If you even sort of paid attention in geography class you already know that the Earth didn’t always look like it does today. At one point in our planet’s history the various continental chunks of land merged into the supercontinent known as Pangea. Eventually, that mass of land broke up into individual pieces once more, …
These days, if you notice a bit of dandruff on your shoulder you just stop by the drug store and grab some specialized shampoo, but 125 million years ago the birds and feathered dinosaurs just had to deal with it. A new study published in Nature Communications has revealed that the ancient creatures shed their …
Many modern birds perch atop their eggs in order to keep them warm and safe from the elements. Doing so gives the species an edge and increases the chances of successful hatching. But what if the bird doing the sitting weighs over 3,000 pounds? That’s a question that an international team of researchers attempted to …
There’s plenty that archaeologists and paleontologists can learn from the bones and other artifacts left behind by ancient creatures and mankind’s own ancestors. Researchers can figure out what they looked like, where they lived, and who ate who, but painting a detailed picture of more advanced behavior is much more challenging. How ancient humans hunted, …
Have you ever wondered why land animals are so small today? Fossils have shown us that many dinosaurs were absolutely massive beasts, evolving over millions and millions of years to become huge, intimidating creature that could crush small animals under their mighty feet, and modern day mammals, by contrast, are tiny. Sure, elephants are big, …
The oceans that cover much of Earth today are filled with all kinds of interesting creatures, and while there’s plenty of dangerous aquatic animals that could end your life, they’re nothing compared to the ancient beasts that once dominated the seas. We’ve seen evidence of many “sea monsters” that lurked in the oceans millions of …
An ancient lizard that lived nearly 50 million years ago boasted a total of four eyes, according to a new report from scientists at Yale. The study, which was published in the journal Current Biology, describes how the four-eyed creature called Saniwa ensidens had both a traditional pair of peepers as well as two additional eyes …
Science fiction and documentaries have painted a rather consistent picture of the mighty Triceratops over the years. With its massive, shielded head and long, imposing horns, it was a defensive plant-eater that could gut a predator with a swift head butt if needed. Indeed, with such natural weaponry, the creature would likely have been incredibly …
Every kid grows up loving dinosaurs. As we grow older we listen to science teachers explain how dinosaurs lived and died, we watch documentaries about the age when reptiles ruled the land, and by the time we reach adulthood most of us like to think we have a pretty good handle on what things were …
Over centuries, paleontologists have been able to paint a pretty vivid picture of what life was like on Earth before humans arrived, but long-extinct creatures don’t actually leave all that much behind. For beasts like mammoths which roamed the land tens of thousands of years ago, bones are often all that we have left, but …
