Modern flamingoes employ filter feeding and their feces is, as a result, rich in remains of microscopically small aquatic prey. Very similar contents are described from more than 150-million-year-old pterosaur droppings, according to a recent paper in PeerJ. This represents...
A University of Bristol academic has succeeded where countless cryptographers, linguistics scholars and computer programs have failed—by cracking the code of the 'world's most mysterious text', the Voynich manuscript.
Although the purpose and meaning of the manuscript had eluded scholars...
The crab family just got a bunch of new cousins—including a 95-million-year-old chimera species that will force scientists to rethink the definition of a crab.
An international team of researchers led by Yale paleontologist Javier Luque announced the discovery of...
For centuries dogs and humans have developed close relationships, that in many cases, have solidified each other as family. The close bond between humans and domesticated dogs can be traced back to some of New Mexico's earliest settlers. But...
A topic of considerable interest to paleontologists is how dinosaur-dominated ecosystems were structured, how dinosaurs and co-occurring animals were distributed across the landscape, how they interacted with one another, and how these systems compared to ecosystems today. In the...
The ancient Incan sanctuary of Machu Picchu is considered one of humanity's greatest architectural achievements. Built in a remote Andean setting atop a narrow ridge high above a precipitous river canyon, the site is renowned for its perfect integration...
It has long been thought that the brain size of anthropoid primates—a diverse group of modern and extinct monkeys, humans, and their nearest kin—progressively increased over time. New research on one of the oldest and most complete fossil primate...
A research team co-led by a scientist at New Zealand's University of Otago has sequenced the first complete mitochondrial genome of a 2500-year-old Phoenician dubbed the "Young Man of Byrsa" or "Ariche". This is the first ancient DNA to...
Many dinosaur species are known from scant remains, with some estimates suggesting 75% are known from five or fewer individuals. Auroraceratops rugosus was typical in this regard when it was named in 2005 based upon a single skull from...
A 24-tonne dinosaur may have walked in a 'high-heeled' fashion, according to University of Queensland research.
UQ Ph.D. candidate Andréas Jannel and colleagues from UQ's Dinosaur Lab analysed fossils of Australia's only named Jurassic sauropod, Rhoetosaurus brownei, to better understand how...
An analysis of a 160,000-year-old archaic human molar fossil discovered in China offers the first morphological evidence of interbreeding between archaic humans and Homo sapiens in Asia.
The study, which appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, centers on...
