Nick Garland

An international team of researchers has uncovered new evidence illuminating the evolutionary origins of one of the defining features of mammals: the ability to suckle and consume milk during infancy.

Zircon crystals date the Ames impact in Oklahoma to about 370 million years ago, close to one of the worst mass extinctions in the oceans.

A small feathered dinosaur from China's Liaoning province, about 120 million years old, suggests the flight equipment of birds and their closest relatives evolved separately.

Paleontologists have long tried to explain how the carbon isotopes of some dinosaur's teeth were so much higher than others. They have recently solved this dietary puzzle.

The first known series of footprints from an adult Tyrannosaurus rex has been found in North Dakota by a team of scientists.

Scientists have identified a giant new dinosaur from a construction site in Brazil that reached about 20 meters long and lived 120 million years ago. Its surprising evolutionary ties to a Spanish dinosaur suggest its ancestors crossed ancient land connections between Europe, Africa, and South America.

A newly described amphibious stem-insect fossil had 24 legs, shedding light on how the ancestors of modern insects moved from water onto land.

Imagine the Western Plains of North America, from Texas to Alaska, submerged under a broad, shallow seaway. To the west lay the ancestral Rocky Mountains. To the east were low-lying plains traversed by large, sluggish rivers.

New work argues the first bird reached takeoff speed with two or three leaps rather than a standing launch.

As paleontologists find more and more feathered dinosaur fossils, the evidence continues to mount for the evolution of birds from theropod dinosaurs. Despite this, the quarrel between researchers with two very different ideas rages on.

A local government in Spain reports that the footprint of a large carnivorous reptile called Isochirotherium has been found in Catalonia.

A humpback whale got awfully close to a marina in Alaska. What you will see in the following video is an example of bubble-net feeding in a humpback whale. The hunting technique generally allows groups of humpbacks to eat their prey with less effort.

Scientists never expected to find remains of saber-toothed cats in the grasslands of Argentina's Pampas region. But research indicates these animals hunted the plains of South America during the last ice age.

For 130 years a giant tree-like stump had baffled paleontologists. Was it a plant, an alga, a lichen or something entirely different? A fossil dug up in Saudi Arabia gave the last word in a new study – it was a humongous fungus.

It wasn’t until 2003 that Japanese scientists officially named Omura’s whale on the basis of nine carcasses hauled in by ships. No one had ever seen a live Omura’s whale in the wild – that is, until recently.

The giraffe’s long neck must have evolved from a short-necked ancestor. For the first time ever, scientists have used fossil evidence to explain this transformation.

Just when you thought modern ruminants like the kudu, ibex, and blackbuck had crazy horns, a trip back in time to look at the extinct mammals with the craziest headgear might change your perspective.

A cooling, drying climate over the last 40 million years turned North America from a warm and wooded place into the drier, open plains we know today. A new study shows how dogs evolved in response to those changes, demonstrating that predators are sensitive to climate change because it alters the hunting opportunities in their habitat.

The identification of a new species belonging to the marine mammal group Desmostylia has intensified the rare animal's brief mysterious journey through prehistoric time, finds a new study.

Researchers in Germany have unveiled the results of their analysis of a remarkable fossil – a female horse-like mammal called Eurohippus that contains a very well-preserved fetus.

After the Chicxulub meteor hit the Earth and dinosaurs vanished from the planet, a group of small mammals hiding for millions of years emerged from the shadows. This is the story of one of those mammals called Kimbetopsalis. Source: The Conversation

Despite being one of the most forbidding places on Earth, the area now occupied by the Gobi Desert was once host to a dizzying array of plants and animals. Some of the most unexpected dinosaurs have been found locked in the red rocks of this arid corner of Mongolia.

Wandering an arid region of the ancient supercontinent of Pangea about 260 million years ago, the pre-reptile Bunostegos akokanensis is the oldest known creature to have walked upright on all fours, according to a newly published study.

Back in April this year, the Internet was abuzz about a newly announced dinosaur that looked like something straight out of a Tolkien book. It’s been called the “dragon dinosaur” or the “batwing dinosaur” and its wings are truly something we’ve never seen before. But what is it?

University of Otago paleontology researchers are continuing to rewrite the history of New Zealand’s ancient whales by describing two further genera and three species of fossil baleen whales.

An early relative of long-necked dinosaurs like Brontosaurus from South Africa has now been described. Pulanesaura is helping paleontologists rewrite the early history of sauropods.

Scientists use DNA analysis on Megaloceros (or Irish Elk) bones to determine that the Giant Deer survived well past the peak of the Ice Age in Southern Germany.

Scientists at The Field Museum have identified a new species of pre-mammal in what is now Zambia. Thanks to a unique groove on the animal’s upper jaw, it was dubbed Ichibengops (Itchy-BEN-gops), which combines the local Bemba word for scar (ichibenga), and the common Greek suffix for face (ops). Put simply: Scarface.

It has long been believed that the hearing bone called the stapes, one of the smallest bones in the ancestors of mammals, shows no differences between species.

An international team led by researchers from the Evolutionary Studies Institute (ESI) at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, has obtained an age from rocks of the Great Karoo that shed light on the timing of a mass extinction event that occurred around 260 million years ago.

Russian scientists caught some extremely rare footage of a colossal squid off the coast of Antarctica.

