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Category: Paleontology

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17 September 1999 | ScienceNOW

Fierce, Yes, But Feathered, Too

by Tim Appenzeller
Picture this: Adult Velociraptors, savage man-sized hunters with slashing claws, may have been covered in downy feathers, like newly hatched chicks. The same goes for the young of Tyrannosaurus rex,...
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12 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Life Gets Older, Really Older

by Douglas Palmer
The first eukaryotes, a lineage of life-forms that includes all plants and animals, appears to have arisen a billion years earlier than scientists had thought. The discovery of eukaryotic biochemicals...
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9 August 1999 | ScienceNOW

Going Woolly Mammoth Huntin'

by Richard Stone
An improbable race to resurrect the woolly mammoth is kicking into high gear. Japanese researchers arrived today at prime mammoth grounds in northeastern Siberia, hoping to find a carcass in...
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25 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

Warming Climate Made a Buzz

by Liese Greensfelder
An ancient global warming lasting 3 million years triggered an onslaught of insect attacks on plants, according to a report in today's Science. Experts laud the study, based on thousands...
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4 June 1999 | ScienceNOW

Field of Dreams

by Science News Staff
Scientists in Alberta, Canada, are marveling over a field of late Pleistocene fossils and animal footprints laid bare earlier this year in an emptied-out reservoir. The 3-square-kilometer site, located in...
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21 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

New Dates for the Dawn of Dream Time

by Carl Zimmer
Researchers say a skeleton unearthed decades ago in the sand dunes of Lake Mungo, Australia, may be tens of thousands of years older than once assumed. The findings, which appear...
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11 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

French Compromise Over "Rescue Archaeology"

by Michael Balter
PARIS--After nearly 30 years of skirmishes among developers, archaeologists, and government officials, France has taken a big step toward regulating "rescue archaeology," the excavation of ancient remains threatened by development...
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5 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

Premodern Precision Tools?

by Michael Balter
Archaeologists have discovered the oldest known evidence for highly skilled stone tool making, dating to more than 2 million years ago. The find, announced in tomorrow's Nature, raises questions about...
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5 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

Dinosaurs Take a Flying Leap

by Gretchen Vogel
Today's birds make it look easy, but getting off the ground and staying in the air is no simple task. How and why the first birds managed to fly has...
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4 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

Big Picture Paleontologist Dies

by Science News Staff
J. John Sepkoski Jr., a paleontologist who charted the diversity of ocean life through Earth's history, died Saturday of sudden heart failure. He was 50. "Paleobiology is a small profession,...
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3 May 1999 | ScienceNOW

Optimistic Evolutionist

by Science News Staff
Today is the birthday of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French paleontologist and philosopher born in 1881. He is known for his provocative writings asserting that humankind is evolving, mentally...
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30 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

Diplodocus's Head Not in the Clouds

by Kevin Boyd
The long-necked dinosaur Diplodocus and its close cousin Apatosaurus did not nibble treetops as commonly assumed but munched most of their food near the ground. Computer modeling of these dinosaurs'...
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22 April 1999 | ScienceNOW

A New Human Ancestor?

by Elizabeth Culotta
Scientists have unearthed fossils of a small-brained hominid that may be a missing link in the evolutionary tree leading to humans. The find--a 2.5-million-year-old skull--is reported in tomorrow's Science, together...
31 March 1999 | ScienceNOW

Extinct Reptile Plucked From Pacific

by Science News Staff
A Russian trawler in the Pacific Ocean yesterday hauled up a 12-meter-long marine reptile that appears to be a member of a species thought to have gone extinct 65 million...
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18 March 1999 | ScienceNOW

A Greater Alligator

by Menno Schilthuizen
Weighing in at more than 5000 kilograms and equipped with Tyrannosaurus rex-sized teeth, Deinosuchus was not the sort of crocodile you would try to make a handbag out of. In...
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22 February 1999 | ScienceNOW

Kennewick Man Goes on the Table

by Constance Holden
Examinations will begin this week to decide, once and for all, whether a 9000-year-old skeleton qualifies as a Native American. Scientists are happy that Kennewick Man, found on the banks...
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19 February 1999 | ScienceNOW

Mammalian Historian

by Science News Staff
Today is the birthday of William Matthew, a Canadian-American paleontologist born in 1871, known for his contributions to the field of mammalian evolution. While working for the American Museum of...
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5 February 1999 | ScienceNOW

Following Ancient Footsteps

by Science News Staff
Tomorrow is the birthday of Mary Leakey, the English paleontologist and anthropologist who made ground-breaking discoveries about the origins of humans while working in East Africa with her husband, Louis...
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22 January 1999 | ScienceNOW

The Breath of a Dinosaur

by Bernice Wuethrich
Respiratory physiologist John Ruben has cast a whole new light on the controversy over whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded. Using ultraviolet (UV) light from an ordinary UV lamp, Ruben was able...
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17 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Argentine Eggs Bear Embryonic Dino Tissue

by Erik Stokstad
The first fossils of embryonic dinosaur skin are among the treasures from a huge nesting ground in Argentina, described today in New York City at a joint press conference of...
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12 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Casts of Thousands

by Science News Staff
Tilly Edinger, a vertebrate paleontologist who pioneered the study of how brains have evolved over the eons, was born on 13 November 1897. The German-born researcher, who immigrated to the...
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12 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Dinosaur Sushi?

