Exceptionally preserved fossils from the Ediacaran period challenge what scientists thought was possible in sandstone. In the fossil record, creatures without hard shells or skeletons, such as ...

A fossil plant smaller than a fingernail, collected more than a century ago from a Scottish rock bed, is reshaping the story ...

In Earth's fossil record, soft-bodied organisms like jellyfish rarely stand the test of time. What's more, it's hard for any ...

Fossils are the remains or traces left behind by life forms that existed long ago and are normally found in sedimentary rocks. They are usually very small, like micro shells or pollen, and sometimes ...

About 66 million years ago, just before the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs, a fish chewed up and spit out some sea creatures. Unbeknownst to that fish, its rejected meal was preserved in ...

In a world that looked nothing like today’s, long before the rise of the dinosaurs or even the first trees, giant living towers stretched skyward from the Earth’s surface. Some reached heights of 26 ...

Some 445 million years ago, life on Earth was forever changed. During the geological blink of an eye, glaciers formed over ...

In the fossil record, trees typically are preserved with only their trunks. They don't usually include any leaves to show what their canopies and overall forms may have looked like. In a new study, ...

Arnau Bolet is at Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Cerdanyola del Vallès E08193, Spain, and in the School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol ...

Non-marine crabs began to live on land at least 100 million years ago, according to recently published research by evolutionary biologists, including Javier Luque, a researcher at the Harvard Museum ...

It's frustrating and gross, but we’ve all done it. We’ve all stepped in poop. Most of us would like to forget the experience. But 33 million years ago, now-extinct life forms stepped in it, and ...