Uruguayan scientists say they have uncovered fossil evidence of the biggest species of rodent ever found, one that scurried across wooded areas of South America about four million years ago, when the continent was not connected to North America.
Category Archives: Paleontology
Mammoth Blondes
Museum dioramas typically portray mammoths as having shaggy brown coats, but some of the hairy beasts might have been blonde, raven-haired or red-bodied in real life, thanks to a gene that controls hair color in humans and other mammals.
Ancient Pandas Competed With Giant Apes For Bamboo
New fossils suggest ancient pandas ompeted with the largest known apes for habitat and food nearly half a million years ago on the tropical coast of southern China, scientists say. The 400,000-year-old fossils of a giant panda were uncovered alongside the remains of a titan-sized, ancient ape called Gigantopithecus blacki, said Huang Wanbo, a paleontologist at Beijing’s Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology.
Granddaddy Of Kangaroos
A 25-million-year-old fossilized skeleton of a kangaroo is shedding new light on the evolution of the iconic Australian animal, scientists say.The nearly complete specimen reveals a creature that once plucked fruit from Australian rain forests and bounded on all fours like a modern-day possum.
Whales Evolved From Tiny Deerlike Mammals
The nearest ancestors of Earth’s largest-ever animals were tiny deerlike creatures that jumped into rivers to flee prehistoric predators, a new study suggests.These semiaquatic, raccoon-size mammals dubbed Indohyus lived in southern Asia some 48 million years ago.
Mummified Hadrosaur Found In North Dakota
Preliminary studies of the 67-million-year-old hadrosaur, named Dakota, are already altering theories of what the ancient creatures’ skin looked like and how quickly they moved, project researchers say.
Bahamas Sinkhole
David Steadman, a University of Florida ornithologist, said the fossils allowed him to reconstruct the ancient plant and animal communities of the Bahamas, as well as the impact that humans had when they first arrived there, which he detailed in the latest issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Sea Monster Found On Svalbard
The reptile appears be the same species as another sea predator whose remains were found nearby on Svalbard last year. His team described those 150-million-year-old remains as belonging to a short-necked plesiosaur measuring more than 30 feet — “as long as a bus … with teeth larger than cucumbers.”
Dwarf Hippo Graveyard On Cyprus
Cypriot and Greek scientists are trying to unravel the riddle of a collapsed cave brimming with the fossilized remains of extinct dwarf hippopotamuses that were descendants of a group believed to have migrated here as far back as a quarter million years ago.
Panda Fossils Found On Hainan
BEIJING – Chinese archaeologists have found fossils that prove pandas once roamed what is now the southern Chinese island of Hainan, state media said on Wednesday.