by Erik Stokstad
Paleontologists have unearthed what may have been the most terrifying fisheater in history: a 3-meter-tall dinosaur that sported claws like giant meat hooks and a crocodilelike snout. The discovery of...
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3 November 1998 | ScienceNOW

Earliest Animals Old Again?

by Richard A. Kerr and Pallava Bagla
TORONTO--In the past month, the apparent age of the first known animals nearly doubled to a startling 1.1 billion years, then swung back to the conventional figure of 600 million...
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2 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Saber-Toothed Surprise

by Erik Stokstad
SNOWBIRD, UTAH--A new species of saber-toothed cat, unveiled here yesterday at the annual meeting of the Society for Vertebrate Paleontology, has startled paleontologists with its fearsome, Arnold Schwarzenegger-like features. The...
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1 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

New Faces for Famous Dinos

by Erik Stokstad
SNOWBIRD, UTAH--The popular image of a Tyrannosaurus rex licking its snarling lips may have to be kissed goodbye. According to research presented here today at the annual meeting of the...
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1 October 1998 | ScienceNOW

Billion-Year-Old Worms: An Earth-Shattering Find?

by Richard A. Kerr
Could paleontologists have overlooked a third of the history of animals preserved in the fossil record? That's the startling implication of what appear to be worm tracks in 1.1-billion-year-old sandstone,...
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18 September 1998 | ScienceNOW

Grappling With Graptolites

by Science News Staff
Sunday is the 156th anniversary of the birth of Charles Lapworth, an English geologist famous for his work with marine fossils called graptolites. By fastidiously collecting the tiny, colonial sea...
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11 September 1998 | ScienceNOW

A Past Master

by Science News Staff
James Hall, one of the United States' foremost invertebrate paleontologists, was born September 12, 1811. After the New York legislature authorized a state geological survey in 1836, Hall was assigned...
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12 August 1998 | ScienceNOW

Battle for Control of Albanian Dig

by Richard Stone
About 2000 years ago, the Romans built a stunning theater in the coastal Albanian town of Butrint during their military conquests of the Balkans. Today the ruins are witness to...
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31 July 1998 | ScienceNOW

An Out-of-Africa Ape Ancestor?

by Science News Staff
The earliest human ancestors lived in Africa, and the same was true of the even earlier common ancestor we share with other great apes--or so most researchers believe. But new...
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30 July 1998 | ScienceNOW

Bones Boost Whale-Hippo Link

by Science News Staff
HAYAMA, JAPAN--A whale may be just an overgrown hippopotamus with an unusual lifestyle. A new analysis of early whale fossils reported here last week at the International Symposium on the...
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16 July 1998 | ScienceNOW

A Fruitful Scoop for Ancient DNA

by Science News Staff
In the movie Jurassic Park, a collector snapped up hundreds of thousands of mosquitoes preserved in amber for DNA they had sucked from dinosaurs. In the real world, however, amber...
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9 July 1998 | ScienceNOW

Early Fire Doused

by Science News Staff
Archaeologists have long thought that the first campfire was lighted by Homo erectus some 500,000 years ago, in a cave near Zhoukoudian, China. But a reanalysis of the cave, reported...
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8 July 1998 | ScienceNOW

Precambrian "Jell-O"

by Science News Staff
The identity of Earth's first multicellular creatures, called Ediacarans, has long mystified scientists. The only evidence of the little floppy sea creatures, which lived about 600 million years ago, are...
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2 July 1998 | ScienceNOW

Eight Millennia of Footwear Fashion

by Science News Staff
From the bear-fur shoes that once graced the feet of Japanese samurai to the sleek platform sandals that strut down runways today, people have long garbed the humblest part of...
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26 June 1998 | ScienceNOW

Bake-It-Yourself Basalt

by Science News Staff
Making rock doesn't always require immense tectonic forces or eons to pass by. The ancient Mesopotamians, in fact, cranked out custom-made rocks in a couple of days, according to a...
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23 June 1998 | ScienceNOW

Feathered Dinosaurs Discovered

by Science News Staff
Dinosaurs didn't die out completely, but instead took wing and evolved into what we now call birds. That's the conclusion of most experts who have seen new fossils of turkey-sized...
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3 June 1998 | ScienceNOW

Ancient Human Skull Has a Modern Look

by Science News Staff
A well-preserved skull of an early human found in the northeast African country of Eritrea will help plug a major gap in the fossil record of human evolution. Dated to...
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27 May 1998 | ScienceNOW

Young Ages for Australian Rock Art

by Science News Staff
Two years ago, archaeologists caused an international stir with their dates for a remote rock shelter called Jinmium in the Northern Territory of Australia. The dates of 116,000 to 176,000...
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13 May 1998 | ScienceNOW

About-Face for Ancient Humans

by Science News Staff
Compared to a Neandertal's jutting mug, a modern human face is flat--tucked under its brain case in a vertical line. Now a researcher says this facial makeover stemmed from a...
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