Looking at hundreds of bones collected over the decades from Winton in central West Queensland, palaeontologists have described 12 new specimens belonging to sauropods. The “Leo” dig site at Winton, Queensland in 2021. Credit: Supplied, Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural History. The study sheds light on the diversity of these massive ancient planet eaters in Australia. Sauropods were the largest dinosaurs, known for their long necks and tails. The 12 new sauropod specimens are detailed in a paper published in the open-access journal PeerJ. The research was led by University Colleg ..read more

A new analysis of the fossil record shows that dinosaurs bucked an ecological trend known as Bergmann’s rule. The rule was put forward by German biologist Carl Bergmann in 1847. It suggests that larger animals are found in colder environments. It is most often applied to birds and mammals. For example, the largest penguins are found in Antarctica. A bit further north, the average penguin size – such as the Magellanic penguin – are a bit smaller. Galapagos penguins – the furthest north, virtually right on the equator – are among the smallest in the world. Similar trends can even be seen in hum ..read more

To make it in a tough world, the first dinosaurs had to grow up fast according to a study published in the open-access PLOS ONE journal. Fossils analysed in this study came from the Ischigualasto Formation in northwestern Argentina. The rocks in the geological formation date between 231 million and 229 million years old. It is about this time that the first dinosaurs emerged. Over the course of millions of years, dinosaurs became the dominant life on land. Their size and adaptability saw them occupy every ecological niche and they ruled for more than 150 million years. Having rapid growth rat ..read more

Fossils of two strange creatures found in northeastern China show the earliest dental diversification among ancestors of mammals. One of the species, Feredocodon chowi, was found in the Daohugou Formation in Inner Mongolia. The rocks in which they were found date to the Middle Jurassic (174–163 million years ago). Two specimens assigned F. chowi were examined in a paper published in Nature. Another paper published in Nature analysed both F. chowi and another new species, Dianoconodon youngi. The bones of D. youngi were found in the Lufeng Formation in the Yunnan province. These rocks are olde ..read more

Scientists have finally solved the mystery of why ancient human ancestors made stone tools from the same quarries for hundreds of thousands of years. The answer turns out to have been something of an elephant in the room. “The question is, why do we find rock outcrops that were used for the production of flint tools, surrounded by thousands of stone tools, and next to them rock outcrops containing flint that was not used for the production of tools?” asks Professor Ran Barkai from Tel Aviv University, Israel. “Ancient humans required three things: water, food and stone. While water and food a ..read more

A haul of 1,200 bones and bone fragments of at least 5 Triceratops horridus individuals has been dug up over the course of 10 years at a quarry in Wyoming, US. The palaeontologists were looking for Tyrannosaurus rex bones in 2013, but instead unearthed the largest group of Triceratops fossils ever found. Triceratops are often depicted as the arch nemesis of T. rex. Both species lived right at the end of the Cretaceous period (145–66 million years ago), becoming extinct when an asteroid spelled the end of the reign of the dinosaurs. Evidence suggests that these ancient herbivores were a food s ..read more

Blue whale populations are slowly recovered from whaling, but Earth’s largest animals now confront new challenges from global warming, pollution, shipping and disrupted food sources. On average, blue whales are 27m long can weigh more than 130t. The longest ever was 33.58m, while the heaviest weighed 199t. Despite their immense size, keeping track of whale numbers and migration is no mean feat. The animals are currently listed on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as “Endangered.” A major new study has assessed the number, distribution and genetics of blue whale populations from around t ..read more

A new lab-based study shows that a single grain of ice – blown into space by subsurface boiling – could contain enough material to detect signs of life on one of the moons in our solar system. An instrument that has this capability is going to be launched in the direction of some key candidates later this year. Ice-encrusted oceans of some of moons in our solar system are the leading candidates in the search for extraterrestrial life. Artist’s rendition of Saturn’s moon Enceladus with hydrothermal activity on the seafloor and cracks in the crust. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. Jupiter and Saturn a ..read more

Researchers have found the fossilised skull of the largest ever river dolphin. While found in the Peruvian Amazon, the ancient dolphin’s closest living relatives are in South Asia. Pebanista yacuruna would have measured between 3 and 3.5 m. The skull of the extinct animal was found in 2018 along the Rio Napo near Peru’s border with Colombia, more than 1,000 km northeast of the capital Lima. It is described in a paper published in the journal Science Advances. Its name is derived from a mythical aquatic people believed to inhabit the Amazon basin called the “yacuruna” in the Quechuan language ..read more

An ancient amphibian ancestor found in Texas has been named Kermitops gratus in honour of iconic Muppet, Kermit the Frog. The animal is known from a fossil skull which was in the collection of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. It is described as a new species of proto-amphibian in a paper published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. Calvin So (right), a doctoral student at George Washington University, and Arjan Mann (left), a Smithsonian postdoctoral palaeontologist and former Peter Buck Fellow, with the fossil skull of Kermitops in the Smithsonian’s Nation ..read more