Duck-Billed Dinos Gave T. rex a Run for Its Money
Hadrosaurs could outrun tyrannosaurusesbecause of the layout of the herbivores’ tail muscles
Archaeology & Paleontology1354 articles archived since 1845
Fight at the Museum: Confronting Visitor Biases
Midway through the school year, parents and teachers are starting to plan (and fundraise) for winter and spring field trips. Among the most popular destinations is the science museum.
Robotic Men and Robotic Vehicles Explore Ancient Shipwrecks
Scientists are using exotic technologies to excavate underwater shipwrecks with the same precision as an archaeological dig
Book Review: Digging for Richard III
Books and recommendations from Scientific American
Stunning Artwork Opens New Window on Mighty Maya Civilization
Long-sought clues to Maya governance emerge from an exquisitely preserved frieze
Stunning Sculpture Holds Clues to Mysterious Maya Politics
Newly discovered Maya artwork illuminates an ancient clash
World's Oldest Engraving Upends Theory of Homo sapiens Uniqueness
It is getting harder and harder to figure out what distinguished Homo sapiens from other members of the human family and fueled our extraordinary success as a species.
Looking Back on 40 Years of Lucy
Paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson's first glimpse of Lucy came on November 24, 1974
40 Years After Lucy: The Fossil That Revolutionized the Search for Human Origins
Forty years ago today, a young American paleoanthropologist named Donald Johanson made the discovery of a lifetime in the arid badlands of Ethiopia's remote Afar region: a 3.2-million-year-old skeleton of a small-brained creature that walked upright like we do...
Fresh Mammoth Carcass from Siberia Holds Many Secrets
Scientists will examine the mammoth to learn whether it will yield enough undamaged DNA to make cloning the extinct creature a reality
How Fake Fossils Pervert Paleontology [Excerpt]
A nebulous trade in forged and illegal fossils is an ever-growing headache for paleontologists
`Proto-Ichthyosaur' Sheds Light on Fish-Lizard Beginnings
Regular readers will know that I have a major interest in ichthyosaurs, the so-called fish-lizards of the Mesozoic (see links below). As you'll know if you keep your finger on the pulse of Mesozoic reptile news, last week saw the publication of a really interesting new animal from the Lower Triassic: the Chinese `proto-ichthyosaur' Cartorhynchus [...]..
Mind-Blowing Fossil Preserves Tiny Horse Carrying Unborn Foal
BERLIN: The former oil shale mining site of Messel, near Frankfurt, Germany, is well known for its spectacular fossils of organisms that lived between 47 million and 48 million years ago, during the Eocene epoch...
New Artifact-Filled Chambers Revealed under Teotihuacan
Rooms beneath the mysterious city contain jade statues, jaguar remains and thousands of other objects
Fern Frozen in Time by Volcanic Flow Reveals Stunning Detail
It defies belief, but a 180 million year old fern fossil unearthed in Sweden is so exquisitely preserved that it is possible to see its cells dividing.
The Hobbit: 10 Years Later
In October 2004 paleontologists announced a new human species called Homo floresiensis . Ever since then debate has raged on whether it truly is a new species or merely a diseased Homo sapiens...
45,000-Year-Old Man's Genome Sequenced
An analysis of the oldest known DNA from a human reveals a mysterious group that roamed northern Asia
The "Shanklin Croc" and the Dawn of the Tethysuchian Radiation
Hey, Darren, how's it going with that plan to discuss all the fossil crocodylomorph groups? Huh? Well, ha ha, it ain't going so well… goddam life getting in the way of my blogging...
Fossils Rewrite History of Sex
Evidence of bony organs in ancient fish suggests that they copulated, although many of their descendants stopped doing so
Human or Hobbit?
The arguments over an ancient skeleton just won’t die
