Paleontology

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

Svante Pääbo’s work on sequencing the DNA of Neandertals and Denisovans, which won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, revealed surprising interbreeding among human species

Walking on all fours helped shape the panda's “thumb”

Fish fossils from Western Australia preserve the oldest 3-D hearts, livers, stomachs and intestines in a jawed vertebrate

The fossil-filled volcanic crater Foulden Maar was almost destroyed. A new book documents its ancient-ecosystem wonders

A small, speedy, omnivorous dinosaur was a forerunner of Brachiosaurus and other giant plant-eaters 

New fossil analysis offers the first physical evidence of this launch strategy