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Categories: Engineering: Biometric, Paleontology: Early Mammals and Birds

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Paleontologists from La Brea Tar Pits develop a whole herd of scientifically accurate extinct animals to use in AR and VR.

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Abrupt shifts in the evolution of animals -- short periods of time when an organism rapidly changes size or form -- have long been a challenge for theorists including Darwin. Now a newly published research paper supports the idea that even these abrupt changes are underpinned by a gradual directional process of successive incremental changes, as Darwin's theory of evolution assumes.

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New research uncovers the negative link between flight-worthiness and fight-worthiness in birds. Evolutionary pressure demanded that birds could either fly or arm themselves -- but not both. Furthermore, the new research suggests that developing wings and not bony spurs involved both sexual and natural selection. This insight helps us better understand how the enormous diversity of life and earth came to be.

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A team of geologists and palaeontologists has discovered that, some 50 million years ago, there was a low-lying continent separating Europe from Asia that they have named Balkanatolia. At the time, it was inhabited by an endemic fauna that was very different from those of Europe and Asia. Geographical changes 40 to 34 million years ago connected this continent to its two neighbors, paving the way for the replacement of European mammals by Asian mammals.

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Two new species of fossil birds that lived alongside the dinosaurs have ben discovered near the Great Wall of China. One of the new species had a sensitive, movable bony appendage at the tip of its lower jaw that it might have used to find food.

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Scientists have discovered the first evidence of a unique respiratory infection in the fossilized remains of a dinosaur that lived nearly 150 million years ago. Researchers examined the remains of an immature diplodocid -- a long-necked herbivorous sauropod dinosaur, like 'Brontosaurus' - dating back to the Late Jurassic Period of the Mesozoic Era. The dinosaur nicknamed 'Dolly,' discovered in southwest Montana, had evidence of an infection in the area of its neck vertebrae.

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During the Ice Age, giant mammals such as mammoths, sabre-toothed cats and woolly rhinoceroses once roamed Northern Europe and America. The cold oceans of the northern hemisphere were also home to giants like Steller's sea cow, which grew up to eight meters long and weighed up to ten tons, and has been extinct for around 250 years. Now an international research team has succeeded in deciphering the genome of this ice-age species from fossil bones. They also found an answer to the question of what the genome of this extinct species of sea cow reveals about present-day skin diseases.

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Scientists have discovered a new fossil that reveals the origin of gills in arthropods.

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A new study leaves large tooth marks in previous conclusions about the body shape of the Megalodon, one of the largest sharks that ever lived.

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Deeper analysis of fossils from one of Eastern Europe's most significant paleontological sites has led to the discovery of a new species of pangolin, previously thought to have existed in Europe during the early Pleistocene but not confirmed until now.

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A new study has found that a class of toxins found in snake and mammalian venom evolved from the same ancestral gene.

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A new study has provided the most detailed timeline of mammal evolution to date.

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A 72 to 66-million-year-old embryo found inside a fossilized dinosaur egg sheds new light on the link between the behavior of modern birds and dinosaurs, according to a new study.

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A new extinct reptile species has shed light on how our earliest ancestors became top predators by modifying their teeth in response to environmental instability around 300 million years ago.

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A study investigated the enigma of why sauropod fossils are only found at lower latitudes, while fossils of other main dinosaur types seem ubiquitously present, with many located in the polar regions.

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The evolutionary origin of endothermy (the ability to maintain a warm body and higher energy levels than reptiles), currently believed to have originated separately in birds and mammals, could have occurred nearly 300 million years ago.

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A study showed that -- within an appropriate framework -- gait recognition could be a viable technique for protecting individuals and their data from potential crime.

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A study finds that there is a 50 percent chance that the common ancestor of birds and dinosaurs had bright colors on its skin, beaks and scales, but 0 percent chance that it had bright colors on its feathers or claws.

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Though discovered more than 45 years ago, fossils of Earth's largest flying animal, Quetzalcoatlus, were never thoroughly analyzed. Now, a scientific team provides the most complete picture yet of this dinosaur relative, its environment and behavior. The pterosaur, with a 40-foot wingspan, walked with a unique gait, but otherwise filled a niche much like herons today. The researchers dispel ideas that it ate carrion and walked like a vampire bat.

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Mere spoonsful of soil pulled from Canada's permafrost are opening vast windows into ancient life in the Yukon, revealing rich new information and rewriting previous beliefs about the extinction dynamics, dates and survival of megafauna like mammoths, horses and other long-lost life forms.