Did lightning provide food for life’s beginning?
Lightning bolts can be deadly or destructive, but some researchers propose they might also have supplied essential elements for the first…
Category: Paleobiology
How smart were the dinosaurs?
A researcher from Vanderbilt University inferred dinosaur intelligence from fossilized skulls. She used the skulls to estimate the number of…
Could we find evidence for life in fool’s gold?
Scientists looked for biosignatures in fool's gold from a Mars-like environment . They found small filaments within the rock that may once…
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are way older than penicillin
Remember the classic chases where Wile E. Coyote tries to catch Roadrunner but is often outsmarted? It turns out that bacteria have to…
What the velociraptor’s brain tells us about its diet
The brain of one of popular culture’s most infamous dinosaurs helps to clarify its diet and hearing range.
Giant dinosaur tracks found in a cave in France
Sauropods were previously thought to have had their heyday in the Late Jurassic period. Recent fossil evidence says it was probably much…
This fossil is the last common ancestor of worms
When did simple life become more complex, such as the modern animals we see today? A recent study may have uncovered evidence for one of…
Ancient Microbes reveal Earth’s response to the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs
Scientists study organic material from the Chicxulub crater to identify the microbes that lived within it, to understand what happened to…
Scientists discover cockroach fossils from the dinosaur age
Two new species of cave dwelling cockroaches have been discovered from a cave in Myanmar. They have been dated to be 99 million years old…
A new way to look for signs of ancient life on Earth and Mars
The Mars 2020 mission involves sending a rover, named Perseverance, to Mars to look for evidence of past life on that planet. Perseverance…