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Categories: Paleontology: Climate, Paleontology: Fossils

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An international research team examines a rich fossil bed in the renowned Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada's Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, where many 50-foot-long ichthyosaurs (Shonisaurus popularis) lay petrified in stone. The study offers a plausible explanation as to how at least 37 of these marine reptiles came to meet their ends in the same locality -- a question that has vexed paleontologists for more than half a century. The research presents evidence that these ichthyosaurs died at the site in large numbers because they were migrating to this area to give birth for many generations across hundreds of thousands of years.

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Fossilized microbial skins can give us a glimpse of how the climate was in the deep geological past. By discovering the 'missing link' between such fossil skins and the skins of living bacteria, researchers have greatly improved the accuracy of climate reconstructions and predictions.

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Climate change, rather than competition, played a key role in the ascendancy of dinosaurs through the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic periods.

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Sediment cores obtained from Eifel maar sites provide insight into the presence of large Ice Age mammals in Central Europe over the past 60,000 years: Overkill hypothesis not confirmed. Herds of megafauna, such as mammoth and bison, have roamed the prehistoric plains in what is today's Central Europe for several tens of thousands of years. As woodland expanded at the end of the last Ice Age, the numbers of these animals declined and by roughly 11,000 years ago, they had completely vanished from this region. Thus, the growth of forests was the main factor that determined the extinction of such megafauna in Central Europe.

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Changes in Earth's orbit that favored hotter conditions may have helped trigger a rapid global warming event 56 million years ago. Researchers found the shape of Earth's orbit, or eccentricity, and the wobble in its rotation, or precession, favored hotter conditions at the onset of the PETM and that these orbital configurations together may have played a role in triggering the event.

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Discoveries at a major new fossil site in Morocco suggest giant arthropods -- relatives of modern creatures including shrimps, insects and spiders -- dominated the seas 470 million years ago.

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Analysis of teeth of extinct lemurs has revealed fascinating clues to the evolution of humans, a new study has found.

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While the Diprotodon -- the extinct megafauna species that is distantly related to wombats but was the size of a small car -- is commonly (but incorrectly) thought of as Australia's 'giant wombat', researchers have shed light on a large species that does belong in the modern-day wombat family. The complete skull of this true fossil giant wombat, found in a Rockhampton cave in Queensland, Australia and estimated to be around 80,000 years old, has been described for the first time.

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By assessing so-called 'flavors' of El Nino events in past climate records and model simulations, researchers have a clearer picture of El Nino patterns over the past 12,000 years and are able to more accurately project future changes and impacts of this powerful force.

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Modern Papuans' immune system likely evolved with a little help from the Denisovans, a mysterious human ancestor who interbred with ancient humans, according to a new study.

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Researchers have been studying the effects of the sudden decrease in global temperatures that occurred about 8,200 years ago, the so-called 8.2-kiloyear event, with the help of mineral deposits present in White Moon Cave in Northern California. New indications show that oscillations between extreme wetness and aridity in California were closely linked with the occurrence of wildfires. The researchers have concluded that such events are likely to become more common in the face of human-induced climate change.

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Researchers have tested the biting efficiency of Smilodon, an extinct species of carnivore close to the extant felines. Using high-precision 3D scans and simulation methods, the team has just revealed how these animals managed to bite despite the impressive length of their teeth.

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How is the weather changing as a consequence of global warming? Climate archives provide valuable glimpses into past climate changes, especially into the processes that drive our planet from one climate setting to the next. For humans and ecosystems, however, time spans of just weeks to years, which are the scope of weather events, are often most important. Using an newly developed and tested analytical method these two aspects have now been merged, and the impacts of the most recent global warming on seasonal temperature fluctuations have been described.

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Two-million-year-old DNA has been identified -- opening a 'game-changing' new chapter in the history of evolution. Microscopic fragments of environmental DNA were found in Ice Age sediment in northern Greenland. Using cutting-edge technology, researchers discovered the fragments are one million years older than the previous record for DNA sampled from a Siberian mammoth bone. The ancient DNA has been used to map a two-million-year-old ecosystem which weathered extreme climate change.

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There's a new branch on the tree of life and it's made up of predators that nibble their prey to death. These microbial predators fall into two groups, one of which researchers have dubbed 'nibblerids' because they, well, nibble chunks off their prey using tooth-like structures. The other group, nebulids, eat their prey whole. And both comprise a new ancient branch on the tree of life called 'Provora,' according to a new article.

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Scientists have solved a decades-long mystery as to why ancient tetrapods -- amphibian-like creatures that lived over 300 million years ago -- preserved in one of Ireland's most important fossil sites seemingly had their bones cooked after they died.

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For over a century, one of the earliest human fossils ever discovered in Spain has been long considered a Neanderthal. However, new analysis from an international research team dismantles this century-long interpretation, demonstrating that this fossil is not a Neanderthal; rather, it may actually represent the earliest presence of Homo sapiens ever documented in Europe.

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A chance find of an unstudied Antarctic sediment core has led researchers to flip our understanding of how often ice ages occurred in Antarctica.

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The Southern Hemisphere is stormier than the Northern -- but no one knew why. A new study lays out the first concrete explanation for this phenomenon. Researchers found two major culprits: ocean circulation and the large mountain ranges in the Northern Hemisphere.

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Major ice streams can shut down, shifting rapid ice transport to other parts of the ice sheet, within a few thousand years. This was determined in reconstructions of two ice streams, based on ice-penetrating radar scans of the Greenland ice sheet.