Pete Buchholz

Wadi Al Hitan, the Valley of the Whales, is a site that’s yielded dozens of skeletons of the early predatory whales Basilosaurus and Dorudon over the last hundred years. Newly uncovered specimens support the idea that it was a calving ground for the dolphin-sized Dorudon, and that those calves were hunted by the much larger Basilosaurus.

Extraordinarily well-preserved fossils discovered from the 1970s to the present day show that all pterosaurs were covered in hair-like fibers known as pycnofibers. Two new pterosaur specimens described by Zixiao Yang and colleagues show that some pycnofibers were actually brush- or tuft-shaped and probably share an evolutionary origin with feathers.

An incredible new specimen of the Early Jurassic genus Stenopterygius found in Germany was studied by Johan Lindgren and colleagues. It preserves skin in detail not previously seen in other ichthyosaur fossils. The team of researchers have learned new details of how ichthyosaurs looked in life, as well as details of their physiology.

Both hump-nosed species were part of a large radiation of chewing plant-eaters. Detailed comparison of the two species shows that their similarities were superficial.

Firefighters battled an enormous blaze for hours at one of the world’s largest natural history museums, housed in Rio de Janeiro’s former Imperial Palace. Museum staff even ran into the building to salvage some of the millions of objects from the natural world and human civilization in Brazil. Their combined efforts were not enough and by most accounts, nearly the entire collection was lost.

Scientists have found a relative of the famous “dream maker” of the Cambrian Explosion, Hallucigenia. Instead of a back covered in spines, it was covered in a carpet of flower-shaped ornaments.

Far more than bumpy black blobs scuttling on the ocean floor, trilobites could be found throughout the water column, even venturing out on the beach at low tide. Their own excellent eyesight and need to camouflage against predators probably meant trilobites came in a variety of colors and patterns, like today’s crustaceans.

Over the past few months the team here at Earth Archives and Pteros has been working hard on something special, and we couldn’t be more proud. This week marks the opening of a new museum exhibit, “Pterosaurs: Ancient Rulers of the Sky,” at ScienceWorks Hands-on Museum in Ashland, Oregon.

Soils from an ancient meadow on a small island on the central coast of British Columbia preserve footprints of early Native Americans. Although most of the northern Pacific Coast was a wall of glacial ice at the time, pockets of forested land accessible by boat allowed early migrants to survive and thrive.

Discovered nearly 50 years ago, Arkansas’s state dinosaur, Arkansaurus, is officially named.

Two Moroccan phosphate mines have yielded dozens of specimens from at least seven different pterosaur species in three different families. The high diversity of sizes and ecological roles found there suggests that pterosaurs remained competitive with birds at medium and large body sizes until the mass extinction at the close of the Mesozoic Era.

Paleontologists around the world published some incredible new finds and research in 2017. We count down the year’s most amazing, surprising, thought-provoking, and important stories.

Halszkaraptor was an ancient cormorant-mimicking raptor. This long-necked fish-eating dinosaur is thought to have used its wings to maneuver while diving.

Recent discoveries in Montana and Idaho have uncovered a previously unknown behavior in dinosaurs: digging. These creatures, known as orodromines, had robust and muscular arms, shoulders, and hips that were well-suited to digging out burrows. Fossil remains of adults and juveniles suggest that these peculiar dinosaurs took care of their young.

A fossil whale collected by a group of undergrads from a drainage ditch two decades ago has turned out to be an important transition from archaic to modern species. This and three other newly discovered specimens of Albertocetus, an early dolphin-like species, provide important anatomical information about the earliest ancestors of the living toothed whale lineage.

Big, fearsome, and dangerous. Dinosaurs remind many people of fantastic combat scenes that result in grave injuries, or a painful death. In reality, fighting is no more than just a tiny slice of any animal’s life. However, fossils found with evidence of injuries tell a tale of how the extinct animals interacted with one another.

Rhabdodontids are known from Cretaceous rocks in Europe. They evolved a unique way to break down fibrous plants: scissor-like jaws and teeth. Individual teeth lined up and worked together to form blade-like surfaces capable of slicing tough palm leaves.

The robust forelimbs of saber-toothed cats are thought to have helped wrestle struggling prey to the ground before using their long teeth to slash a killing blow. This burly build was needed to ensure the long teeth weren’t broken by struggling prey.

Detailed examination of fossilized dung, technically known as coprolites, from plant-eating dinosaurs revealed two surprising things: large amounts of rotten wood, and crab shells. The coprolite producers, probably duck-billed dinosaurs are usually considered to be herbivores, and this behavior might have been related to egg-laying.

Researchers examining the pattern and rate of growth in the mysterious “quilted” organism Dickinsonia have shown that new segments appear to grow from a wedge-shaped section at the blunt end. This adds to a growing body of data showing that Dickinsonia, and possibly other “quilted” Ediacaran organisms were among the earliest animals.

