8 March 2023
The Cambrian fossil Protomelission was identified in 2021 as a type of coral-like animal called a bryozoan, but new specimens make it look more like a kind of green algae
29 December 2022
New fossil discoveries show predatory marine reptiles from 200 million years ago may have been bigger than today’s blue whales – and that they evolved astonishingly rapidly
8 November 2022
Flowerless gymnosperms, such as conifer and ginkgo, ruled the Jurassic world before their flowering rivals, the angiosperms, became dominant. What caused the fall of one and the rise of the other?
20 July 2022
Analysis of inner ear canals from hundreds of modern and fossil animals shows that warm-bloodedness appeared abruptly in the late Triassic
20 July 2022
A fossil from 385 million years ago named Qikiqtania wakei shows that a descendant of early land animals lost its adaptations for land and became a more efficient swimmer
7 July 2022
A dinosaur discovered in Argentina has been identified as a new species. Meraxes gigas lived 20 million years before T. rex, but had a similarly large body, sharp teeth and proportionately small arms
31 March 2022
After the extinction of the dinosaurs, mammals took over and had room to evolve larger bodies, but their brains remained small to begin with
8 November 2021
More than half a billion years ago, tiny penis worms had learned to protect themselves by grabbing and living inside snail-like shells, like hermit crabs do today
14 August 2021
A 500-million-year-old comb jelly is so well-preserved that it’s possible to see it had a nervous system more complex than that of modern comb jellies
28 July 2021
The preserved remains of sponges found in Canada suggest that animals may have originated 350 million years earlier than we thought
