Archaeology

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

Protoceratops © by John Conway, from All Yesterdays As someone fascinated by prehistoric life during my entire existence, my love for paleoart is experiencing something of a renaissance: I have children now.

By analyzing what came out of Neandertals, researchers have verified that at least some of them mixed vegetation into their meaty diet. Cynthia Graber reports 

 

If you pay any attention to the world of zoological research (as you will do, given that you're reading a blog called Tetrapod Zoology), you'll know that the study of anatomy has very much come to the fore in recent years.

No time to finish anything new, gah. In desperation, here’s a classic article from the Tet Zoo archives, originally published in March 2009.