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Articles on Fossils

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Kayentapus ambrokholohali footprints belong to an animal of about 26 feet long, dwarfing all the life around it. Theropod image adapted by Lara Sciscio, with permission, from an illustration by Scott Hartman

Meet the giant dinosaur that roamed southern Africa 200 million years ago

Until this discovery, theropod dinosaurs were thought to be considerably smaller, at three to five metres in body length, during the Early Jurassic.
Here’s a modern human skull on the left, and Neanderthal skull on the right. Darren Curnoe

Curious Kids: Where did the first person come from?

Maeve, age 8, has a question that has stumped many scientists over the years. And that’s because it’s a surprisingly tricky question to answer. It depends a bit on what you mean by ‘person’.
Two male Moschops are fighting using their ornamented head as a weapon. (Artwork by Alex Bernardini, SimplexPaleo)

New insights into the survival techniques of a prehistoric beast

The Moschops fossil was discovered in South Africa in 1911 and a new study of a complete skull shows how its dense braincase protected the brain and sense organs during head-to-head combat.
Dr Tim Holland (seated right) assisting volunteers in the excavation of the ribs of Austrosaurus mckillopi in 2015. Stephen Poropat

A new look at a lost dinosaur dig in the Australian outback

The location of a dinosaur find on a remote Queensland sheep station was lost for almost 80 years. But the site was rediscovered, and details are now emerging about the make up of the new dinosaur.
Hypothetical reconstruction of the largest extinct megapode, Progura gallinacea (right), with a modern Brush-turkey and a Grey Kangaroo. Artwork by E. Shute, from photos by Tony Rudd, Kim Benson and Aaron Camens

Tall turkeys and nuggety chickens: large ‘megapode’ birds once lived across Australia

Large birds once lived across Australia, only to become extinct around the time that giant marsupials and other megafauna died out during the Pleistocene “ice ages”.

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