Paleontology

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

Geologic evidence for a freezing arctic suggests dinosaurs could have weathered an epoch-ending volcanic winter

Some species were constrained by their food sources, while others ranged widely

The first known male appendage from trilobites has been found in a 508-million-year-old fossil

They scurried in the shadows of dinosaurs for millions of years until a killer space rock created a new world of evolutionary opportunity

An amazingly well-preserved fossil suggests the common ancestor of dinosaurs and pterosaurs also had some type of feather or feather precursor

A well-preserved fossil introduces a new species that lived in what is now California around 42 million years ago

New fossils are changing a decades-old story about the species that roamed the Mediterranean 80 million years ago.