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Ordovician mass extinction cleared the way for jawed fishes to rise
Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Jan 13, 2026 About 445 million years ago, a global environmental crisis reshaped life in the oceans, drying out many shallow seas and driving one of the largest mass extinctions in Earth's history. During this Late Ordovician Mass Extinction, or LOME, glaciers spread over the southern supercontinent Gondwana, ocean chemistry changed dramatically, and an estimated 85 percent of marine species disappeared. A new analysis of early vertebrate fossils shows that this biological catastrophe set the stage for the lat ... read more |
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Signs of Ancient Life Turn Up in an Unexpected PlaceBoulder CO (SPX) Jan 14, 2026 Dr. Rowan Martindale, a paleoecologist and geobiologist at the University of Texas at Austin, was walking through the Dades Valley in the Central High Atlas Mountains of Morocco when she saw somethi ... more 
Ancient bee nests found inside Caribbean cave fossilsLos Angeles CA (SPX) Dec 17, 2025 Paleontologists working in a cave on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola have documented the first known example of fossil bee nests constructed inside pre-existing fossil cavities in mammal and othe ... more 
Fossil bird shows fatal stone-filled throat and hints of dinosaur bird survival storyLos Angeles CA (SPX) Dec 05, 2025 A small Cretaceous bird fossil from northeastern China preserves more than 800 tiny stones jammed in its throat, giving researchers rare evidence that this individual likely died by choking. The ani ... more 
'You don't need a big brain to fly' and other lessons from the first flying reptilesBlacksburg VA (SPX) Dec 05, 2025 Flight evolved only three times among vertebrates: in bats, birds, and the extinct flying reptile called pterosaurs. Of these, pterosaurs were the first to master flight, more than 215 million ... more |
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Ancient mantle revealed by 3.7-billion-year-old rocks in AustraliaSydney, Australia (SPX) Nov 06, 2025 Researchers at the University of Western Australia, along with colleagues from the University of Bristol, the Geological Survey of Western Australia, and Curtin University, examined feldspar crystal ... more 
Dinosaurs Thrived in New Mexico Up to Catastrophic End Cretaceous ImpactLos Angeles CA (SPX) Oct 27, 2025 New radiometric dating from a contested fossil site in New Mexico has established that dinosaurs remained both abundant and regionally varied right up until the Cretaceous asteroid impact sixty six ... more 
Planetary modeling reveals Jupiter's rapid early growth shaped Earth's formation zoneLos Angeles CA (SPX) Oct 27, 2025 Researchers from Rice University have demonstrated that Jupiter's initial expansion played a pivotal role in organizing the developing solar system. Using advanced hydrodynamic and dust-evolution si ... more 
Evidence suggests ancient Australians valued fossils rather than causing megafauna extinctionSydney, Australia (SPX) Oct 23, 2025 New research led by palaeontologists from UNSW Sydney undermines the long-held view that Indigenous Australians hunted the nation's giant prehistoric animals, instead presenting evidence that they m ... more 
Ancient sea creatures may have navigated using Earth's magnetic fieldBerlin, Germany (SPX) Oct 21, 2025 Some of the earliest marine organisms may have possessed a natural compass that helped them find their way through ancient oceans, according to a new study led by researchers from the Helmholtz Cent ... more |
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Nickel and urea hints reshape story of early Earth oxygen rise
Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Oct 10, 2025 The appearance of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere was a turning point in the history of our planet, forever transforming the environment and setting the stage for complex life. This event, known as the Great Oxidation Event (GOE), occurred roughly 2.1 to 2.4 billion years ago. Yet, although oxygenic photosynthesis in cyanobacteria is thought to have evolved hundreds of millions of years earlier than this event, oxygen levels in the atmosphere remained low for a prolonged period. Scientists have debated why ... read more 
USF study: Ancient plankton hint at steadier future for ocean lifeSt.Petersburg, FL (SPX) Oct 13, 2025 A team of scientists has uncovered a rare isotope in microscopic fossils, offering fresh evidence that ocean ecosystems may be more resilient than once feared. In a new study co-led by Patrick ... more |
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Ancient hot springs reveal how microbes thrived before Earth gained oxygen Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Sep 25, 2025 Earth was once an anoxic planet where oxygen was toxic to life, and researchers are turning to Japan's rare iron-rich hot springs to better understand how early microbes survived. A study led by Fat ... more 
Asteroid tells secrets of Earth's 'far wetter' building blocksTokyo (AFP) Sept 10, 2025 Earth's building blocks were "far wetter" than previously imagined, new analysis of tiny samples from a distant asteroid has suggested, overturning long-held assumptions about the early solar system. ... more 
Earth's chemistry settled early but later collision likely delivered water for lifeLos Angeles CA (SPX) Sep 01, 2025 Earths chemical make-up reached completion within the first three million years of the Solar Systems formation, according to a new study by the University of Berns Institute of Geological Sciences. ... more 
Paleontologists discover dinosaur-era crocodile in PatagoniaWashington DC (UPI) Aug 29, 2025 An interdisciplinary team of specialists from Argentina's National Scientific and Technical Research Council, or CONICET, discovered most of the skeleton - including the skull and jaws - of a large hypercarnivorous crocodile that lived in southern Argentina about 70 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous period. ... more
Hidden order uncovered in geological epochs across Earth's deep historyBerlin, Germany (SPX) Aug 25, 2025 A new international study published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters reveals that geological epochs and periods, while seemingly random, actually follow a hidden hierarchical structure. The wo ... more |
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