Paleontogly

New research by a team of scientists from the University of Exeter and elsewhere offers an illuminating insight into iridescent colors found on the earliest known lepidopterans, which lived on our planet 200 million years ago (Mesozoic era). Ecological restoration of moths in the Cretaceous Burmese amber forest. Image credit: Dinghua …

According to a study released this week in the journal PLoS ONE, an isolated bone from the lower jaw of a prehistoric marine reptile found in Somerset, UK, belongs to one of the largest animals ever. Giant ichthyosaurs Shonisaurus. Image credit: Nobumichi Tamura. Fossil collector Paul de la Salle found …

The mystery behind how birds browse might finally be fixed: it’s not the iron in their beaks supplying a magnetic compass, however a recently found protein in their eyes that lets them “see” Earth’s electromagnetic fields. These findings come courtesy of 2 brand-new papers – one studying robins, the other …

An international team of paleontologists from the University of Edinburgh, Staffin Museum and Chinese Academy of Sciences has discovered a new dinosaur tracksite at Rubha nam Brathairean (Brothers’ Point) on the Isle of Skye, Scotland. Photograph and line drawing of a sauropod footprint, one of the most striking at Brothers’ …

According to a new study, Saniwa ensidens — an extinct monitor lizard that lived in what is now Wyoming 51-49 million years ago (Eocene epoch) — had four eyes, a first among known jawed vertebrates. The third and fourth eyes refer to pineal and parapineal organs, eye-like photosensory structures on …

A team of paleontologists from Yale University, Smithsonian Institution and Johns Hopkins University has discovered a new species of reptile that lived 200 million years ago during the Triassic period, in what is now Connecticut in the United States. An artist’s rendering of Colobops noviportensis. Image credit: Michael Hanson. Dubbed …

Archaeopteryx is an iconic fossil species with feathered wings from the Late Jurassic of Germany. The question of whether this dino-bird was an elaborately feathered ground dweller, a glider, or an active flyer has fascinated paleontologists for many years. European Synchrotron Radiation Facility researcher Dennis Voeten and colleagues have now …

A new study shows how a group of ancient reptiles called captorhinids could detach their tails to avoid predation. This is an illustration of Captorhinus, a captorhinid reptile that lived during the Permian period, showing breakable tail vertebrae. Image credit: Robert Reisz. Captorhinids, also known as cotylosaurs, are a group …

An international research team led by Swedish Museum of Natural History scientists has found that stromatolites (solid, laminar structures of biological origin) from the 1.6-billion-year-old Chitrakoot Formation in India contain abundant fossilized oxygen bubbles. Fossilized bubbles and cyanobacterial fabric from 1.6 billion-year-old phosphatized microbial mats of the Chitrakoot Formation in …

The tiny fossil of a juvenile enantiornithe bird from the Early Cretaceous La Huérguina Formation of Spain is helping paleontologists understand how early birds came into the world in the age of dinosaurs. Artist impression of a juvenile enantiornithe bird. Image credit: Raúl Martín. The 127-million-year-old fossil is a chick …