period is one of the major divisions of the geologic timescale, reaching from the end of the Jurassic period, about 146 million years ago (Ma), to the beginning of the Paleocene epoch ... > full article

Mammoth -- A mammoth is any of a number of an extinct genus of elephant, often with long curved tusks and, in northern species, a covering of long hair. They lived during the Pleistocene epoch from 1.6 million ... > full article

Homo heidelbergensis -- Homo heidelbergensis ("Heidelberg Man") is an extinct, potentially distinct species of the genus Homo and may be the direct ancestor of Homo neanderthalensis in Europe. According to the "Recent Out ... > full article

Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event -- The Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event was a period of massive extinction of species, about 65.5 million years ago. It corresponds to the end of the Cretaceous Period and the beginning of the ... > full article

Hadrosaurid -- Hadrosaurids or duck-billed dinosaurs are members of the superfamily Hadrosauroidea, and include ornithopods such as Edmontosaurus and Parasaurolophus. They were common herbivores in the Upper ... > full article

Cambrian -- The Cambrian is a major division of the geologic timescale that begins about 542 Ma (million years ago) at the end of the Proterozoic eon and ended about 488.3 Ma with the beginning of the Ordovician ... > full article

Ichthyosaur -- Ichthyosaurs were giant marine reptiles that resemble a dolphin with large teeth. They lived during a large part of the Mesozoic era, and appeared about 250 million years ago (Ma), slightly earlier ... > full article

Albertosaurus -- Albertosaurus is a genus of tyrannosaurid theropod dinosaur that lived in western North America during the Late Cretaceous Period, more than 70 million years ... > full article

Triceratops -- Triceratops, meaning "three-horned face", because it had three horns was a ceratopsid herbivorous dinosaur genus from the Latest Cretaceous period of what is now North America. It lived at around the ... > full article

Gondwana -- The southern supercontinent Gondwana (originally Gondwanaland) included most of the landmasses which make up today's continents of the southern hemisphere, including Antarctica, South America, ... > full article