Paleontology

Fossil jaws from colossal octopuses place them at the top of a prehistoric marine food chain

Laying eggs may have helped mammal ancestors thrive after Earth’s worst mass extinction

Fossils show exceptionally rare evidence of a cloacal vent—the slit that most vertebrates use to excrete, have sex and lay egg—which could shed light on the evolution of the orifice

Spinosaurus mirabilis was a force to be reckoned with

Vomit is gross—but 290-million-year-old vomit is a scientific marvel

A newfound site in the Italian Alps holds one of the largest collections of Triassic dinosaur footprints ever seen

A partial skeleton dating back more than two million years is the most complete yet of Homo habilis, one of the earliest known species in our genus

Towering Prototaxites ruled Earth before trees—and they may have been a form of life entirely new to science

Scientists have sequenced the genome of the long-extinct woolly rhinoceros from remains found in the stomach of a naturally mummified Pleistocene wolf pup

New clues hidden inside T. rex bones suggest that the carnivore lived longer lives than we thought

A fossil belonging to an ancient hominin that lived seven million years ago bears the hallmarks of bipedalism, according to a new study

Bones of now extinct species became a haven for bee babies thousands of years ago, scientists report in a first-of-its-kind discovery