Geology, features and articles | Educational Science

Jan 17, 2023

Bloom entombed in amber is the largest fossilized flower ever found

Scientists have officially identified the largest fossilized flower ever recorded: a nearly 40 million-year-old flower entombed in a hunk of amber, according to a study published Jan. 12 in the journal Scientific Reports. The flower had been known for 150 years but has only now been definitively identified as a...

Jan 25, 2023

Never-before-seen pterosaur had nearly 500 teeth and ate like a flamingo

During the late Jurassic, a pterosaur with an unusually shaped bill lined with hundreds of tiny, hooked teeth stalked the waters of what is now Bavaria, Germany. The now-extinct animal likely gulped down its seafood prey while wading in ancient ponds and lakes, just like flamingos chow down today, a...

Feb 22, 2023

Giant ancient fish that likely preyed on humans' ancestors unearthed in South Africa

About 350 million years ago, long before the dinosaurs stalked the planet, a gigantic fish with deadly fangs hunted river waters on the ancient southern supercontinent Gondwana, a new study finds. This fish, measuring up to 9 feet (2.7 meters) long, is the largest bony fish on record from the...

Feb 24, 2023

3 million years ago, this brutish giant petrel likely eviscerated dead seals with its knife-like beak

About 3 million years ago, giant petrels terrorized the skies and seas of the Southern Hemisphere with their deadly hooked bills and piercing eyes, a new study on a previously unknown bird species finds. The discovery — based on a well-preserved skull and weathered humerus (upper wing bone) of the...

Mar 10, 2023

Ancient platypus-like fossil could rewrite the history of egg-laying mammals

Around 70 million years ago, a small, furry, platypus-like creature shuffled along the banks of an ancient lake. This would not have been a remarkable occurrence, except for one thing: The lake was in present-day Argentina, not Australia. The creature, dubbed Patagorhynchus pascuali, is the oldest fossil of the egg-laying...

Mar 16, 2023

Oops, this 300 million-year-old 'blob' fossil was upside down. It's not a jellyfish after all.

Often, a discovery isn't so much about gathering new information as it is about looking at something from a new perspective. That's not always simple — except in the case of a newly described fossil sea anemone, when it was as simple as turning a presumed jellyfish fossil upside down....

Mar 17, 2023

Oldest 'fish-lizard' fossils ever found suggest these sea monsters survived the 'Great Dying'

Ancient fish-lizards were swimming around in Earth's oceans 250 million years ago, long before scientists thought they first emerged, a new study finds. Researchers discovered the fossilized remains of an ichthyosaur on Spitsbergen, a remote Arctic island in the Svalbard archipelago in Norway in 2014. Ichthyosaurs are an extinct, fish-like...

Mar 21, 2023

Ancient marsupial sabertooth had eyes like no other mammal predator

Despite having eyes as wide-set as a cow's and surprisingly long upper-canine teeth with roots tunneling deep into its skull, the marsupial sabertooth proved to be an effective carnivore, a new study finds. This ferocious marsupial is an extinct mammal from South America scientifically known as Thylacosmilus atrox. Scientists from...

Mar 21, 2023

Trilobites had a hidden third eye, new fossils reveal

Trilobites, a group of extinct marine arthropods, had a hidden third eye — and sometimes even a fourth or fifth, new research suggests. Paleontologists knew that, like other arthropods such as insects and spiders, these hard-shelled prehistoric sea creatures had a pair of compound eyes, which they used to see...

May 2, 2023

462 million-year-old fossilized eyes and brains uncovered in 'secret' Welsh fossil site

An extraordinary secret fossil spot in Wales contains the preserved eyes and brains of 462 million-year-old creatures hidden amidst a hoard of unknown species, a new study finds. Last year, weird bramble snout fossils were documented at the site called Castle Bank, but new research published May 1 in the...

May 5, 2023

Scientists reveal face of 10-foot 'killer tadpole' that terrorized Earth long before the dinosaurs

By piecing together fragments of an ancient skull, scientists have reconstructed the haunting face of a 330 million-year-old crocodile-like tadpole creature, revealing not only what it looked like but also how it may have lived. Scientists have known about the extinct species, Crassigyrinus scoticus, for a decade. But because all...

Jul 11, 2023

Hidden 36 million-year-long cycles may fuel biodiversity on Earth, ancient rocks reveal

The massive slabs of slowly-moving rock just under Earth's surface — known as tectonic plates — may drive bursts of marine biodiversity every 36 million years, a new study finds. As tectonic plates slide over the mantle, Earth's inner rocky layer above the core, they cause sea levels to rise...

Jul 18, 2023

400,000-year-old mammoth tusk found sticking out of the ground in English quarry

A fossil hunter has discovered a mammoth tusk that is believed to be more than 400,000 years old sticking out of a rocky quarry in east England. The tusk, which is roughly 4 feet (1.2 meters) long, belonged to a steppe mammoth (Mammuthus trogontherii) — the second-largest species of mammoth...

Jul 18, 2023

Final moments of dinosaur and mammal's epic 'mortal combat' battle preserved by volcanic eruption

A small badger-like mammal and a young bipedal dinosaur were locked in mortal combat around 125 million years ago before being entombed by a sudden volcanic eruption, creating a stunning fossil that perfectly preserves their fight to the death. The epic fossil was unearthed from the Liujitun fossil beds in...

Aug 4, 2023

500 million-year-old worm with 'shuriken' spikes named after gigantic 'Dune' sandworms

A newfound, 500-million-year-old fossilized sea worm has been unearthed in northern Utah. This ancient worm would have glided through the ocean during the Cambrian period (541 million to 485.4 million years ago), which was marked by a surge of new life on Earth sometimes dubbed the Cambrian explosion. The new...