11 October 2022
A fossil previously categorised as a hyena-like mammal is actually an early member of a group of sabre-toothed carnivores called nimravids. Its advanced features suggest these animals evolved rapidly
18 November 2020
The femur of Sahelanthropus tchadensis, generally regarded as the oldest known hominin, has finally been scientifically examined. The results suggest it walked on four legs, so may not actually be a close human relative at all
4 November 2020
An ancient squid-like animal with a shell like a 1.5-metre-long paperclip may have lived to be 200 years old
15 October 2020
Homotherium, a sabre-toothed cat that lived in the Americas and Eurasia during the most recent ice age, was a swift and social predator, according to its genes
6 August 2020
Tanystropheus had a neck three times the length of its body, and a new analysis of its skull suggests it lived in the sea, where it ambushed prey
28 July 2020
The first mammals probably mostly ate insects, but bite marks on a bone fragment suggest they occasionally scavenged meat from giant dinosaur carcasses
20 May 2020
A man who lived in Siberia about 14,000 years ago is the earliest known person in the world to have the specific mix of genes seen in people with Native American ancestry, analysis of DNA from a fossilised tooth has revealed
30 April 2018
A plant fossil that lay unnoticed for a century is unexpectedly large for something so old, and it could upend our ideas about the evolution of land plants
23 April 2018
Earth’s air suddenly got a lot more oxygen around 1.6 billion years ago and that could have triggered the evolution of large multicellular organisms
23 April 2018
A pair of mass extinctions struck in quick succession just before the dinosaur era, and the birth of a mountain range in South Africa may have been partly to blame
