dna, elephant birds, fossils, history, madagascar, new discoveries

Extinct Elephant Birds Were 3 Meters Tall and Weighed 700kg. Now, DNA From Fossil Eggshells Reveals How They Lived

Madagascar’s extinct elephant birds — the largest birds ever to have lived — have captured the public’s interest for hundreds of years. Little is known about them due to large gaps in the skeletal fossil record. A new study published in Nature Communications used ancient molecules extracted from fossil eggshells to reveal surprising new insights ...

Troy Oakes

Madagascar's extinct elephant bird eggs.

Discovery of Ancient Shark Teeth in Indian Ocean by Australian Scientists

A “graveyard” of fossilized shark teeth was recently discovered by Australian scientists 3.1 miles (4-5 km) deep in the Indian Ocean. This jaw-dropping site, found in October 2022, had more than 750 shark teeth of modern and prehistoric mega sharks. Scientists made this surprising discovery during a month-long voyage at Cocos (Keeling) Islands. Commonwealth Scientific ...

Nathan Machoka

shark-teeth

Resurrecting Ancient Plants: A Deep-Dive Into Paleobotany

Scientists are constantly studying plants hoping to grow one with unique traits such as drought resistance. But some scientists are branching to paleobotany and looking into ancient plants hoping for a breakthrough. The Earth has about 450,000 plant species, and the evolution of plants on Earth is closely intertwined and detrimental to its development. Plants ...

Viena Abdon

Seeds sprouting.

Fossils Reveal Humans Were a Greater Threat Than Climate Change

Researchers from the University of Florida have pulled almost 100 fossils from a flooded cave in the Bahamas, and the story they tell is one of triumph; that is until humans came into the picture. Out of 39 species examined, 22 of them disappeared after the arrival of humans some 1,000 years ago. The 39 ...

Troy Oakes

Sinkhole.

How to Become an Archaeologist From Home

Have you ever wanted to go to the Kenyan desert and go on a hunt for fossils? Now, you can be an armchair archaeologist without even leaving home. The University of Bradford and Turkana Basin Institute have started a collaborative online citizen science initiative called Fossil Finder. Members of the public have been asked to help ...

Jack Roberts

An archaeologist digging with a trowel.

Oldest Monkey Fossils Outside of Africa Found

Three fossils found in a lignite mine in southeastern Yunan Province, China, that are about 6.4 million years old, indicate monkeys existed in Asia at the same time as apes, and are probably the ancestors of some of the modern monkeys in the area, according to an international team of researchers. Nina G. Jablonski, Evan ...

Troy Oakes

Two monkeys in a tree.

New Fossil Ape Has Been Discovered in India

A 13-million-year-old fossil unearthed in northern India comes from a newly discovered ape, the earliest known ancestor of the modern-day gibbon. The discovery, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, fills a significant void in the ape fossil record and provides important new evidence about when the ancestors of today’s gibbon migrated to ...

Troy Oakes

Christopher Gilbert at site in Ramnagar, India.

Amber Fossils Unlock True Color of 99-Million-Year-Old Insects

Nature is full of colors, from the radiant shine of a peacock’s feathers or the bright warning coloration of toxic frogs to the pearl-white camouflage of polar bears. Except for amber fossils, usually, fine structural detail necessary for the conservation of color is rarely preserved in the fossil record, making most reconstructions of the fossil ...

Troy Oakes

Resin from a tree that forms amber.

Research Offers Insight Into How Oldest Microfossils Formed

Researchers at the University of Western Australia have uncovered evidence of a new type of fossilization that may explain how some of Earth’s oldest microfossils formed and might even help scientists detect evidence of past life on other planets. They provide important clues about the early history of life on Earth; however, some mystery still ...

Troy Oakes

Fossil shells.