paleontology

A team of scientists dated the footprints along an extinct lake bed in New Mexico and found them to be between 21,000 and 23,000 years old — far older than reliable evidence has suggested to date.

Human ancestors got steadily larger over the last 1 million years. Our relatives living in colder places developed bigger bodies, a new study finds.

Scientists have identified an aggressive bone cancer — for the first time — in the fibula of a dinosaur that lived 76 to 77 million years ago. The diagnosis sheds new light on dinosaurs and disease.

A new study of dinosaur eggs, as well as a football-size egg from Antarctica, shows how some ancient creatures relied on soft shells rather than hard ones.

A new analysis of what were initially thought to be microbial fossils in Greenland suggests they might instead just be mineral structures created when ancient tectonic forces squeezed stone.

Modern birds are dinosaurs without toothy jaws, and with bigger brains. Newly published research fills in some of the missing links in their evolution.

Scientists have discovered the proboscis butterflies use to suck nectar from flowers existed before flowers did. So: What were ancient butterflies using their long, tongue-like suckers for?

The tick was with a feather from a dinosaur that lived in the Cretaceous Period. Modern ticks love to bite mammals, and scientists have long wondered what the tiny vampires ate millions of years ago.

Even after a Harvard team took into account differences in age and weight among ancient specimens and knees today, they found that modern humans tend to have more osteoarthritis.

They were ugly. And, unfortunately, they were not equipped with an anus. But the sand dwellers could be an important part of filling in our own early evolutionary tree.

The creature, which roamed ocean floors over 500 million years ago, went years without a definitive scientific classification. Now, researchers think the oddball finally has a group to call its own.

Early stages of dinosaur development remain a mystery. However, researchers have uncovered a new way to study the early stages using the teeth of fossilized dinosaur embryos.