Vasika Udurawane

We live on a green planet. Today we may take them for granted, but plants are the most important living things on Earth. Their colonization of land made it possible for all animal life to survive, from the smallest ants to the biggest dinosaurs. Their landscape once again changed when the grasses appeared, an incredible revolution in the history of life. How did they rise to dominance and conquer the Earth? And how did they manage to engineer the lives of the animals around them, ourselves included?

We live on a green planet. Today we may take them for granted, but plants are the most important living things on Earth. Their colonization of land made it possible for all animal life to survive, from the smallest ants to the biggest dinosaurs. After evolving into green-topped giants, how would plants ensure that their future generations were protected? What new ingenious systems of reproduction would they use?

We live on a green planet. Today we may take them for granted, but plants are the most important living things on Earth. Their initial colonization of land made it possible for all animal life to survive, and once the Devonian ended, the forests grew bigger and stranger. How would plants change their own bodies and the environment in this golden age?

We live on a green planet. Today we may take them for granted, but plants are the most important living things on Earth. Their colonization of land made it possible for all animal life to survive, from the smallest ants to the biggest dinosaurs. After their first foray onto land, how did they turn into nature’s skyscrapers?

We live on a green planet. Today we may take them for granted, but plants are the most important living things on Earth. Their colonization of land made it possible for all animal life to survive, from the smallest ants to the largest dinosaurs. What were the first of these tough, green pioneers? And how did they find their way onto land in the first place?

This is a list of the most scientifically influential fossil stories of 2016. Not only do we have new species turning up at a breakneck pace, like a “three-eyed” Triassic reptile and an invertebrate that carried its young like kites, but we have also gained a new perspective of how life on Earth even began with the oldest fossil remains of all time.

For millions of years, dinosaurs dominated the conifer forests and plains of ancient Mexico. They were also on ground zero during the earth-shattering cataclysm that ended their 165-million-year reign.

Huge predatory dinosaurs were everywhere during the Late Cretaceous. And now, it is Brazil’s turn to reveal its monster. Called Pycnonemosaurus, this forgotten predator was the largest of the abelisaurs, a family of decidedly strange and poorly known predators.

Ninety-five million years ago, a gigantic predatory dinosaur roamed the swamps and riversides of the prehistoric Sahara. For more than a century, Spinosaurus aegyptiacus took on many forms as scientists struggled to reconstruct it. Now with new material, there might be a chance to end it.

Pterosaurs, or flying reptiles, came in all shapes and sizes. Some were as big as a single engine Cessna while some others were as small as sparrows. And one of the cutest of all flying reptiles was the big-eyed Anurognathus.

Dinocrocuta gigantea, a hyena-like predator was one of the biggest and strongest carnivores to stalk the ancient grasslands of China. Its bite was strong enough to crush bones and it dominated its contemporary herbivores. One fossil shows us that it was clearly unafraid to take on animals much bigger than itself: Tooth marks in the skull of a massive tusked rhinoceros.

Quetzalcoatlus dominated the skies of North America at the end of the Dinosaur Age and flew high over such famous creatures as Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops. As tall as a giraffe, the biggest Quetzalcoatlus species were also the largest of all flying creatures. They were the ultimate in pterosaur evolution.

Arguably the scientifically best-known dinosaur in the fossil record, Edmontosaurus is known from countless remains that range from single vertebrae to exquisitely preserved natural mummies. Through finds like this we have an incredible view of one of America’s biggest and most successful herbivores.

Purussaurus is one of the biggest, yet most poorly understood of all massive crocodilians. For a while not much was known about it besides its size and strength. Recently though, new scientific research is uncovering its most lethal secret: Its monstrous seven-ton bite.

New fossils tell us that previously known giant “ducks” lived farther north than ever before. More than 53 million years ago, the Arctic was warm, and covered with extensive jungles and swamps. It was a far cry from the icy carpet that covers the region today.

