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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.
DinosaursDinosaurs · 16 Oct 2026New York – On 27 October, Sotheby’s will auction a roughly 67-million-year-old predatory dinosaur skeleton from Montana, with an estimate of six to nine million US dollars! In 2023, “Jodi” was still considered a juvenile of the most famous predator of all. Now it is called Nanotyrannus: a separate, smaller predator from the same period. However, the evidence behind the new name comes from other skeletons, not Jodi.
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.
EvolutionEvolution · 14 Oct 2026Palaeontologists have redrawn the evolution of the dinosaur spine: when early dinosaurs gained an extra vertebra in the sacrum, the part of the spine firmly joined to the pelvis, they lost one from the back! According to the new analysis, the additional pelvic vertebrae were remodelled trunk vertebrae that had shifted from the back into the pelvis. Evolution did not invent new vertebrae for the job.
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.
EvolutionEvolution · 13 Oct 2026Researchers have discovered three new species of bone-eating worms around the Iberian Peninsula! They found the animals on cow and pig bones that they had deliberately sunk to depths of 90 to 1,200 metres. *Osedax* worms have neither mouths nor guts and depend on bacteria capable of digesting the organic material inside bones.
EvolutionEvolution · 13 Oct 2026Researchers studying 146 living and recently extinct crown birds have uncovered a startling contradiction: when birds lose the ability to fly, the semicircular canals in their inner ears — tiny ring-shaped tubes responsible for balance — change only slightly. Yet they respond strongly to a remodelled skull. For avian evolution, this means the supposed signature of flight in the ears of early birds probably arose as the joint between the head and neck was rebuilt.
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.
