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Categories: Environmental: Ecosystems, Paleontology: Early Mammals and Birds

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Researchers have analyzed an extensive collection of sand samples from so-called megaripple fields around the world and gained new insights into the composition of these sand waves. These could help settle debates about the mechanistic origin of some recently discovered enigmatic extraterrestrial sand structures and improve our ability to infer information about past weather and climate events from sediment records.

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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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When winds loft fine desert dust high into the atmosphere, iodine in that dust can trigger chemical reactions that destroy some air pollution, but also let greenhouse gases stick around longer. The finding may force researchers to re-evaluate how particles from land can impact the chemistry of the atmosphere.

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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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Shrubs in the desert Southwest have increased their water use efficiency at some of the highest rates ever observed to cope with a decades-long megadrought. Researchers found that although the shrubs' efficiency increases are unprecedented and heroic, they may not be enough to adapt to the long-term drying trend in the West.

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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 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.

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From 50,000 years to 6,000 years ago, many of the world's largest animals, including such iconic grassland grazers as the woolly mammoth, giant bison, and ancient horses, went extinct. The loss of these grazing species triggered a dramatic increase in fire activity in the world's grasslands, according to a new study.

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Referred to as 'China's Venice of the Stone Age', the Liangzhu excavation site in eastern China is considered one of the most significant testimonies of early Chinese advanced civilization. More than 5000 years ago, the city already had an elaborate water management system. Until now, it has been controversial what led to the sudden collapse. Massive flooding triggered by anomalously intense monsoon rains caused the collapse, as geologists and climate researchers have now shown.

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Researchers have now reconstructed how the Indian summer monsoon responded to meltwater pulses into the North Atlantic at the end of the penultimate cold period.

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The largest survey of pollinator abundance in Wales has found that woodland and hedgerow creation can play a crucial role in action to reverse declines in insects that are essential for crop yield and other wildlife.

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Climate scientists identify abrupt transitions in climate records that may have been caused by the climate system crossing a tipping point. They devised a statistical method to determine whether these transitions are simply noise or evidence of a more significant change. Their method is less error-prone than previous methods, since it doesn't rely on human determination. It also allows comparing different records consistently and can identify important events that may have been overlooked in older studies.

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New research shows that humans had a significant role in the extinction of woolly mammoths in Eurasia, occurring thousands of years later than previously thought. An international team of scientists has revealed a 20,000-year pathway to extinction for the woolly mammoth.

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Human-caused bird extinctions are driving losses of functional diversity on islands worldwide, and the gaps they leave behind are not being filled by introduced (alien) species, finds a new study.