A recent examination of the skull of the elasmosaurid Morturneria seymourensis shows that its unusual teeth were used to strain food from the muddy sea bottom. Morturneria, and its closest relatives, show a remarkable similarity to early toothed baleen whales which fed in the same way.

A large plant-eating reptile fossil from the Middle of Triassic of India shows that some adults had brow horns and some didn’t. Researchers have suggested that the horned individuals were males who used their horns in combat trying to woo females.

Twenty million years after the Age of Dinosaurs ended, an island that would become part of Turkey had a unique animal community, including a cat-like marsupial predator named Anatoliadelphys.

Chitons have thousands of tiny lenses all over their shells that may work together to form a compound eye.

A genetic analysis of two species of tardigrade, or water bear, has given great insight into the genetic mechanisms that help them survive extreme conditions. Although tardigrades look similar to arthropods like insects and spiders, their genes show a much closer relationship to round worms.

Baleen whales underwent a number of evolutionary transitions on the journey from small hunters to giant filter-feeders. Recent research shows that there were a large number of experimental methods of feeding, including the origin of filter feeding long before the origin of baleen.

The badlands outside of Drumheller, Alberta is a famous graveyard of giant Late Cretaceous dinosaurs. A detailed study of skull bones has revealed a new species of small predatory dinosaur.

Detailed examination of this cousin of Iguanodon shows that its big sail evolved to show off to mates and rivals.

Two small bone fragments found in Athens represent the last known monitor lizard in Europe. This small lizard lived at the onset of the last Ice Age in the last warm refuge in Europe.

Micro-CT scanning showed that meat-eating dinosaurs, known as theropods, had numerous pits on their jaws which are thought to be passages for nerves or blood vessels. Until now, this feature had received little-detailed attention except in semi-aquatic spinosaurs and giant tyrannosaurs.

A nugget of amber from Myanmar has been found with a nearly complete baby bird inside. The specimen is one of the several recently discovered amber nuggets with entombed body parts of feathered dinosaurs.

This Late Cretaceous armored dinosaur is known from an amazingly preserved specimen that shows fossilized skin tissue.

This oddball of the horned dinosaur family had a lumpy mass of bone where Triceratops flaunted its famous triple horns.

Extensive archaeological and anthropological data suggest that the first humans entered the Americas about 15,000 years ago from Asia to Alaska. A 130,000-year-old mastodon skeleton discovered in suburban San Diego shows signs of butchery only associated with ancient humans.

Lurdusaurus was a burly, barrel-chested iguanodont that may have been semi-aquatic, living in and around the rivers of an ancient tropical forest. It moved slowly on land, measuring eight meters long (26 feet) and weighing more than five tons.

Dromaeosaurs, feathered predators nicknamed raptors, hunted with retractable sickle-shaped claws on their feet. Most dromaeosaurs had short and stocky legs, but this roadrunner-sized raptor walked on stilt-legs. It was part of the microraptorian lineage, famous for being four-winged gliders.

A fossil-bearing cave in northeastern Spain that has yielded the most complete skeleton of the extinct cave hyena yet known, greatly improving on partial remains found elsewhere. The deposits in the cave, known as Las Aprendices, have been dated to approximately 144,000 years ago. The cave offers a snapshot of the environment and wildlife encountered by the first humans moving into Europe.

Paleontologists have published a description of one of the best collections of dinosaur footprints on Earth from a stretch of beach on the northern coast of Western Australia. They include one of the largest dinosaur footprints known, as well as the first fossil evidence of stegosaurs in Australia.

For over a century, it has been agreed that the long-necked sauropods are cousins of the carnivorous theropods based on features of the vertebrae and hands. One study suggests that this is incorrect. The theropods seem to be related to the beaked herbivorous ornithischians instead.

Exceptionally well-preserved fossils of red algae living in a shallow equatorial sea have been discovered in central India. These fossils represent the oldest known multicellular organisms and push back the origin of complex life by hundreds of millions of years.

The last populations of woolly mammoths lived on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean off the coast of Siberia. Comparison of specimens from Wrangel Island and the Siberian mainland show that the island populations accumulated a number of genetic mutations that would adversely affect the last living mammoths.

Tyrannosaurus has never been found with feathers preserved, but its cousins tell us it wasn't the green scaly giant of our childhood.

In 1965, a pair of arms as long as a full-grown ostrich's height were discovered in Mongolia. For more than 40 years, the rest of the animal remained a mystery.

A suspension feeding “worm” from the Cambrian Burgess Shale held on to the ground with its rear legs and used its feather-like front legs to capture food out of the water.

Hyoliths, an enigmatic group of Paleozoic invertebrates have long puzzled paleontologists. A new analysis of hundreds of specimens shows that they are close relatives of brachiopods or lamp shells.

