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Categories: Anthropology: Early Humans, Paleontology: General

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Sabertooth cats make up a diverse group of long-toothed predators that roamed Africa around 6-7 million years ago, around the time that hominins -- the group that includes modern humans -- began to evolve. By examining one of the largest global Pliocene collections of fossils in Langebaanweg, north of Cape Town in South Africa, researchers present two new sabertooth species and the first family tree of the region's ancient sabertooths. Their results suggest that the distribution of sabertooths throughout ancient Africa might have been different than previously assumed, and the study provides important information about Africa's paleoenvironment.

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Did the pterosaurs, flying reptiles from the days of the dinosaurs, practice parental care or not? New research shows that pterosaurs were indeed caring parents -- but only the larger species.

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Scientists have described an unusual fossil from around 125 million years ago in China that shows a dramatic moment in time when a carnivorous mammal attacked a larger plant-eating dinosaur. The two animals are locked in mortal combat, and it's among the first evidence to show actual predatory behavior by a mammal on a dinosaur. The fossil's presence challenges the view that dinosaurs had few threats from their mammal contemporaries during the Cretaceous, when dinosaurs were the dominant animals.

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In an exciting scientific development, an international team of researchers have officially named a newly discovered 145-million-year-old pterosaur. The animal had enormous 2-meter wingspan and was nicknamed 'Elvis' when the fossil was first unearthed in Bavaria, Germany because of the giant pompadour-like bony crest on its skull. Now the animal has been given a formal scientific name of Petrodactyle wellnhoferi. The name translates as 'Wellnhofer's stone-finger' honouring legendary German palaeontologist Peter Wellnhofer who spent his career working on German pterosaurs. Petrodactyle is a very complete skeleton with nearly every bone preserved and in remarkable detail.

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Butterflies and moths share 'blocks' of DNA dating back more than 200 million years, new research shows.

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Ice Age saber-tooth cats and dire wolves experienced a high incidence of bone disease in their joints, according to new research.

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An international team of researchers has chosen the location which best represents the beginnings of what could be a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene Working Group have put forward Crawford Lake, in Canada, as a Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) for the Anthropocene. A GSSP is an internationally agreed-upon reference point to show the start of a new geological period or epoch in layers of rock that have built up through the ages.

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A new study reveals the iconic extinct Megalodon, or 'megatooth shark', was a rather slow cruiser that used its warm-bloodedness to facilitate digestion and absorption of nutrients.

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Humans began altering environments long before records were kept of the things that lived in them, making it difficult for scientists to determine what healthy ecosystems should look like. Researchers show the recent fossil record preserves a reliable snapshot of marine environments as they existed before humans.

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Movement in the Earth's tectonic plates indirectly triggers bursts of biodiversity in 36 million-year cycles by forcing sea levels to rise and fall, new research has shown.

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Research shows global cooling of the climate 10 million years ago led to an explosion of diversity in terrestrial orchids.

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Extinct dwarf hippos that once roamed Madagascar lived in forests rather than open grasslands preferred by common hippos on mainland Africa. The findings suggest grasslands that now cover much of the enormous island off the eastern coast of southern Africa were a relatively recent change facilitated by people rather than a natural habitat sustained in part by these famously large vegetarians.

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Researchers describe a 500 million-year-old tunicate fossil species. The study suggests that the modern tunicate body plan was already established soon after the Cambrian Explosion.

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Birds are the only group of dinosaurs that survived the asteroid-induced mass extinction 66 million years ago. But not all the birds alive at the time made it. Why the ancestors of modern birds lived while so many of their relatives died has been a mystery that paleontologists have been trying to solve for decades. Two new studies point to one possible factor: the differences between how modern birds and their ancient cousins molt their feathers.

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Biomechanical studies on the arachnid-like front 'legs' of an extinct apex predator show that the 2-foot (60-centimeter) marine animal Anomalocaris canadensis was likely much weaker than once assumed. One of the largest animals to live during the Cambrian, it was probably agile and fast, darting after soft prey in the open water rather than pursuing hard-shelled creatures on the ocean floor.

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An international team has, for the first time, accurately determined the age of the East Anatolian fault, allowing geologists to learn more about its seismic history and tendency to produce earthquakes.

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The lower jaws of lizards, birds, fish and even dinosaurs are comprised of multiple bones per side. Yet mammals diverged from all other vertebrates and settled on just one bone, repurposing the extra bones into a more elaborate inner ear, perhaps the better to hear. The single bone per side, fused in primates into one jawbone, makes the jaw more rigid. A paleontologist asks, Did the stiffer, rigid jaw make mammals more successful?

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Scientists have filled a major gap in the state's fossil record -- describing the first known Jurassic vertebrate fossils in Texas. The weathered bone fragments are from the limbs and backbone of a plesiosaur, an extinct marine reptile.

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Scientists have been mystified as to why animals are missing in much of the fossil record. Researchers have now developed a new method to determine if animals really were absent during certain geological eras, or if they were present but too fragile to be preserved.

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A Cretaceous origin for placental mammals, the group that includes humans, dogs and bats, has been revealed by in-depth analysis of the fossil record, showing they co-existed with dinosaurs for a short time before the dinosaurs went extinct.