Paleontology

T. Rex’s Tiny Arms – Just-So Stories And Just Wrong Stories

I like to think of palaeontology as a historical science. We use science as a tool to speculate and test ideas about the history of life on Earth. The alternative is mythology, where we create ideas about the history of life to make a good story, without a ...

Article - Oliver Knevitt - Dec 4 2012 - 7:51am

Nyasasaurus Parringtoni: Oldest Dinosaur Found- So Far

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, s ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 4 2012 - 11:13pm

Elk Bones At Yellowstone: A Tale Of Life, Death, And Habitat Use

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 complem ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 19 2012 - 12:00pm

Sauropod Size: Plant Food Argument About Dinosaurs Gets Renewed

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 o ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 12 2012 - 5:00am

Vegetarians Not So Simple: Therizinosaurs Had Well-Developed Smell, Hearing And Balance

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 forebr ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 19 2012 - 9:02pm

Pre-Cambrian Critter

  Recently on Science Codex there appeared A new fossil species found in Spain, which on reading turns out to be a new Cloudinid, an order of shelled creatures from the late Ediacaran.  Cloudina shells are of interest, showing bore holes made by predators ...

Blog Post - Robert H Olley - Dec 28 2012 - 8:10am

Vulpes Skinneri: Two Million-Year-Old Fox Species Found

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 recen ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 23 2013 - 6:00pm

North American Small Carnivorous Dinosaur Species Now Up To 23

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 din ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 24 2013 - 3:45pm

Ancient Roman Skeleton Contains Ovarian Tumor- With Teeth And Bone Fragment Inside

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 examinat ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 24 2013 - 6:30pm

Sexual Selection In The Fossil Record: Survival Of The Prettiest?

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 rec ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 29 2013 - 11:16am