Ever since their discovery, the huge back plates and tail spikes on stegosaurs have inspired wonder, but also puzzlement about their purpose.

The discovery of an armored, aquatic predator increases the known diversity of Triassic reptiles. Comparison to other reptiles, living and extinct, shows that it was an ambush predator and most closely related to an armored predator from New Mexico.

North America's Late Cretaceous dinosaur fauna is familiar and well studied. The dinosaurs unearthed from the North Slope of Alaska are at once familiar, but also unique, and preserve evidence of troodontids twice the size of their contemporaries from Montana and Alberta.

Powered flight evolved three times in vertebrates, all converting their forelimbs into wings. The body plan modifications among gliders however are far more diverse, including a new Triassic reptile with long legs bearing a wing membrane.

A 120-million-year-old fossil bird specimen has been discovered in Lower Cretaceous rocks of northeastern China with traces of the original feather pigments. Analysis of the feathers and comparison to modern birds indicates that this bird was largely iridescent on its head, neck, and body.

Although living sperm whales focus on squid, ten-million-year-old fossils from Peru show that ancient sperm whales were top predators. They ate primarily marine mammals, and filled niches once occupied by mosasaurs and currently filled by orcas.

Although they share their name with a Eurasian nation-state, turkeys are thoroughly American birds. Turkeys are large, flamboyent members of an American lineage of gamebirds that also includes grouse and ptarmigans.

A strange reptile called Triopticus primus increases the known diversity of reptiles from the dawn of the Age of Dinosaurs and helps scientists understand the repeated evolution of body types across the Mesozoic.

Excavated in 1953 by paleontologist Llewellyn Ivor Price, the specimen is now known as Austroposeidon magnificus.

Two species of early mammals show transitional features of the teeth and jaw bones that came to define living mammals. Both fossils help further our understanding of members of the mammalian lineage in the Late Triassic.

A re-examination of an ornithomimid specimen collected in 1934 reveals that it's a previously unknown species.

Paleontologists announced the discovery of a species of rauisuchid from the Ghost Ranch locality in northern New Mexico in rocks from the Upper Triassic Chinle Formation.

Researchers in Germany formally described a new theropod found in Middle Jurassic deposits. The theropod, named Wiehenvenator albati (VEE-hen-VEN-uh-tor), was discovered almost 20 years ago in rocks of the Ornatenton Formation in the northwestern part of Germany near the town of Minden.

A rare and endangered conifer from Australia, first discovered in 1994, has a lineage stretching back to the time of dinosaurs.

All known ankylosaurs, like Edmontonia and Euoplocephalus, were all large, heavily armored, and solely plant eaters. At least that was the case before the discovery of new specimens of Liaoningosaurus.

A father and son team of fossil hunters have discovered a tooth from a sauropod dinosaur near the town of Katsuura on the Japanese island of Shikoku. The fossil, measuring 2.3 cm in length was discovered in Lower Cretaceous rocks dating to approximately 130 million years ago.

A large Tasmanian devil relative has been discovered from a new fossil locality in the outback of northwestern Queensland.

Duck-billed dinosaurs were chewing machines. Detailed examination of teeth and jaws shows how they evolved one of the most sophisticated dental batteries in vertebrate history.

The most complete specimen of the poorly known dryosaurid Valdosaurus canaliculatus has been discovered in Lower Cretaceous rocks on the Isle of Wight. This new discovery helps flesh out the anatomy of this dinosaur and is one of the most complete dinosaur specimens known from England.

Paleontologists have discovered the footprint of a giant carnivorous dinosaur nearly matching Tyrannosaurus in size.

A newly described specimen of a tiny plant-eating dinosaur shows features indicating that it may have been able to climb around in branches -- an ability so far unknown in any dinosaurs except birds.

Theropods are some of the most famous and successful of all dinosaur groups. These bipeds include every known carnivorous dinosaur (and quite a few that were not carnivores), and range in size from giants like Tyrannosaurus and Giganotosaurus, to diminutive wrens and hummingbirds. Many theropods are known to have been feathered, and they still live among us as birds.

Scientists have discovered a new two-fingered theropod from Upper Cretaceous rocks of Patagonia. Despite superficial similarities to tyrannosaurs, a detailed comparison to many other meat-eaters has shown that Gualicho's relationships are more complex.

A tiny new plant-eating dinosaur discovered in Northern Spain has helped paleontologists answer big questions about the evolution and migration of ornithopods.

DNA extracted from bones collected in the Yukon show that North America's last camel was a close relative of Old World camels and not llamas as previously thought.

Named in 2015, Regaliceratops, meaning royal horned face, has numerous spade shaped horns on its frill, resembling a crown.

Measuring almost nine meters (30 feet), Qijianglong's neck was about half the animal's total length.