1+ day, 13+ hour ago   (267+ words) New research from the Natural History Museum at the University of Oslo suggests ichthyosaurs’ rib cages may have done a job modern whale ribs don’t: acting as ballast to help them dive....

1+ week, 1+ day ago   (410+ words) For several decades, paleontologists have described Miracinonyx trumani -- an extinct species of cheetah-like felid that roamed the North American prairies and steppe terrains more than 13,000 years ago -- as North America’s answer to the African cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus)....

1+ week, 1+ day ago   (34+ words) Researchers tracking grunts, whimpers and laughter across two geographically separated chimpanzee populations found that vocal differences sharpen with age....

1+ week, 4+ day ago   (505+ words) Paleontologists studying a fossil unearthed in southern Manitoba, Canada, have identified what they believe are two bite marks on the internal skeleton of the ancient giant cephalopod Enchoteuthis, offering rare evidence of predator-prey interactions in the Cretaceous seas that once…...

1+ week, 5+ day ago   (698+ words) A pair of thylacines, a male and female, c. 1905. Image credit: Smithsonian Institutional Archives / E. J. Keller, National Zoological Park. Also known as the Tasmanian tiger or the marsupial wolf, the thylacine was a carnivorous marsupial and the apex predator in Tasmania. The…...

2+ week, 1+ day ago   (115+ words) An incomplete fossilized skull that has sat in the collections of the Natural History Museum of Denmark since the 19th century has turned out to represent a previously unrecognized species of glyptodont (genus Glyptotherium) that once roamed South America....

3+ week, 2+ day ago   (388+ words) A new genus and species of sauropterygian reptile that lived during the Triassic period, some 245 million years ago, has been identified from a nearly complete skeleton found in China. Sauropterygians were a highly successful lineage of paddling marine reptiles that…...

3+ week, 2+ day ago   (502+ words) For nearly 110 years, biologists have puzzled over why domestic cats’ kidneys are packed with unusually large numbers of fat-storing structures called lipid droplets. Professor Masao Miyazaki of Iwate University and colleagues suggest that these kidney droplets serve as a chemical…...

3+ week, 3+ day ago   (579+ words) Dr. Ian Towle, a researcher with the Biomedicine Discovery Institute at Monash University, proposes folding nearly 5 million years of hominin fossils into the genus Homo, arguing that traits once used to separate species — big brains, tool use — no longer hold…...

3+ week, 4+ day ago   (527+ words) A Neanderthal pelvis — the basin-shaped ring of bones at the base of the spin — discovered decades ago may help explain an unusual feature of modern human anatomy: why the pelvises of men and women are shaped so differently. “Until the…...