Paleontology

Officially, these prehistoric birds are the dromornithids, but everyone who studies them calls them thunderbirds—and for good reason.

The elephant bird was the heaviest bird to ever walk the earth. Also, its eggs were 150 times the size of a chicken egg and thick as a dinner plate.

The fossil was a prehistoric bird called Pelagornis sandersi, and its wings stretched out twice as wide as those of the great albatross. 

Paleontologists have uncovered a miniature world of sea creatures whose tiny guts, eyes and even brains remain visible 462 million years after they perished

An extensive system of air sacs, evolved over and over, let dinosaurs grow larger without sacrificing strength

This ancient creature swam in surprisingly modern seas

Two newly identified primatelike mammals once lived in the Arctic, which could help us understand how species there today may adapt as the climate heats up

A rare flower encased in amber is the largest one ever found and dates from around 40 million years ago

Two-million-year-old DNA, the world's oldest, reveals that mastodons once roamed forests in Greenland’s far northern reaches

Fossil trackways may show tyrannosaur tykes teaming up

Watching fish rot for more than two months disproves a long-standing fossilization theory

Geneticist Svante Pääbo reconstructed the genome of long-extinct human relatives, showing we have more in common with Neandertals than previously thought