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Categories: Geoscience: Geomagnetic Storms, Offbeat: Paleontology and Archeology

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Exceptional fossils with preserved soft parts reveal that the earliest mollusks were flat, armored slugs without shells. The new species, Shishania aculeata, was covered with hollow, organic, cone-shaped spines. The fossils preserve exceptionally rare detailed features which reveal that these spines were produced using a sophisticated secretion system that is shared with annelids (earthworms and relatives).

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What if the 'Market Economy' always existed? Archaeologists tried to answer this question by researching how much Bronze Age people used to spend to sustain their daily lives. Their results show that, starting at least 3,500 years ago, the spending habits of prehistoric Europeans were not substantially different from what they are today.

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Birds tend to be more colorful in the tropics, and scientists wanted to find out how they got there: if colorful feathers evolved in the tropics, or if tropical birds have brightly-colored ancestors that came to the region from somwhere else. Scientists built a database of 9,409 birds to explore the spread of color across the globe. They found that iridescent, colorful feathers originated 415 times across the bird tree of life, and in most cases, arose outside of the tropics -- and that the ancestor of all modern birds likely had iridescent feathers, too.

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Lampreys are one of only two living jawless vertebrates Jaws are formed by a key stem cell population called the neural crest New research reveals the gene regulatory changes that may explain morphological differences between jawed and jawless vertebrates.

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Danish Tycho Brahe was most famous for his contributions to astronomy. However, he also had a well-equipped alchemical laboratory where he produced secret medicines for Europe's elite.

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Brachiopods were evolving in new directions but this did not turn into evolutionary success in terms of the numbers of species, researchers have found.

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Rock art explored by archaeologists in the Colombian Amazon has provided an insight into the complex relationship between the earliest settlers on the continent and the animals they encountered.

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Scientists have discovered that the serrated edges of Komodo dragons' teeth are tipped with iron. The study gives new insight into how Komodo dragons keep their teeth razor-sharp and may provide clues to how dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex killed and ate their prey.

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A study looks at the maximum possible sizes of dinosaurs, using the carnivore, Tyrannosaurus rex, as an example. Using computer modelling, experts produced estimates that T. Rex might have been 70% heavier than what the fossil evidence suggests.

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Palaeontologists are helping resolve the evolution and ecology of Odaraia, a taco-shaped marine animal that lived during the Cambrian period. Fossils reveal Odaraia had mandibles. Palaeontologists are finally able to place it as belonging to the mandibulates, ending its long enigmatic classification among the arthropods since it was first discovered in the Burgess Shale over 100 years ago and revealing more about early evolution and diversification.

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Archaeological evidence from the world-famous Mesolithic site of Star Carr in North Yorkshire has shown that hunter-gatherers likely kept an orderly home by creating 'zones' for particular domestic activities.

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Space storms could soon be forecasted with greater accuracy than ever before thanks to a big leap forward in our understanding of exactly when a violent solar eruption may hit Earth. Scientists say it is now possible to predict the precise speed a coronal mass ejection (CME) is travelling at and when it will smash into our planet -- even before it has fully erupted from the Sun.

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Using genomes from 2,000 living humans as well as three Neanderthals and one Denisovan, an international team mapped the gene flow between the hominin groups over the past quarter-million years.

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An international research team has assembled the genome and 3D chromosomal structures of a 52,000-year-old woolly mammoth -- the first time such a feat has been achieved for any ancient DNA sample. The fossilized chromosomes, which are around a million times longer than most ancient DNA fragments, provide insight into how the mammoth's genome was organized within its living cells and which genes were active within the skin tissue from which the DNA was extracted. This unprecedented level of structural detail was retained because the mammoth underwent freeze-drying shortly after it died, which meant that its DNA was preserved in a glass-like state.

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The surprising discovery of a new species of extinct crocodile relative from the Triassic Favret Formation of Nevada, USA, rewrites the story of life along the coasts during the first act of the Age of Dinosaurs. The new species Benggwigwishingasuchus eremicarminis reveals that while giant ichthyosaurs ruled the oceans, the ancient crocodile kin known as pseudosuchian archosaurs ruled the shores across the Middle Triassic globe between 247.2 and 237 million years ago.

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The most complete dinosaur discovered in the UK in the last 100 years, with a pubic hip bone the size of a 'dinner plate', has been described in a new article.

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The United States has lost its only stand of the massive Key Largo tree cactus in what researchers believe is the first local extinction of a species caused by sea level rise in the country.

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A type of extinct kangaroo that lived during the Pleistocene around two and a half million to ten thousand years ago, known as the 'giant wallaby', was a poor hopper, a study has found.

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A newly discovered ancestor of Thescelosaurus shows evidence that these animals spent at least part of their time in underground burrows. The new species contributes to a fuller understanding of life during the mid-Cretaceous -- both above and below ground.

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Meet Gaiasia jennyae, the swamp creature with a toilet seat-shaped head. It lived 40 million years before the first dinosaurs, and it was the top predator in its ecosystem.