Geology, features and articles | Educational Science

Aug 18, 2023

'Fleeing vampire' haunted Jurassic oceans with glow-in-the-dark organs, fossil reveals

A bullet-shaped creature with luminous organs, eight arms and sucker attachments like a vampire squid haunted Earth's oceans 165 million years ago, a new study has found. Researchers in France discovered the species while using modern imaging techniques to re-analyze previously discovered fossils belonging to vampyromorpha — a group of...

Oct 23, 2023

Jurassic pliosaur 'megapredator' was a giant 'sea murderer'

A newfound member of a dynasty of pliosaur megapredators was at the top of the ocean food chain for 80 million years, a new study reveals. The newly described sea monster, named Lorrainosaurus, was a Jurassic (201 million to 145 million years ago) giant with a 4.3-foot-long (1.3 meters) jaw...

Oct 26, 2023

Scientists finally solve 390 million-year-old 'murder mystery' from an ancient supercontinent

Researchers have finally figured out what happened to a group of marine animals that died out on the ancient supercontinent Gondwana — and the finger points squarely at climate change. It turns out that the so-called Malvinoxhosan biota — an ancient group of water-dwelling animals — disappeared from Gondwana over...

Dec 13, 2023

Earliest known parasitic fungus discovered in fossilized plant frozen in time 400 million years ago

The oldest disease-causing fungus ever found has been discovered within a museum's fossil collections. Estimated to be 407 million years old, the newfound fungal plant pathogen, named Potteromyces asteroxylicola, is a filamentous fungus — a type of fungi commonly associated with infections. The parasitic fungus was found growing in an...

Jan 4, 2024

'Terror beast' fossils unearthed in Greenland are more than half a billion years old

A terror beast marine worm with a giant jaw dominated the seas more than 500 million years ago, exquisitely preserved fossils show. Scientists recently uncovered the fossils of the newfound species of carnivorous worm — named Timorebestia koprii, or terror beast — in northern Greenland and described it in a...

Jan 27, 2024

1.6-billion-year-old fossils push back origin of multicellular life by tens of millions of years

Groundbreaking fossils unearthed in China suggest that multicellular organisms arose earlier than scientists previously thought. The fossils, of what may be an ancient type of photosynthetic alga, are the oldest known multicellular eukaryotes, a group of organisms that contains a clearly defined nucleus full of packaged DNA. The fossils date...