EARLY EARTH

News About The Primordial Earth

1,835 articles

Preshistoric plumage patterns
Oct 30, 2015 (SPX)
An undergraduate University of Alberta paleontology student has discovered an Ornithomimus dinosaur with preserved tail feathers and soft tissue. The discovery ...
Dinosaurs used nasal passages to keep brains cool
Oct 30, 2015 (SPX)
"My work represents the first test of the hypothesis that the elaborated nasal passages of large dinosaurs functioned as efficient heat exchangers," explained J...
Lost giant poop disrupts whole planet
Oct 28, 2015 (SPX)
Giants once roamed the earth. Oceans teemed with ninety-foot-long whales. Huge land animals - like truck-sized sloths and ten-ton mammoths - ate vast quantities...
Extinction of Pleistocene herbivores induced major vegetation and landscape changes
Oct 28, 2015 (SPX)
The extinction of large herbivores such as mammoths could explain massive prehistoric changes in vegetation and landscape structure. But it has wider implicatio...
'Hypercarnivores' kept massive ancient herbivores in check
Oct 28, 2015 (SPX)
When the largest modern-day plant-eaters - elephants - are confined to too small an area, they devastate the vegetation. So 15,000 years ago, when the herbivore...
Surprising source for ancient life biomarker found
Oct 21, 2015 (SPX)
Stanford scientists have discovered a surprising source for an organic molecule used as an indicator for life on early Earth. Tetrahymanol is a fatty molecule, ...
Taking dinosaur temperatures with eggshells
Oct 20, 2015 (SPX)
Researchers know dinosaurs once ruled the earth, but they know very little about how these animals performed the basic task of balancing their energy intake and...
Prehistoric mammal likely suffered from hair disease
Oct 15, 2015 (SPX)
An international team of researchers, together with participation from the University of Bonn, has investigated a stunning fossil finding from the Cretaceous pe...
Estimates of dinosaur body temps shed new light on 150-year debate
Oct 15, 2015 (SPX)
Were dinosaurs really fast, aggressive hunters like the ones depicted in the movie "Jurassic World"? Or did they have lower metabolic rates that made them move ...
125M year-old mammal fossil reveals the early evolution of hair and spines
Oct 15, 2015 (SPX)
The discovery of a new 125-million-year-old fossil mammal in Spain has pushed back the earliest record of preserved mammalian hair structures and inner organs b...
Paleoclimate researchers find connection between carbon cycles, trends
Oct 13, 2015 (SPX)
Making predictions about climate variability often means looking to the past to find trends. Now paleoclimate researchers from the University of Missouri have f...
Evolution of kangaroo-like jerboas sheds light on limb development
Oct 12, 2015 (SPX)
With their tiny forelimbs and long hindlimbs and feet, jerboas are oddly proportioned creatures that look something like a pint-size cross between a kangaroo an...
125-million-year-old wing sheds new light on the evolution of flight
Oct 12, 2015 (SPX)
Some of the most ancient birds were capable of performing aerodynamic feats in a manner similar to many living birds, according to a new study of the fossil win...
Tiny ancient fossil from Spain shows birds flew over the heads of dinosaurs
Oct 09, 2015 (SPX)
Birds have an enormously long evolutionary history: The earliest of them, the famed Archaeopteryx, lived 150 million years ago in what is today southern Germany...
48-million-year-old horse-like fetus discovered in Germany
Oct 09, 2015 (SPX)
A 48 million year-old horse-like equoid fetus has been discovered at the Messel pit near Frankfurt, Germany according to a study published October 7, 2015 in th...
Short-lived, toothy mammal found in ancient North Pacific a mystery
Oct 09, 2015 (SPX)
The identification of a new species belonging to the marine mammal group Desmostylia has intensified the rare animal's brief mysterious journey through prehisto...
Ancient rocks record first evidence for photosynthesis that made oxygen
Oct 09, 2015 (SPX)
A new study shows that iron-bearing rocks that formed at the ocean floor 3.2 billion years ago carry unmistakable evidence of oxygen. The only logical source fo...
Researchers discover clues on how giraffe neck evolved
Oct 09, 2015 (SPX)
Scientists have long theorized that the long neck of modern-day giraffes evolved to enable them to find more vegetation or to develop a specialized method of fi...
Stability of surviving communities increases following mass extinction
Oct 07, 2015 (SPX)
By using fossil data, researchers have found that the structure of ecological communities leading up to the Permian-Triassic Extinction, one of the largest driv...
Study explores ancient ecosystem response to a 'big 5' mass extinction
Oct 07, 2015 (SPX)
As the planet faces the dawn of a sixth mass extinction, scientists are searching for clues about the uncertain road ahead by exploring how ancient ecosystems c...
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