Latest Phanerozoic Stories
According to a new report, the ancient humanoid species referred to as the "hobbit" closely resembled man and not apes as some experts thought.
Millions of years ago, a bizarre, pouched super-predator terrorized South America with huge saber-like teeth.
Pangea, a single supercontinent, dominated the Earth during the Permian era with animal and plant life dispersed broadly across the land. This disbursement is documented by identical fossil species found on multiple modern continents.
Although scientists have known since the middle of the 19th century that the tropics are teeming with species while the poles harbor relatively few, the origin of the most dramatic and pervasive biodiversity on Earth has never been clear.
Four new studies have taken a new look at the diets of our ancestors and have found their behavior was a “game changer” for early humans some 3.5 million years ago.
A fossil previously used as a stepping stone for mules has deepened the mystery surrounding the evolution of ichthyosaurs, dolphin-like marine reptiles that were contemporaries of the dinosaurs.
New light has been shed on the diet and food acquisition strategies of some of the earliest human ancestors in Africa.
Dietary flexibility may have been an important factor, giving wolves and bears an edge over saber-toothed cats and cave lions, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
One of the largest studies on some of the most complete remains of early human ancestors has culminated in a comprehensive look into how an early hominid (Australopithecus sediba) moved and chewed.
Mapinguari The mapinguari or mapinguary is an ape-like cryptid said to inhabit the Amazon rainforests of Brazil and Bolivia. It is also known as the Isnashi. Several attempts to find physical evidence that the creature exists have been conducted. Samples have been gathered, but when analyzed it was found to be from known animals and some of the castings of tracks were inconclusive. Native folklore has described the creature as having only one eye, long claws, backward feet, a...
Palaeovespa is a genus of wasps that holds seven species, all of which are extinct. Two of the species were discovered in Baltic amber deposits from Europe dating back to the middle Eocene era, while the other five were found in Florissant Formation amber from the Priabonian stage era in Colorado in the United States. This genus, and four of its species, was first described in 1906 by Dr. Theodore Cockerell in the Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Cockerell described all but one...
Australopithecus africanus was an early hominid, an australopithecine that lived between roughly 3.03 and 2.04 million years ago in the later Pliocene and early Pleistocene. Au. africanus was of slender build and was thought to have been a direct ancestor of modern humans. Fossil remains signify that Au. africanus was considerably more like modern humans that Au. afarensis, with a more human-like cranium permitting a larger brain and more humanoid facial features. This hominid has only been...
Thescelosaurus, meaning “godlike”, “wondrous”, or “marvelous” and “lizard” was a genus of small ornithopod dinosaur that appeared at the very end of the Late Cretaceous period in North America. It was a member of the last dinosaurian fauna before the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event around 65.5 million years ago. The completeness and preservation of many of its specimens illustrate that it might have preferred to live near streams. This bipedal ornithopod is known from...
Daspletosaurus, meaning “frightful lizard” is a genus of tyrannosaurid theropod dinosaur that resided in western North America between 77 and 74 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous Period. Fossils of the only named species were found in Alberta, although other possible species from Alberta and Montana wait for description. Daspletosaurus is closely related to the much larger and more current Tyrannosaurus. Like most of the known tyrannosaurids, it was a multi-ton bipedal...
- To befool; deceive; balk; jilt.
- An illusion; a trick; a cheat.