Earth & Climate

Featured picture: Excavation with a difference

These scientists are not just looking for bones and other tangible evidence of the past. In the Satsurblia Cave in the Caucasus, they...

Earliest animal life 890 million years ago

Location of the fossils. (Image: Elizabeth Turner / Laurentian University) The first animals could possibly have lived 890 million years ago: On reefs in...

Even babies pterosaur could fly

Pterosaurs of the species Pterodaustro guinazui. (Image: Mark Witton) At what age could pterosaurs fly? Up to now, this question has been a...

3.42 billion year old microbial fossils discovered

Microscopic image of the fossil microbe filaments. (Image: B. Cavalazzi) Methane-forming microbes - possibly the oldest organisms of this kind - cavorted in hydrothermal...

Featured picture: Aurora australis over the South Pole

This brightly colored aurora shines above the telescopes of the Amundsen-Scott polar station at the South Pole. Like the northern lights, the aurora...

Featured picture: The “zombie” frog

This orange-spotted, pointed-nosed frog belongs to a species newly discovered in the Amazon region. However, it owes its name, Synapturanus zombie, not to its...

Why some dinosaurs shrank

Four Alvarez sauroids illustrate the size differences. (Image: Zhixin Han / https://www.artstation.com/xinyanjun) While most of the dinosaurs grew larger and larger in the course...

Threatened “sea ice refuge”

The "Last Ice Area" is a haven for polar bears and co. (Image: Kristin Laidre / University of Washington) For polar bears and co. It...

On the trail of elephant rises and falls

The trunk animals once had an enormous biodiversity. (Illustration: Oscar Sanisidro) Today only three species are left - but once there was an enormous...

A beetle from the dinosaur droppings

The fossil beetle and the originator of the feces in which it was preserved. (Image: Qvarnström et al./ Malgorzata Czaja) Researchers have discovered a...

Dino nursery discovered in the cold north

Among the dinosaur species that apparently lived and nested year-round in what is now Alaska was a relative of Tyrannosaurus rex: Nanuqsaurus hoglundi. ...

Ancient giant rhinoceros discovered

This is what Paraceratherium linxiaense could have looked like. (Image: Yu Chen) Giant rhinos are among the largest land mammals that have ever lived...

Featured picture: Searching for clues in the Chiquihuite cave

In search of traces of the past, researchers venture into remote caves: Here archaeologists are on their way to the Chiquihuite cave in Mexico,...

Cretaceous live snail birth

99 million year old birth scene in amber: a snail and its five young animals. (Image: Tingting Yu) When it was just giving birth...

Featured picture: A crocodile with horns

This skull comes from an extinct crocodile that has long puzzled researchers. The reptile, once native to Madagascar, resembled the Nile crocodiles in...

Mysterious shark dying

Microfossils provide evidence of an enigmatic mass extinction in sharks. (Illustration: Leah Rubin) A bang in the history of sharks is emerging: around 19...

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