A new kind of pterosaur named Eurazhdarcho langendorfensis was a flying reptile from the time of the dinosaurs, according to scientists from the Transylvanian Museum Society in Romania, the University of Southampton in the UK and the Museau Nacional in Rio de Janiero, Brazil. 

The fossilized bones come from the Late Cretaceous rocks of Sebeş-Glod in the Transylvanian Basin, Romania, which are approximately 68 million years old. The Transylvanian Basin is known for its many Late Cretaceous fossils, including dinosaurs of many kinds, as well as fossilized mammals, turtles, lizards and ancient relatives of crocodiles. 

Sexual selection refers to the evolutionary pressures that relate to a species' ability to repel rivals, gather mates and pass on genes. We can observe those processes happening in living animals and, now, detecting sexual selection in the fossil record is also possible, according to researchers. 

It has been challenging to recognize sexual selection in extinct animals. Many fossil animals have elaborate crests, horns, frills and other structures that look like they were used in sexual display but it can be difficult to distinguish these structures from those that might play a role in feeding behavior, escaping predators, controlling body temperature or not having any important function at all.

The remains of a calcified ovarian teratoma in the pelvis of the skeleton of a woman from the Roman era confirms the presence in antiquity of this type of tumor - formed by the remains of tissues or organs, which are difficult to locate during the examination of ancient remains.

Inside the small round mass, four teeth and a small piece of bone were found.

 

Fossilized teeth have led to identification of at least 23 species of small meat-eating dinosaurs that roamed western Canada and the United States between 85 and 65 million years ago, a large increase from the 7 species of small two-legged meat-eating dinosaurs from the North American west that had previously been identified.

The researchers examined a massive dataset of fossil teeth that included samples from members of the families to which Velociraptor and Troodon (possibly the brainiest dinosaur) belong.

Researchers have announced the discovery of a two million year old fossil fox at the now renowned archaeological site of Malapa in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site.
 

The previously unknown species of fox is named Vulpes Skinneri, for the recently deceased South African mammalogist and ecologist Prof. John Skinner of the University of Pretoria.
 

Scientists have found that therizinosaurs defied the sterotype of sensory abilities of plant-eating animals. Their  exceptional sensory abilities - smell, hearing and balance - were well developed and might have affected or benefited from an enlarged forebrain, something typically associated with predators. 

Josh Miller likes to call himself a conservation paleobiologist, which makes sense when he explains how he uses bones as up-to-last-season information on contemporary animal populations. 

Bones, he says, provide baseline ecological data on animals complementary to aerial counts, adding a historical component to live observation. In his November cover article for the Ecological Society of America's journal Ecology, he assesses elk habitat use in Yellowstone National Park by their bones and antlers, testing his method against several decades of the Park Service's meticulous observations.

It's not disputed that long necked sauropod dinosaurs were the largest land animals ever to walk the Earth, but why they got so large is a debate.

Was it the nature of the food they ate?  While that was considered, skepticism remained.  But a group of researchers now argues that the plant ecologists from South Africa who suggested a plant food cause for big dinosaurs were onto something; but scientists confused two different issues in thinking about this problem; namely how much energy is in the plant with how much nitrogen is in the plant – the South African ideas were based on nitrogen content not the total energy in the plant food. 

Drs. David Wilkinson and Graeme Ruxton of  
Liverpool John Moores University

Researchers have discovered what may be the earliest dinosaur,
Nyasasaurus parringtoni, a creature the size of a Labrador retriever, but with a five foot-long tai. It walked the Earth about 10 million years before more familiar dinosaurs like the small, swift-footed Eoraptor and Herrerasaurus.