Given tens of millions of years, wildly improbable events – like primates crossing oceans – are almost a given.
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Palaeontology – Analysis and Comment
A transcript of episode 11 of The Conversation Weekly podcast, including an interview on Israel’s foreign policy options following its recent election.
Gigantic flying reptiles had impressive wingspans of up to 12 metres – and a special trick in their necks.
The environmental, cultural and scientific sensitivity of some sites, and rarity of some fossils, means amateur fossil collecting comes with huge risks.
‘Tetrapods’ were the first fish to evolve lungs and walk onto land. They were also our ancestors. Now, a new study sheds light on the size and shape of these unique animals’ brains.
Our new study has found younger tyrannosaurs would have hunted small prey.
This is the oldest genome recovered from a non-permafrost environment.
The study reveals changes in the functions of melanin over 500 million years.
Kate Winslet plays palaeontologist Mary Anning in the film Ammonite. The love story may be fictional — but how does the science stand up?
New fossil detective work sheds light on the life of megalodon, the biggest predatory shark ever discovered.
Ancient fatty molecules, once believed to be traces of some of the first animals to live on Earth, may have been produced by algae instead.
The end-Triassic mass extinction was a cataclysm for the world’s prehistoric species, killed off by volcanoes that altered Earth’s seas and skies. But new research shows it didn’t happen when we thought.
The assumption that the lateral semicircular canal of the inner ear can be used to reconstruct head posture in extinct species has long remained unchallenged.
If albanerpetontids were around today, they’d easily fit in your hand. And although their bones are found all over the world, these unique amphibians eluded experts for a long time.
Did Neanderthal military superiority delay our migration out of Africa?
Tooth fossils from NSW have confirmed sauropods weren’t exclusive to Queensland. They’re also providing a first look at how these colossal dinosaurs fed from Australia’s land.
Fossils reveal that dinosaurs’ flying cousins become twice as efficient at flying over 150 million years.
New study used X-rays of the teeth of early mammals’ to show they were more like cold blooded reptiles.
Several theories have suggested either humans, climate change or both drove megafauna extinctions in Southeast Asia. Our newest work suggests otherwise.
Microfossils offer up an array of information to scientists, like the time periods in which they lived and how environments have changed.
You can gauge a dinosaur’s body mass either by reconstructing it as accurately as possible, or by scaling its leg bones against those of today’s animals. Research shows both methods work well together.
New research show how crinoids could live for so long on floating wood without it breaking up.
When the dinosaurs went extinct, some species took over the world. Adaptability, not survivability, explains why.
How we identified a new ancestor of the likes of Diplodocus from old bones.
The extinct Mukupirna - which translates to ‘big bones’ - is estimated to have been more than four times larger than any living wombat.