Palaeontology

Leg-wing cooperation in baby birds, dinosaurs is key transition in origin of flight

New research based on high-resolution x-ray movies reveals that despite having extremely underdeveloped muscles and wings, young birds acquire a mature flight stroke early in their development, initially relying...

Turtle shells help decode complex links between modern, fossil species

Imagine that Labradors and golden retrievers died out a million years ago, leaving only fossilized skeletons behind. Without...

Ancient crocodiles walked on two legs like dinosaurs

An international research team has been stunned to discover that some species of ancient crocodiles walked on their...

Mammal forerunner that reproduced like a reptile sheds light on brain evolution

Compared with the rest of the animal kingdom, mammals have the biggest brains and produce some of the...

Mammals switched to daytime activity after dinosaur extinction

Mammals only started being active in the daytime after non-avian dinosaurs were wiped out about 66 million years...

Bird fossils dating back millions of years found in Poland

The areas of present-day south-eastern Poland used to be covered by a shallow sea. But apart from fossil fish, invertebrates and plants, bird remains...

Window to the past: New microfossils suggest earlier rise in complex life

Microfossils from Western Australia may capture a jump in the complexity of life that coincided with the rise of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere and...

New Mosasaur is a link between iconic species

Scientists have discovered a new species of mosasaur, large, carnivorous aquatic lizards that lived during the late Cretaceous. With "transitional" traits that place it...

How the fish got its shoulder

A new analysis of the bones and muscles in ancient fish gives new clues about how the shoulder evolved in animals -- including us. The...

Giant dinosaur carcasses might have been important food sources for Jurassic predators

Carnivorous dinosaurs might have evolved to take advantage of giant carcasses, according to a study published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Cameron Pahl and...

Bizarre new fossils shed light on ancient plankton

A scientist from the University of Leicester has discovered a new type of fossil that reveals life in the oceans half a billion years...
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