Extinct Species, features and articles | Educational Science

Dec 31, 2021

Did The Rock buy Stan, the most expensive Tyrannosaurus rex on record?

Did The Rock really buy Stan, one of the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex specimens on record, which sold for a record $31.8 million in October 2020 to an unknown buyer? Rumors swirled online this week after actor and XFL owner Dwayne The Rock Johnson appeared on NFL and ESPN's ManningCast...

Mar 20, 2023

Extinct 'Lord of The Rings' eagles had a 10-foot wingspan and probably could have carried a hobbit

An ancient hulk of an eagle that once soared over Australia shares similarities with the fictional giant eagles from J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy epic The Lord of the Rings, a new study on the extinct raptors shows. While the real-life giants weren't as enormous as their fictional counterparts (and...

Mar 23, 2023

Scientists want to clone an extinct bison unearthed from Siberian permafrost. Experts are skeptical.

Researchers in Russia recently completed a necropsy, or animal autopsy, on a stunningly intact extinct bison that was unearthed from Siberian permafrost. The tissues recovered during the dissection are so well preserved, the team believes the long-dead specimen could be cloned. But one expert told Live Science that it is...

Apr 10, 2023

25 of the strangest ancient sea monsters

From the creepiest Cambrian critters to massive marine reptiles, wonderfully weird sea creatures have inhabited our oceans for over half a billion years. We've put together a list of 25 of the strangest ancient sea monsters ever to have lived, all of which went extinct long before humans came along....

Apr 21, 2023

230 million-year-old bizarre-beaked reptile was a relative of modern-day crocodiles

During the late Triassic period roughly 230 million years ago, a squat reptile with a beak-like mouth lived in what is now Wyoming. Paleontologists identified the remains of the herbivorous reptile, which is a stem, or early archosaur and therefore a distant relative of modern-day birds and crocodiles, as a...

Apr 24, 2023

Mystery of prehistoric, alien-like tully monster deepens once more

Tully monsters haunted Earth's oceans 300 million years ago and left behind such bizarre fossils that researchers haven't even agreed on whether these strange creatures had backbones. Now, more than 60 years after the strange creature's discovery in 1958, a new investigation using 3D lasers finds that the Tully monster...

May 8, 2023

Mysterious 'golden' fossils from the Jurassic aren’t what they seem

It was long thought that pyrite — a shiny mineral also known as fool's gold — was the special ingredient that gave fossils embedded in Germany's Posidonia Shale their golden glow. But now scientists think something else is causing these fossils to shimmer. Earlier this year, a team of international...

May 12, 2023

Rhino-like 'thunder beasts' grew massive in the evolutionary blink of an eye after dinos died off

In the aftermath of the dinosaur-killing asteroid impact, a second explosion rocked the animal kingdom. This time, it was the mammals that blew up. Rhino-like horse relatives that had lived in the shadow of the dinosaurs became gigantic thunder beasts as suddenly as an evolutionary lightning strike, new research, published...

May 12, 2023

Long-extinct Tasmanian tiger may still be alive and prowling the wilderness, scientists claim

The completely unique, wolf-like Tasmanian tigers that thrived on the island of Tasmania before they went extinct in 1936 may have survived in the wilderness for far longer than previously thought, research suggests. There is also a small possibility they are still alive today, experts say. Tasmanian tigers, also known...

May 24, 2023

Fearsome saber-toothed giant dominated at dawn of 'Great Dying', but its reign was short-lived

At the dawn of the most devastating mass extinction in Earth's history 252 million years ago, species fought tooth and nail to survive in the changing environment. Ancient predators in particular, struggled ruthlessly to stay at the top of the food chain. Now, scientists have discovered that a tiger-size, saber-toothed...

Jun 1, 2023

Nearly 6 million-year-old 'elephant graveyard' unearthed in Florida

An ancient elephant graveyard chock-full of massive bones has been unearthed along what was once a prehistoric river in northern Florida. The fossils of these long-extinct beasts belong to gomphotheres — a relative of modern elephants — and date to about 5.5 million years ago, during the Miocene epoch. It...

Jun 1, 2023

Quarter-ton marsupial that ambled across Australia 3.5 million years ago was 'unlike anything alive today'

Scientists have uncovered the remains of an ancient, quarter-ton marsupial that once walked vast distances across Australia. The new fossils help shed light on mysteries surrounding other, even more gigantic extinct marsupials. The newly described species, Ambulator keanei, had a body plan similar to a bear or rhinoceros. It likely...

Jun 15, 2023

Could the megalodon still exist today?

From 20 million to 3.6 million years ago, Earth's oceans were dominated by an enormous species of shark called the megalodon. The scientific name, Otodus megalodon, means giant tooth — and it's easy to see why. With teeth up to three times the size of those of a great white...

Jun 19, 2023

Enormous 240 million-year-old sea monster had its head torn off in one clean bite

A giant predator that lived 240 million years ago was decapitated with a single, brutal bite from a deadlier creature, scientists have said. The beheaded animal, which had its neck ripped in half during the attack, belonged to the species Tanystropheus hydroides — a marine reptile that could grow to...

Jun 20, 2023

Deadly cyclone unearths fossils of giant marine creatures that lived 80 million years ago

A cyclone that battered New Zealand has uncovered the fossils of what appear to be enormous marine reptiles that lived 80 million years ago. The prehistoric remains were discovered at the Maungataniwha Native Forest after February's Cyclone Gabrielle hit the country's North Island, supercharging mountainous waterways that dislodged nearby rocks...