EARLY EARTH - DARWIN DAILY

Earliest life may have arisen in ponds, not oceans

Apr 15, 2019 (SPX)

Researchers report that shallow bodies of water, on the order of 10 centimeters deep, could have held high concentrations of what many scientists believe to be ...

Evolution from water to land led to better parenting

Apr 15, 2019 (SPX)

A study by an international team of researchers, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, looked at the parental care of over 1000 species of ...

Tracking records of the oldest life forms on Earth

Apr 09, 2019 (SPX)

The research, published in two papers - one in the Journal of the Geological Society and another in Earth and Planetary Science Letters - solves the longstandin...

Fossil fly with an extremely long proboscis sheds light on the insect pollination origin

Apr 03, 2019 (SPX)

Archocyrtus kovalevi is only known as a single compression fossil found in the Late Jurassic rocks in Southern Kazakhstan. The fossil, estimated to be about 160...

66-million-year-old deathbed linked to dinosaur-killing meteor

Apr 03, 2019 (SPX)

Then, tiny glass beads began to fall like birdshot from the heavens. The rain of glass was so heavy it may have set fire to much of the vegetation on land. In t...

In ancient oceans that resembled our own, oxygen loss triggered mass extinction

Apr 03, 2019 (SPX)

At around the same time, a global die-off known among scientists as the Ireviken extinction event devastated scores of ancient species. Eighty percent of conodo...

Oxygen depletion triggered mass extinction in oceans similar to today's

Mar 28, 2019 (UPI)

As scientists detailed in a new paper, published this month in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, the oceans of the so-called Silurian Period look...

ANU scientists solve mystery shrouding oldest animal fossils

Mar 27, 2019 (SPX)

ANU PhD scholar Ilya Bobrovskiy, lead author of the study, said the study shows that simple physical properties of sediments can explain Dickinsonia's preservat...

A petrifying virus key to evolution

Mar 27, 2019 (SPX)

The name Medusavirus was given for the effect this virus has on its host, Acanthamoeba castellanii. Once infected, the amoeba forms cysts, a phenomenon called e...

Half-a-billion-year-old fossil reveals the origins of comb jellies

Mar 27, 2019 (SPX)

Comb jellies occupy a pivotal place in the history of animal evolution with some arguing that they were among the first animals to evolve. Now an international ...

Paleontologists uncover largest-ever T. rex fossil

Mar 25, 2019 (UPI)

Found among Late Cretaceous deposits in Saskatchewan's Frenchman River Valley, the giant T. rex, nicknamed Scotty, is the the largest dinosaur fossil recovered ...

Rukwa Rift Basin Project names new Cretaceous mammal from East African Rift System

Mar 19, 2019 (SPX)

The National Science Foundation-funded OHIO team, in collaboration with international colleagues, identified and named the new mammal in an article published in...

Evolution of the mammalian arm predates the dinosaurs

Mar 19, 2019 (UPI)

According to a new study, the earliest mammalian predecessors began evolving unique forelimbs 270 million years ago, 30 million years before the first dinosaurs...

Researchers uncover new clues to surviving extinction

Mar 15, 2019 (SPX)

The study, published in Biology Letters, suggests that the extinction survivors shared many of the same ecological roles as their predecessors, with one catch -...

Thank Earth's Magnetic Field for Water That Gives You Life

Mar 14, 2019 (SPX)

Plants and animals would not survive without water on Earth. The sheer strength of Earth's magnetic field helps to maintain liquid water on our blue planet's su...

New wallaby-sized dinosaur from the ancient Australian-Antarctic rift valley

Mar 13, 2019 (SPX)

Reported in the Journal of Paleontology, the new dinosaur is named "Galleonosaurus dorisae," and is the first dinosaur named from the Gippsland region of Austra...

Ancient records prompt rethink of animal evolution timeline

Mar 13, 2019 (SPX)

Bursts of evolutionary activity that increased the number and variety of animals began earlier, occurred over a longer timeframe, and were more frequent than pr...

Dinosaurs were thriving before asteroid strike that wiped them out

Mar 11, 2019 (SPX)

Scientists largely agree that an asteroid impact, possibly coupled with intense volcanic activity, wiped out the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period 6...

Scientists track deep history of planets' motions, and effects on Earth's climate

Mar 08, 2019 (SPX)

But planetary paths change over time, and that can change the cycles' lengths. This has made it challenging for scientists to untangle what drove many ancient c...

Paleontology: Diversification after mass extinction

Mar 04, 2019 (SPX)

Monte San Giorgio in the Swiss canton of Ticino is one of the most important known sources of marine fossils from the Middle Triassic Period (around 240 million...