Latest Phanerozoic Stories
Researchers working at Shuitangba, a site in Yunnan Province, China, announced the discovery of a fossilized ape cranium that is highly unique due to the fact that it comes from a juvenile of the species and at a time when apes had become extinct in most of Eurasia.
Scientists say they have discovered a 350-million-year-old scorpion fossil, recovered from Devonian formation layers in Grahamstown, South Africa.
Mass extinction certainly sounds like it would be the end of the line, and perhaps even evoke images of the end of the world. However, new research suggests that the end can also be the beginning.
The 160 million-year-old fossil of a newly described species has revealed new details about the most successful mammalian lineage in Earth’s history.
A new study, led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography, reveals the look of the oceans will change drastically in the future as the coming greenhouse world alters marine food webs and gives certain species advantages over others, if history's closest analog is any indication.
According to a new report, the ancient humanoid species referred to as the "hobbit" closely resembled man and not apes as some experts thought.
Millions of years ago, a bizarre, pouched super-predator terrorized South America with huge saber-like teeth.
Pangea, a single supercontinent, dominated the Earth during the Permian era with animal and plant life dispersed broadly across the land. This disbursement is documented by identical fossil species found on multiple modern continents.
Although scientists have known since the middle of the 19th century that the tropics are teeming with species while the poles harbor relatively few, the origin of the most dramatic and pervasive biodiversity on Earth has never been clear.
Four new studies have taken a new look at the diets of our ancestors and have found their behavior was a “game changer” for early humans some 3.5 million years ago.
Mapinguari The mapinguari or mapinguary is an ape-like cryptid said to inhabit the Amazon rainforests of Brazil and Bolivia. It is also known as the Isnashi. Several attempts to find physical evidence that the creature exists have been conducted. Samples have been gathered, but when analyzed it was found to be from known animals and some of the castings of tracks were inconclusive. Native folklore has described the creature as having only one eye, long claws, backward feet, a...
Palaeovespa is a genus of wasps that holds seven species, all of which are extinct. Two of the species were discovered in Baltic amber deposits from Europe dating back to the middle Eocene era, while the other five were found in Florissant Formation amber from the Priabonian stage era in Colorado in the United States. This genus, and four of its species, was first described in 1906 by Dr. Theodore Cockerell in the Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Cockerell described all but one...
Australopithecus africanus was an early hominid, an australopithecine that lived between roughly 3.03 and 2.04 million years ago in the later Pliocene and early Pleistocene. Au. africanus was of slender build and was thought to have been a direct ancestor of modern humans. Fossil remains signify that Au. africanus was considerably more like modern humans that Au. afarensis, with a more human-like cranium permitting a larger brain and more humanoid facial features. This hominid has only been...
Thescelosaurus, meaning “godlike”, “wondrous”, or “marvelous” and “lizard” was a genus of small ornithopod dinosaur that appeared at the very end of the Late Cretaceous period in North America. It was a member of the last dinosaurian fauna before the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event around 65.5 million years ago. The completeness and preservation of many of its specimens illustrate that it might have preferred to live near streams. This bipedal ornithopod is known from...
Daspletosaurus, meaning “frightful lizard” is a genus of tyrannosaurid theropod dinosaur that resided in western North America between 77 and 74 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous Period. Fossils of the only named species were found in Alberta, although other possible species from Alberta and Montana wait for description. Daspletosaurus is closely related to the much larger and more current Tyrannosaurus. Like most of the known tyrannosaurids, it was a multi-ton bipedal...
- One who brings meat to the table; hence, in some countries, the official title of the grand master or steward of the king's or a nobleman's household.