Fossil Finds
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Fossil FindsFossil Finds · 21 Oct 2026Researchers have discovered traces of two different seas in fossil teeth from the floor of the North Pacific! The teeth’s outer layer reveals the water in which the fish once swam, while the interior records where the tooth later came to rest. From this, the team draws a proposal: a deep current from Antarctica gathers up the teeth, building deposits of mud packed with rare metals.
Fossil FindsFossil Finds · 16 Oct 2026Researchers have identified a silesaurid in India beyond doubt for the first time. This animal belonged to the dinosaurs’ closest relatives. The new species, *Rewasaurus minori*, is known from an incomplete skull with a lower jaw, where three teeth at the tip jut forwards at an angle. Yet two analytical methods give different answers about where the animal belongs in the dinosaur family.
Fossil FindsFossil Finds · 16 Oct 2026Researchers have identified a fossil discovered more than 20 years ago in north-eastern Italy as a new Triassic reptile, an animal from the period before the Jurassic and Cretaceous. An extraordinarily long neck bone put them on the trail. But only the remaining bones reveal why the incomplete skeleton matches no previously known species.
Fossil FindsFossil Finds · 15 Oct 2026Researchers have described a fossil right whale from Antwerp that adds weight to the size history of these marine giants: the early members of the bowhead whale lineage apparently shrank first, while right whales became giants only later, twice and independently. The researchers infer this from a reconstruction of body sizes. The skull, almost five million years old, belongs to a previously unknown genus and species.
Fossil FindsFossil Finds · 15 Oct 2026Researchers have described the oldest known skeleton of an ancient stem-group deer from central Japan — complete with antlers! The animal lived around 18 million years ago and belongs to a new species named *Procervulus mizunami*. Until now, deer with forked antlers from this period were known only from Europe. Now it is clear: one of the very first was already roaming East Asia.
Fossil FindsFossil Finds · 14 Oct 2026A Brazilian researcher has brought together new dinosaur finds from the south of his country and revealed that the first dinosaurs began as outsiders. In the Triassic, more than 220 million years ago, the land belonged to the ancient relatives of mammals and the kin of crocodiles. Between them, two-legged newcomers darted through the undergrowth and soon produced the first apex predators among the dinosaurs.
Fossil FindsFossil Finds · 12 Oct 2026Resin oozes from a tree trunk, trapping a wasp in its grip. The resin became Baltic amber, preserving a scientific first: *Paleolelaps draco* is the first fossil wasp from the chalcidoid family Diparidae and also its oldest known representative. Until now, researchers knew this family only from living species.
Fossil FindsFossil Finds · 12 Oct 2026Around 85 million years ago, a frog lived on a floodplain in what is now Hungary, with two bony spikes rising from the back of its head. A newly discovered skull of *Hungarobatrachus szukacsi* places this horned frog firmly in the world of the dinosaurs. It also shakes up its family tree: the animal may belong to a group of frogs from the Southern Hemisphere.
Fossil FindsFossil Finds · 9 Oct 2026An amphibian paddles through a lake in what is now Moravia, at the very beginning of the Permian period. Its original fossil is very probably lost, but new finds from Zbýšov and Moravský Krumlov rescue the species: *Moraverpeton remesi* becomes *Branchiosaurus remesi*. A new replacement fossil now serves as the benchmark, while Branchiosaurus makes its first appearance in the Permian of the Boskovice Basin.
Fossil FindsFossil Finds · 8 Oct 2026A shallow, muddy lagoon in what is now southern France preserved the remains of a Jurassic turtle that researchers have now identified as a new species: *Caesaria templaria*. Two fossils from the limestone of Canjuers even establish a new genus. They come from the youngest Jurassic turtle fauna known in Europe.
Fossil FindsFossil Finds · 8 Oct 2026Seven pairs of long spines jut from its flanks, while 13 pairs of legs carry its flat body across the seabed below. For more than half a billion years, these legs lay hidden in rock until an X-ray scan brought them to light. They belong to *Dianhaia heptacantha*, a previously unknown arthropod — a relative of modern crustaceans and insects — from the Chengjiang fossil site in southern China.
Fossil FindsFossil Finds · 7 Oct 2026A long, narrow jaw snaps at prey in the warm, shallow sea east of present-day Cairo. The prehistoric crocodile it belonged to lies in the same limestone from which the Great Sphinx was carved — and spent decades under the wrong name. A new study now shows that the animal was not closely related to the false gharial, a living crocodilian from Southeast Asia.
