What paleontologists had believed to be spiny fins turned out to be elongated jaws. New examination of fossils that were 365 million years old revealed a fish with a remarkable lower jaw.
There’s no single reason many Asian animals spread to Australia but few went the other way – but climate, geography and the slow drift of tectonic plates all played a role.
Giraffes are the latest animals to show they can solve tasks using statistical reasoning – and the only one to do this with a small brain relative to body size.
The findings come from placoderm fish fossils found in Western Australia’s Kimberley region. This extinct order of fish represents some of our earliest jawed ancestors.
While we know that most chameleons have such a prehensile tail, it’s not yet clear how it works and what makes it simultaneously so flexible and strong.
These surfaces are of profound scientific, cultural, heritage, environmental, and aesthetic importance. Unfortunately, they are threatened - by graffiti.
Scientists used to believe that a group containing starfish and sea urchin were the closest relatives of vertebrates like humans. But new research challenges this idea.
Since the 19th century, biologists have treated the larvae of lampreys as a relic of evolutionary ancestry that could potentially give clues about vertebrate origins. Now fossils overturn that view.
The three-toed skink can give birth to live young and lay eggs in the same pregnancy. What can this little critter teach us about the evolution of live birth?
The arrangement of bones in our specimen’s fins are the same as those of ‘fingers’ in tetrapods. The only difference is the digits are locked within the fin, and not free moving.
New research shows shallow, near-land seas similar to Bass Strait were critical in the early days of fish evolution. These are the waters we need to protect now to ensure ongoing biodiversity.
A 400 million year old fossilised fish skull gives us very early and previously unknown clues about how boney fishes evolved into the vertebrates we see today on Earth - including us humans.
Palaeontologist, Albany Museum (supported by the Millennium Trust and the DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Palaeosciences, the NRF and the NSCF), Rhodes University