The largest known insect of all time was a predator resembling a dragonfly but was only distantly related to them. Its name is Meganeuropsis, and it ruled the skies before pterosaurs, birds and bats had even evolved.

At the end of the dinosaur age, gigantic beasts roamed the southern half of the North American continent. From Utah to Texas and New Mexico, these giants shook the earth under their immense weight, towering above predators and neighbors alike. It was the reign of Alamosaurus, America’s biggest dinosaur.

The aptly-named titanosaurs were the biggest creatures to walk the Earth yet they had to grow up from rather tiny beginnings. From group nesting in Argentina to fast-growing babies that succumbed to Madagascan droughts, these fossils have left their mark and are helping scientists to uncover the secrets of these little giants.

In one small corner of Burma, scientists have discovered something incredible: The whole wings of two tiny birds preserved in amber. These fossils give us another important glimpse into Cretaceous forest ecosystems.

We may never resurrect a living dinosaur from DNA in amber. But we can accurately reconstruct the anatomy of other beautiful little creatures lying trapped for the past 99 million years. Scientists are doing this now, with a set of unfortunate Burmese lizards.

Ammonites existed all over the world's oceans between 400 and 66 million years ago. Some reached immense sizes. The biggest of their kind, Parapuzosia, were the veritable krakens of the ancient seas.

Battles between big carnivores are a rarity in the fossil record. One find from Triassic rocks in New Mexico reveals something incredible. It is a life-and-death duel between two of the era’s most powerful hunters.

Sharovipteryx, from the Mid Triassic of Kyrgyzstan had the oddest "wings" of any fossil reptile, stuck to its hind limbs. This unique delta-winged creature glided effortlessly between the trees of its forest home. It was a design that would never again reappear in nature.

The armored Pawpawsaurus was a powerful animal, well-built for defense against formidable predators. CT scans of the skulls of these creatures has revealed the finely-tuned features that helped to guide this dinosaur’s bodies and senses.

Longisquama insignis is one of the most enigmatic reptiles in the fossil record. Scientists thought it was a tree-dwelling animal with weird back appendages and then a tiny flying relative of birds, and back again. Nobody is as yet sure how it used its defining features: The elongated “skin appendages” on its back.

Many varieties of armored predators ruled the oceans long before the Age of Dinosaurs. Among the most unusual were the eurypterids, the so-called “sea scorpions.” Some were the size of a human hand while others grew bigger than a man and were among the largest arthropods on Earth.

Sometimes the least expected people make the most interesting fossil discoveries. One such surprise was the beautifully preserved skeleton of a new frilled dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Montana. Named Spiclypeus, it was the find of a lifetime for a former nuclear physicist.

Atopodentatus caused a stir online when it was described scientifically two years ago. It was reconstructed with a split in its upper jaw, using this weird apparatus to sift through the sand like a walrus. Yet new discoveries have shown that it was more like a spoon-billed marine iguana in its feeding habits.

The long-necked, big-bodied sauropod dinosaurs are known in popular culture for their often immense size, with some being the biggest animals to have ever walked the Earth. Yet while the huge thighs and necks of these behemoths are well-known, very few are known for their skulls. With Sarmientosaurus though, we have an exception.

With a name as pretty as Gynaephora groenlandica, you’d imagine this moth to be a frail creature with no defenses at all. But it is one of the hardiest insects in the world, surviving the Arctic winter frozen and still alive as a caterpillar. The Arctic woolly bear is a true survivor in every sense of the word and has even wormed its way into our culture.

The so-called “buzzsaw shark” Helicoprion was a prominent feature of the oceans roughly 290 to 250 million years ago. Known mostly for its strange spiral set of teeth, it was also a titanic marine monster that sometimes stretched more than 12 meters in length and was the biggest marine animal of its day.

Therizinosaurs are among the most unorthodox of dinosaurs. They have a big belly, short legs and tail, a long neck and a set of immense flattened claws to help them manipulate branches. Despite the majority being from Asia, tantalizing remains have surfaced from the unlikeliest of places.

