Millions of ancient fossils were discovered underneath a California high school...
Construction at a high school uncovered millions of fossils dating back nearly 9 million years.The fossils include unique species of fish that had never been found in the area before.The discovery is reshaping views on California geology with the possibility of extinct islands. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed…
A sinkhole in South Dakota is packed with mammoth fossils that...
Amid the evergreen forests and picturesque hilltops in the Black Hills of South Dakota is a massive sinkhole time machine.Tens of thousands of years ago, dozens of mammoths met their doom in this sinkhole death trap deep enough to fit a four-story building.Today, the sinkhole is a treasure trove for paleontologists who get a rare…
Scales helped reptiles conquer the land—when did they first evolve?
Enlarge / Upper left: a reconstruction of Diadcetes. Below: false color images of its foot and tail prints. Right: the section of the tail that left the print.Voigt et. al./Urweltmuseum GEOSKOP. Their feet left copious traces in muddy Permian floodplains, leaving tracks scattered across ancient sediments. But in one slab of such trackways, scientists uncovered…
Bizarre egg-laying mammals once ruled Australia—then lost their teeth
Enlarge / The echidna, an egg-laying mammal, doesn't develop teeth. Outliers among mammals, monotremes lay eggs instead of giving birth to live young. Only two types of monotremes, the platypus and echidna, still exist, but more monotreme species were around about 100 million years ago. Some of them might possibly be even weirder than their…
The largest marine reptile ever could match blue whales in size
Blue whales have been considered the largest creatures to ever live on Earth. With a maximum length of nearly 30 meters and weighing nearly 200 tons, they are the all-time undisputed heavyweight champions of the animal kingdom. Now, digging on a beach in Somerset, UK, a team of British paleontologists found the remains of an…
Renovation relic: Man finds hominin jawbone in parents’ travertine kitchen tile
Enlarge / Reddit user Kidipadeli75 spotted a fossilized hominin jawbone in his parents' new travertine kitchen tile.Reddit user Kidipadeli75 Ah, Reddit! It's a constant source of amazing stories that sound too good to be true... and yet! The latest example comes to us from a user named Kidipadeli75, a dentist who visited his parents after…
It’s a fake: Mysterious 280 million-year-old fossil is mostly just black...
Enlarge / Discovered in 1931, Tridentinosaurus antiquus has now been found to be, in part, a forgery.Valentina Rossi For more than 90 years, scientists have puzzled over an unusual 280 million-year-old reptilian fossil discovered in the Italian Alps. It's unusual because the skeleton is surrounded by a dark outline, long believed to be rarely preserved…
A 13-year-old found a 5-million-year-old fossil, and now there’s a new...
A 13-year-old fossil enthusiast found a walrus skull in a boulder in northern California in 2011.Eleven years later, a paleontologist has named the formerly unknown, now extinct species after him.The toothless walrus likely lived near temperate bays in California about 5 million years ago. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in a personalized…
Massive skull of prehistoric sea monster that was the ‘ultimate killing...
A seven-foot skull belonging to an ancient sea monster was discovered in Dorset.The pliosaur was an apex predator that roamed the ocean 150 million years ago.The skull contains 130 razor-sharp teeth that could instantly kill its prey. Loading Something is loading. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're…
Fossil found on the side of the road is a new...
Henry Sharpe / AMNH In 2015, Deborah Shepherd returned to the site where she and other volunteers had worked on a public fossil dig with family members. That’s when she saw it: a fossil lying there, exposed on the surface. Most people would not have recognized it for what it was: It wasn’t a skull,…
