Geology, features and articles | Educational Science

Oct 31, 2011

Oldest Hairy Microbe Fossils Discovered

Ancient rock deposits, laid down between two massive ice ages, reveal the oldest known fossils for two types of single-celled creatures: Tube-shelled foraminifera and hairy, vase-shape ciliates. Both closely resemble microbes living today. But the climate they lived in may have been quite different. The fossils appear in limestone deposited...

Apr 30, 2011

Social Beasts: 35 Ancient Marsupials Found in Grave

A large trove of bones found in Bolivia is giving researchers a new look at the social lives of ancient marsupials. These ratlike animals lived in large packs, a very uncommon scenario in modern marsupials. We found a large number of complete skeletons from marsupial mammals. It's very exceptional, said...

Jul 31, 2012

Gallery: The World's Weirdest Balancing Rocks

Balancing rock (Image credit: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 | Penny Mayes)This balancing rock formation is one of the Brimham rocks, located on Brimham Moor in North Yorkshire, England. Made of millstone grit, it was carved over time through water and wind erosion. The bottom layer eroded fastest. Balancing column (Image...

May 31, 2012

Iceland Offers Rare Glimpse of Tectonic Meeting Place

On a recent sunny afternoon in Iceland, a group of scientists filed off a bus and took in a view of geological grandeur that, nearly everywhere else on Earth, would require a deep-diving submersible. They were standing in Thingvellir, a sweeping valley surrounded by majestic cliffs; the valley is one...

May 31, 2012

Dino Dealer Says He's Not a 'Smuggler,' Calls Fossil 'Political Trophy'

A Florida fossil dealer who prepared the skeleton of a tyrannosaur and attempted to sell it at auction, questions assertions that the fossils were taken illegally from Mongolia, and says the dispute over its ownership has brought financial ruin on his family. Imagine watching your house burn down with everything...

Apr 30, 2012

Up For Auction: A Gallery of Natural History Specimens

Tyrannosaurus bataar (Image credit: Wynne Parry)This nearly complete Tyrannosaurus bataar is set to go on auction. It is one of many rare natural history specimens Heritage Auctions plans to sell on May 20. An Asian relative of the North American Tyrannosaurus rex, this specimen's estimated value is between $1.4 and...

Mar 31, 2012

Fossils Show Surprising Life of Ancient Swimming Mollusks

Fossils found in a South Dakota cliff have revealed that ancient, free-swimming shelled creatures called ammonites were permanent residents around a methane seep at the bottom of the inland sea that divided the North American continent more than 65 million years ago. Methane and other chemicals, such as hydrogen sulfide,...

Jan 31, 2012

Why Colliding Continents Slow Down

As Earth's tectonic plates move across the planet's surface, the continents that sit atop them are carried along, sometimes smashing together for many millions of years at a time. As the continents mash against each other, their collision gradually slows. New research suggests that this slowing may be the work...

Dec 31, 2011

Fossils Reveal Secrets of Insects' Weird Ears

Various species of insects boast ears in the strangest places, including on their necks and under their wings. Now, a new examination of 50-million-year-old cricket and katydid fossils finds that these odd ears evolved before even the appearance of the predators that these ears can hear. Crickets, moths and other...

Sep 30, 2013

Tiny, Strange Primate Fossil Unearthed in Coal Mine

The fossilized jaw of a pint-size primate that lived about 35 million years ago in Asia has been unearthed in Thai coal mines. The new species, dubbed Krabia minuta, after the Krabi coal mines where it was found, was an ancient, extinct member of a group of primates called anthropoids,...

Jul 31, 2013

Trove of Ancient Marsupial Fossils Discovered in Australia

Paleontologists have uncovered a fossil field in Australia that fills a large gap in the continent's environmental history, and contains several previously unknown ancient species of marsupials and bats. Researchers at the University of New South Wales discovered the site near the Riversleigh fossil field, an UNESCO World Heritage site,...

Jul 31, 2013

Atmospheric Pressure: Definition & Facts

Books on meteorology often describe Earth's atmosphere as a huge ocean of air in which we all live. Diagrams depict our home planet as being surrounded by a great sea of atmosphere, a few hundred miles high, divided into several different layers. And yet, that part of our atmosphere that...

Jun 30, 2013

55-Carat Diamond Dazzles at NYC Museum

The dazzling 55-carat Kimberley Diamond makes its debut at the American Museum of Natural History in New York Thursday (July 11). The champagne-colored cape diamond was originally cut from a 490-carat stone found sometime before 1868 in the Kimberley Mine in South Africa. (A carat is a unit of weight...

May 31, 2013

Lost World Locked in Stone at Fossil Lake

With just two inhabited buildings and a population of five, Fossil, Wyo., is all but a ghost town today. But as far as ghosts go, the ones at Fossil are pretty remarkable — 50-million-year-old monitor lizards, stingrays and freakishly long-tailed turtles among them. Fossil showed promise of becoming a train-stop...

Apr 30, 2013

Smithsonian Digs Into Extraordinary Fossil Collection

This Research in Action article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation. This well-preserved fossilized tree hopper, flanked by two fossil crane flies, is one specimen from of an extraordinary fossil collection donated to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History by an amateur paleontologist between...