We pride ourselves on being the world’s greatest predators but once in our long history, we were the hunted and not the hunters. Bones from Morocco reveal the shocking tale of how some human ancestors met their match at the hands of bone-crushing teeth.

For millions of years, a wide variety of dinosaurs battled harsh, wintry conditions as the Southern Lights flickered above their heads. These unique pioneer discoveries of paleontology, some gigantic and some petite, have all left their remains in opal and rock in the “Land Down Under.”

The highly endangered and long-snouted gharial lives in the Indian Subcontinent. But millions of years ago, these creatures ruled the waterways of the world, including the Amazonian region. And it is here that we can further unravel the secrets behind their long evolution. Enter “the storyteller.”

Every so often, something incredibly beautiful and delicate comes out of the fossil record. It can be the microscopic fossil of extinct plankton or the near-complete skeleton of a massive dinosaur. Then there are those fossils which show a surprising degree of completeness, presenting real snapshots of a long-lost age. They are the top 10 finest amber fossils ever.

The most recent addition to the ranks of the vertebrates is the famed “Tully Monster”, state fossil of Illinois. This oddly-shaped aquatic beast, with its squid-like body and pincered mouth-on-a-trunk also had another secret. This time, it was its stalk-like “blobs.”

Many of the ancestors of the earliest dinosaurs were small, active and lizard-like animals. Yet their growth patterns have been somewhat of a mystery. Recent studies of their bones suggest that size is not always a good determinant of skeletal maturity.

One of the best mothers in nature was not a devoted mammal or bird but rather a spineless, hard-shelled and somewhat spiky ancient arthropod that swam the oceans 430 million years ago. Nicknamed the “Kite Runner”, the odd beast held onto its young with thread-like bodily tendrils.

The strange extinct avian rulers of New Caledonia named Sylviornis, were among the oddest large birds ever to exist. For a long time we puzzled about what they were, only to find out that were indeed real “giant chickens”.

They arose millions of years before the first dinosaurs and dominated the seas in a vast array of finned fish-like and dolphin-like forms. Some were hardly the size of a small porpoise while some were as vast and gentle as today’s biggest whales and still others terrorized their kin with vicious jaws and teeth. They were the spectacular ichthyosaurs, among the most specialized of all marine reptiles.

The relationship between dog and man is an ancient love that has carried on for thousands of years. Now we have a few secrets that may shed some light on the origins of this bond – puppies dug up from the Ice Age permafrosts of Yakutia, Russia.

The Cambrian is remembered as a time when there was nothing on land and all life existed in the oceans. Gone were the days of simple one-celled organisms for an evolutionary explosion had just occurred and animal life had mushroomed into hundreds of new forms. It was a time of change, when the seas were ruled by creatures seemingly straight out of science fiction.

Gigantic one-horned beasts once roamed the frozen steppes and tundra of Siberia. They were a species of rhino, more than two meters at the shoulder who grazed these areas in huge numbers during the last Ice Age. That is, until their extinction.

A toothy beast the size of a large lizard roamed Brazil over 250 million years ago. Armed with large teeth and powerful jaws, this predator’s wonderfully preserved skull may hold clues to the origins of some of the biggest creatures that ever existed on Earth.

We all know and love Tyrannosaurus rex for its raw power, awe-inspiring charisma and predatory prowess. However, there has also been a massive and mysterious gap in the tyrannosaur evolutionary tree for a long time. That is, until the discovery of the not-so-little Timurlengia.

Tiny elephants are far from a new scientific discovery. Many species have been found on some of the smallest and most remote parts of the world. And none were smaller than those at Spinagallo Cave, Sicily.

Every Jurassic Park movie seems to be building up to the big question of whether we will ever see a living dinosaur again. While the likelihood of reviving extinct creatures from amber is almost zero, some scientists think an alternate route is possible – by genetically engineering a chicken and creating a “chickensaurus.”

