Archaeology

Excavations of an ancient Wyoming sinkhole containing a rare trove of fossils of Ice Age mammals have unearthed hundreds of bones of such prehistoric animals as American cheetahs, a paleontologist said on Friday.

Some time round about 165 million years ago, the group of small, feathered dinosaurs that we call birds evolved from within the theropod radiation (theropods are the so-called `predatory dinosaurs': the great group that includes animals like Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor as well as the birds).

The event you've all been waiting for is here: Simbirskiasaurus and Pervushovisaurus have been resurrected, and we're all wondering what the hell's going on with their absurd, complex nostrils.

Is the planet undergoing the sixth mass extinction in its history courtesy of the human species?

Evidence of featherlike structures have been found for the first time in the fossil of a plant-eating dinosaur rather than the dinosaur lineage closely related to birds

A new arachnid family tree suggests that many spider species evolved away from web-weaving

If, as I have, you've spent copious time wandering the British countryside, visiting amusement parks and visitor attractions that feature life-sized `prehistoric animals', you'll surely have seen all those Phorusrhacos* models.

Reef-building in skeletal animals appeared much earlier in evolutionary history than previously thought, as far back as 548 million years ago

Scientists have long thought of the Cambrian Explosion 541 million years ago as the flowering of complex life on Earth. Strangely shaped, large soft-bodied organisms were known to have lived in the period just prior — the Ediacaran — but they made few hard parts and scientists have debated whether any or how many were [...]

Long cloaked in mystery, the ancient Teotihuacán culture is at last giving up its secrets

After decades of investigation, fresh clues are emerging from Mexico’s City of Gods