EARLY EARTH - INDO DAILY

Paleontology: Diversification after mass extinction

Mar 04, 2019 (SPX)

Monte San Giorgio in the Swiss canton of Ticino is one of the most important known sources of marine fossils from the Middle Triassic Period (around 240 million...

500-million-year old worm 'superhighway' discovered in Canada

Mar 01, 2019 (SPX)

The sea bed in the deep ocean during the Cambrian period was thought to have been inhospitable to animal life because it lacked enough oxygen to sustain it. But...

Amoebae diversified at least 750 million years ago, far earlier than expected

Mar 01, 2019 (SPX)

The study, which was supported by Sao Paulo Research Foundation - FAPESP, revealed eight new ancestral lineages of Thecamoebae, the largest group in Amoebozoa. ...

Ancient rocks provide clues to Earth's early history

Feb 28, 2019 (SPX)

So when and where did O2 begin to build up on Earth? By studying ancient rocks, researchers have determined that sometime between 2.5 and 2.3 billion years ago,...

Ancient Rocks Provide Clues to Early History of Oxygen on Earth

Feb 27, 2019 (SPX)

So when and where did O2 begin to build up on Earth? By studying ancient rocks, researchers have determined that sometime between 2.5 and 2.3 billion years ago,...

Giant animals lived in Amazonian mega-wetland

Feb 27, 2019 (SPX)

The Pebas Formation was the home of the largest caiman and gavialoid crocodilian ever identified, both of which were over ten meters in length, the largest turt...

Did volcanoes kill the dinosaurs? New evidence points to 'maybe.'

Feb 25, 2019 (SPX)

"Everyone has heard that the dinosaurs died from an asteroid hitting the Earth," said Schoene, an associate professor of geosciences. "What many people don't re...

New species of tiny tyrannosaur foreshadows rise of T. rex

Feb 25, 2019 (SPX)

Meet Moros intrepidus, a small tyrannosaur who lived about 96 million years ago in the lush, deltaic environment of what is now Utah during the Cretaceous perio...

Half-a-billion-year-old weird wonder worm finally gets its place in the tree of life

Feb 25, 2019 (SPX)

Such organisms are found world-wide at sites like the famous Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rockies, where their soft bodies are preserved intact. The strange an...

Were dinosaurs killed off by asteroid or volcanoes? It's complicated

Feb 21, 2019 (AFP)

But scientists say the story may not be quite that simple, and that massive volcanic eruptions over hundreds of thousands of years may have contributed to the d...

Newly discovered marsupial lived among Arctic dinosaurs

Feb 20, 2019 (SPX)

The thumb-sized animal, named Unnuakomys hutchisoni, lived in the Arctic about 69 million years ago during the late Cretaceous Period. Its discovery, led by sci...

Ancient fossilized tracks suggest multicellular life far older than previously thought

Feb 14, 2019 (SPX)

"The preservation of fossilized tracks, or trace fossils, suggests that multicellular organisms that could move around to reach food resources may already have ...

New dinosaur with heart-shaped tail provides evolutionary clues for African continent

Feb 14, 2019 (SPX)

The OHIO team identified and named the new species of dinosaur in an article published this week in PLOS ONE. The new dinosaur, the third now described from sou...

Undersea gases could superheat the planet

Feb 14, 2019 (SPX)

Scientists say events that began on the ocean bottom thousands of years ago so disrupted the Earth's atmosphere that it melted away the ice age. Those new findi...

Giant prehistoric shark Megalodon disappeared earlier than thought

Feb 13, 2019 (UPI)

After surveying fossil data related to previous attempts to pinpoint the disappearance of Otodus megalodon, scientists realized most earlier efforts were flawed...

Researchers investigate a billion years of coexistence between plants and fungi

Feb 07, 2019 (SPX)

Virginia Tech professor emeritus Khidir Hilu, along with a team of 13 researchers with complementary expertise in botany, mycology, paleontology, and bioinforma...

Paleontologists diagnose 240-million-year-old proto-turtle with bone cancer

Feb 07, 2019 (UPI)

Researchers have discovered evidence of an aggressive malignant tumor in the femur of a 240-million-year-old proto-turtle -- the oldest case of bone cancer in a...

First fossil feather didn't belong to famed Archaeopteryx bird

Feb 04, 2019 (UPI)

New analysis suggests the feather belonged to an unknown feathered dinosaur -- not Archaeopteryx. Shortly after its discovery in Germany in 1861, scientists des...

Iguana-sized dinosaur cousin discovered in Antarctica

Feb 01, 2019 (SPX)

"This new animal was an archosaur, an early relative of crocodiles and dinosaurs," said Brandon Peecook, a Field Museum researcher and lead author of a paper in...

Earth's largest extinction event likely took plants first

Feb 01, 2019 (SPX)

About 252 million years ago, with the planet's continental crust mashed into the supercontinent called Pangaea, volcanoes in modern-day Siberia began erupting. ...