Miniature deer, about the size of a beagle, once strolled around an island off the coast of Panama. Yet they are no longer with us today. When did these Ice Age leftovers die, and what killed them?

We all love kangaroos for their athletic abilities, charm and charisma. Before you can hop though, you need to scurry. And there was one roo that did just that, more than 20 million years ago. It was small, innocuous and rat-like, and shared the ancient Australian forests with its bigger fanged cousins.

Straddling the finger of this human being is a terrifying beast, the likes of which we rarely see in the flesh. It is a mighty red octopus juvenile. And it’s the size of a man’s thumbnail.

The Jurassic skies were once ruled by tiny dragons. These furry-bodied fliers are wonders in paleontology, true 21st-Century milestones that changed what we thought we knew about the flying reptiles. Soar through the forests of the Mid Jurassic as Earth Archives teams up with Pteros to bring you the weird and wonderful wukongopterids!

One of the most unusual marine mammals of all time was Kolponomos, the “otter-bear”. Details of this enigmatic animal have remained quite a mystery for many years since its discovery. Now, scientists have finally figured out the secret behind the otter-bear’s deadly bite, and just how it managed to survive.

We all know Tyrannosaurus rex as North America's biggest and most terrifying land predator. It ruled the continent 66 million years ago, dominating its prey and rivals with its 9-ton bulk and bone-crushing jaws. However T. rex was not exactly as American as we once thought.

The olm, the blind cave salamander of Southern Europe is one of the most interesting amphibians in the world. It is rare, pinkish-white and blind, and reproduces just once or twice a decade during its entire lifetime.

Mysterious objects have been commonplace in the fossil record for centuries. However, none have been more mysterious than the so-called “Devil’s Corkscrews” unearthed in the Badlands of North America. The reality behind these rather daunting objects though, is nothing short of surprising.

Japan has merely seven dinosaurs altogether. This one was small, omnivorous and related to the famous raptor dinosaurs. It is also the country’s most complete dinosaur to date.

A study of 12,000-year-old DNA shows that the car-sized, club-tailed glyptodonts were cousins of modern armadillos. Source: BBC News

There were once hoofed animals that did not just graze and run in herds. Among their ranks were gigantic beasts with bone-crushing jaws that were the most powerful predators of their time. They ruled the earliest grasslands, taking prey up to the size of rhinos while contending with other deadly hunters. They are the entelodonts, the aptly named ‘terminator pigs’.

Interbreeding with our species may have been one of many factors that drove the Neanderthals to extinction, with traces of their DNA in our own. But for a while we never really knew of any Homo sapiens genetic material in a Neanderthal fossil. That is, until recently with a new fossil from Denisova Cave.

The heaviest flying bird of all time dominated the skies of Patagonia with iron wings. It strode overland while on the hunt, swallowing its prey in one mouthful. It was certainly pushing the limit of heavy, feathered flying creatures but was still able to patrol immense distances of grassland bordered by the young Andes. How did a bird with such a huge wingspan even manage to get off the ground?

Pterosaurs are the most iconic and arguably beautiful of all extinct animals. They have inspired awe in all who discovered their fossils and now they have come to life like never before through the Pteros project, an online encyclopedia of pterosaurs.

It was a time when the oceans and rivers of the world were ruled by aliens with armored bodies and slicing bony blades in their mouths. Welcome to the Devonian, the Age of Fishes, when these creatures were at the height of their strangeness.

It may not be the biggest marine monster of the Jurassic but the mammoth eyes of Dollocaris certainly make it the most adorable.

The biggest creature to have ever chewed a cud was a gigantic and bulky relative of giraffes and okapis. It had none of the balletic grace but instead got all the weight and brawn.

One of the most mysterious huge animals in the fossil record is the ape Gigantopithecus. Only a few bones have ever been found, and we still do not know the secrets to its existence. One thing though, is quite clear: Thanks to a team from the Seckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt, we finally know why it is no longer among us today.

