Australia has them, so why doesn’t New Zealand have national or regional fossil emblems? A campaign to change that kicks off today.
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Articles on Fossil record
Displaying 1 - 20 of 25 articles
While crocodiles are not native to Canada, fossil traces have been found in northern British Columbia that indicate that during the Cretaceous Period, giant crocodiles roamed.
The lack of large numbers of fossils makes it hard to study sexual dimorphism in dinosaurs. But a new statistical approach offers insight into this question and others across science.
While current extinction rates remain lower than during previous mass extinction events, the number of species under threat of dying out is growing, reflecting the true scale of loss.
Fossilized comb jellies, or ctenophores, are rare because the creatures are almost completely soft-bodied. Rare fossil finds are helping us learn more about ancient animals and evolution.
New Zealand’s conservation needs to consider the long-term impact of climate change and focus not only on protecting native species but on preserving ecological richness.
Researchers have found a new way by which the brains of ancient animals can be preserved.
There are no body fossils of elephants from this time period, so the available information of how these gigantic animals moved through the ancient landscapes depends entirely on the track record.
Today, Earth’s biodiversity is highest at the equator – but it hasn’t always been this way.
Our new research has more than doubled the known fossil record of seals in Australia.
The updated methods are providing a clearer picture of how Earth and its inhabitants evolved over the past 60,000 years - and thus, providing new insight into its future.
The extinct Mukupirna - which translates to ‘big bones’ - is estimated to have been more than four times larger than any living wombat.
You can’t own a human, so why can you own their remains? We need to stop treating human fossils as objects.
The skull of Oculudentavis, found encased in amber, provides new clues into the transition from dinosaurs to birds and may be smallest of either ever found.
These trackways offer rare insights about ancient life in a stressful, hostile environment during the Early Jurassic.
Populations of plankton are in decline. If we push this critical foundation of the marine food chain to extinction, we could cripple ecosystems for millions of years.
Paleontologists created an evolutionary map of how croc body size changed over the last 200 million years – with some interesting implications for today’s species.
There is evidence to show this monster of the ancient sea was a cannibal, feeding on its own kind.
A series of new studies sheds light on the population crash and extinction of the giant birds, lemurs and more that roamed the island until around A.D. 700-1000.
Death is inevitable for individuals and also for species. With help from the fossil record, paleontologists are piecing together what might make one creature more vulnerable than another.
Top contributors
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Research Associate, African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience, Nelson Mandela University
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Professor of Earth Sciences, University of New England
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Professor, Pangea Research Centre, UNSW Sydney
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Professor in Evolutionary Biology (jointly appointed with South Australian Museum), Flinders University
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Associate Professor, Southern Cross University
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Pro Vice-Chancellor of Research at the University of Technology Sydney and Chief Investigator of ARC Centre for Excellence in Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, University of Technology Sydney
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Lecturer at Department of Geology, Faculty of Earth Sciences and Technology, Institut Teknologi Bandung
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Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Business, Law and Arts, Southern Cross University
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Paul Braterman is a Friend of The Conversation.
Hon. Research Fellow; Professor Emeritus in Chemistry, University of Glasgow
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Senior Researcher in Vertebrate Palaeontology, University of the Witwatersrand
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Merit Researcher, Natural History Museum
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Professor, Southern Cross University
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Senior Lecturer in Ancient DNA, University of Otago
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Postdoctoral research fellow, Jurassica Museum
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Senior Curator, Vertebrate Palaeontology, Museums Victoria
