Birds descended from the dinosaurs, but researchers have known relatively little about how the bird's brain took shape over millions of years. A new fossil sheds light on that mystery.
There's an area in China that's home to a huge trove of dinosaur fossils. It used to be thought it was formed through a Pompeii-like volcanic eruption, stopping dinosaurs in their tracks. But new evidence has come to light about how it likely came to be.
When dinosaurs reigned some 130 million years ago, flowering plants were taking over the world. That change is sealed in ancient amber specimens on the slopes of Lebanon that Danny Azar knows so well.
A father and daughter discovered fossil remnants of a giant ichthyosaur that scientists say may have been the largest-known marine reptile to ever swim the seas.
500 million years ago, the world was a very different place. During this period of time, known as the Cambrian period, basically all life was in the water. The ocean was brimming with animals that looked pretty different from the ones we recognize today — including a group of predatory worms with a throat covered in teeth and spines.
Researchers thought these tiny terrors died out at the end of the Cambrian period. But a paper published recently in the journal Biology Letters showed examples of a new species of this worm in the fossil record 25 million years after scientists thought they'd vanished from the Earth. One of the authors of the paper, Karma Nanglu, tells us how this finding may change how scientists understand the boundaries of time.
Curious about other weird wonders of the ancient Earth? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.
The ancient extinct shark that starred in the film The Meg is thought to be the largest shark that ever swam the Earth. But there's debate over what it really looked like.
A new study of kelp fossils from the coast of Washington state show that kelp forests, which host all manner of marine life, developed tens of millions of years ago.
Butterflies likely split from nocturnal moths around 100 million years ago in present-day western North America or Central America, a new study of the winged insects finds.
A project to replace the boardwalk at the Mill Canyon Dinosaur Tracksite in Moah, Utah, cause minor damage to tracks and trace fossils at the site, a Bureau of Land Management paleontologist found.
A group of geologists stumbled on the fossil of the giant creature, known as Arthropleura, during a "social trip" to England's Northumberland region in 2018. It's the largest such fossil ever found.
Research into the evolution of tardigrades has been severely hindered by a lack of fossils. This new discovery could offer researchers insight into how the creatures lived millions of years ago.