Around 120 million years ago, there lived a monstrous marine crocodile relative named Machimosaurus rex. Its massive jaws could crush turtle shells and it terrorized the warm seas that covered what are now the deserts of Tunisia.

They once shared our world, some as recently as a few years ago. From the lions that fought at the Colosseum to the blind dolphins of China, they were exceptional in life and remain iconic in death. They are the most memorable of all recently extinct animals.

Racing across the plains of Argentina were strange feathery shapes, taller than a man. They pecked their prey to death with hooked beaks mounted on heads as big as that of a horse’s. These were the terror birds, the dominant predators of their day and age.

A passer-by on Christmas Day found a meter-long shell on a riverbank in Argentina which may be from a glyptodont, a prehistoric kind of giant armadillo, experts said Tuesday. A local man thought the black scaly shell was a dinosaur egg when he saw it lying in the mud, his wife Reina Coronel told AFP. Source: Yahoo News

From the tiny dragon dinosaur to the largest land mammal ever, these beasts stand head and shoulders above the rest. The paleo countdown begins! These are the top ten fossil discoveries of 2015.

Have you ever seen a lace bug? Don’t let their pretty name fool you—even though they’re dainty as a doily, they’re tough little bugs. You may have encountered lace bugs in your garden or on houseplants, since they’re herbivorous sap-drinkers. Though they only feed on plants, their bite can sting! Source: EveryONE

They were once entombed within frozen soil, lying buried for sixty-nine million years. Only now are we beginning to discover Dinosaur Age Alaska, from its perilous seas with veritable leviathans, to snowy forests ruled by pygmy tyrants. Alaska’s prehistoric past comes to life like never before, and in detail more spectacular than ever imaginable.

New evidence from Argentina reveals that dinosaur ancestors, known as dinosauromorphs, gave rise to their famous descendants much earlier than once thought. It could have been as few as 5 million years.

Scientists have long speculated that pterosaurs, the first backboned animals to take flight, were able to cross the world's continents by air. Now, fossils of a pterosaur named Cimoliopterus offer definitive proof.

The giant invertebrates of the deep ocean enjoy fame and fortune on the everlasting internet. But no matter how big and terrifying many may be, none will be as adored as much as the one and only giant isopod, the crustacean darling of the deep ocean.

A tiny new species of whale is filling the gaps of the family tree, providing clues to how baleen evolved and how they became the giants they are today.

In the middle of the city of Los Angeles lies one of the most important fossil sites in all the world. The La Brea tar pits preserve an Ice Age eden beyond the grip of the huge glaciers that leveled North America.

Few would venture underneath the ice of Russia's Lake Baikal, largest and most ancient freshwater lake in the world. Strange creatures exist beneath the frozen surface, creatures straight out of science fiction. But one woman dares to hunt for them, armed with SCUBA gear, a camera and a good dose of persistence.

Crocodylomorphs are amazing animals. They've been around for about 250 million years, and throughout this time have survived two mass extinctions, and at least twice decided to hitch up and take to the seas. Now we have new evidence that may change our entire view of modern-style croc evolution. Meet Loheucosuchus! Source: Phys.org

For the first time ever, paleontologists have found evidence for a filter-feeding marine reptile. The animal, a plesiosaur, is hardly a new find but one that has been sitting right under our noses for quite a while.

The largest dinosaur population growth study comes back with exceptional results, with the famous ‘good mother lizard’ being right at the center. Maiasaura peeblesorum is one of the best-known duckbill dinosaurs and the animal that solidified the idea of the sociable, caring and warm-blooded non-avian dinosaur.

The cave lion was a highly successful and adaptable predator that ruled the steppes of Ice Age Eurasia with an iron paw. Now, with the discovery of two cubs in the Siberian permafrost there is talk of bringing this magnificent creature to life. But should we?

With faces pretty enough to turn you to stone, and a pair of saber-teeth to slash at their prey, the gorgonopsians truly lived up to their frightful name. They were the lords of the Late Permian, a time when every single continent was beginning to drift together, forming the supercontinent of Pangaea.