It’s not an underwater rabbit, it’s a marine animal called a nudibranch. And the Japanese are going crazy for them.

Wendiceratops becomes the second horned dinosaur unveiled this year. It is the oldest relative of Triceratops and the oldest dinosaur of its group with a big nose horn.

Amargasaurus is the weirdest of the long-necked dinosaurs, and among the strangest of all dinosaurs. It had high rows of spines that projected from the top of its neck and back, the equivalent of a dino mohawk. Its bony mane would make the band members of The Misfits melt with jealousy.

Paleontologists studying Smilodon fatalis, or the saber-toothed cat, have discovered that its dagger-like teeth grew at twice the rate of living big cats.

On the scale from normal to weird, a little worm called Collinsium is off the charts. Hailing from the Cambrian Period of China, it joins a strange menagerie of sea life from long ago.

While not technically the grandfather of Brontosaurus, Sefapanosaurus becomes the newest dinosaur found in Africa. It is an ancestor of the well-known long-necked dinosaurs, the sauropods.

Triceratops, the three-horned frilled plant-eating dinosaur that everyone knows and loves, may have had a secret weapon in its 800 teeth. New research shows there was a lot more to Triceratops’ bite than meets the eyes.

Antarctica was once quite a warm continent, even tropical. Over the last few decades, paleontologists have found fossils there from four dinosaurs including the fearsome meat-eater Cryolophosaurus.

According to new research, miniature long-necked dinosaurs once inhabited a small island during the Jurassic Period in Germany until a meat-eating army of dinosaurs mounted a full-scale invasion.

A strange dog-sized dinosaur from Romania was once thought to be part of a group that includes Velociraptor. But a new study suggests a different identity.

Animals emerged from the water and clamored onto land more than 300 million years ago, but paleontologists are looking for even more details about the transition. A healed broken bone that later fossilized is offering some new and unexpected clues.

A new 205 million-year-old fossil reptile named after a spell cast by Severus Snape of the Harry Potter films, has been unearthed in Southwest England.

New research into the feeding habits of a long-extinct mysterious fish reveals that it may be the first animal ever known to use vertical thrashing of external teeth to kill its prey. And it had some seriously crazy teeth.

Friend of Earth Archives, Zach Coker, is about to do something no one has done before. He is designing a life-size Velociraptor skeleton to be 3D printed and loaned or sold to classrooms around the world. In order to accomplish this goal, Zach needs your help. Please read his description of Dinosaurs in the Classroom below and consider donating to his GoFundMe campaign.

Scientists in North Carolina have unearthed a new species of aetosaur, a group of armored relatives of crocodiles that lived around the world during the Triassic Period more than 200 million years ago.

How did whales become one of the few groups of mammals to go back into the sea? Ambulocetus bridges the gap between small terrestrial ancestors and the sea-faring behemoths more recognizable as whales.

A strange, small cone-shaped fossil baffled scientists for a very long time. Now that it has found its family, you’ll never guess its closest living relative.

New ichthyosaur fossil discoveries in Arctic Russia indicate that these marine reptiles were adapted to life in icy polar regions.

For more than 100 years dust collected on fossils in Yale’s Peabody Museum marked as unidentified bird specimens. It wasn’t until recently that paleontologists discovered these were no bird fossils at all. They were baby marine reptiles called mosasaurs whose details hinted at an unexpected behavior.

Insects are resilient creatures. After a global apocalypse there may just be a showdown between the cockroaches and the beetles. New research suggests beetles could hold the edge in a fight to survive.

From the ichthyosaurs to the mosasaurs to the plesiosaurs, the marine reptiles of the Mesozoic were an interesting group of animals. Dolichorhynchops wasn’t the biggest but it sure packed a mean set of chompers.

Originally mistaken for a flying reptile (pterosaur) when it was discovered in the 1800s, Tanystropheus had a neck that would put the Kayan giraffe women of Myanmar to shame.

How in the world did fish evolve into land-dwelling animals? Scientists knew that fish must have had to emerge from water on primitive feet but they couldn't find their missing link. Until they found Tiktaalik.

Two wonderfully weird animals from the last ice age of South America never had a real home in the mammal family tree. Through protein sequencing of fossil bones, scientists have found their closest living relatives.

In Triassic North Carolina, a 9-foot-tall bipedal crocodile relative ruled the land with a jaw full of knife-like teeth. Meet the "Butcher of Carolina."

Scientists described the fossil remains of a pterosaur from the Transylvania region of Romania. Its relatives include the biggest flying animals of all time.

Most flying reptiles are already bizarre. Nyctosaurus ups the ante with something approximating a huge deer antler on its head.

A brand new herbivorous dinosaur called Koshisaurus has been unearthed in Japan. It is only the sixth named species of dinosaur ever discovered on the archipelago.

Vandalism of natural treasures seems to be on the rise. Along with the "artist" who used eight national parks in the USA as her canvas and the person who stole a dinosaur bone from Dinosaur National Monument, charlatans who destroyed a dinosaur nest in Spain now join an incredible list of wreckers of civilization.

With a face that only an egg-laying mother could love (and then immediately leave), Atopodentatus is one of the weirdest reptiles ever to have lived.

Thirty-six million years ago, during the Eocene Epoch, a group of giant penguins swam the world's southern oceans.

Just when you thought Triceratops was cool, along comes another dinosaur with a crazy frill.