Ancient microbes likely produced natural products their descendants today do not. Tapping into this lost chemical diversity could offer a potential source of new drugs.
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Articles on Paleobiology
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Our ancient ancestors didn’t have clothes or houses – but that constant exposure to the sun helped their skin protect itself from the worst sun damage.
Thanks to our new technique using fossilised tracks, we have been able to learn more about the locomotion of the largest creatures ever to have roamed this planet.
By looking at the eye bones and ear canals of extinct dinosaurs, researchers show that a small ancient predator likely hunted at night and had senses as good as a modern barn owl.
Plus, what Israel’s latest election could mean for its foreign policy. Listen to episode 11 of The Conversation Weekly podcast.
Scientists claimed they knew what this bizarre creature was – our evidence suggests the question is still open.
Exceptionally well preserved 500m year old fossils show Cambrian seas were more diverse than scientists had thought.
Scientists asked young people to draw what they would like the natural world to look like when they’re older. Their imagination could help make conservationists more ambitious.
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.
What can we expect from our future climate after looking at the ‘Hothouse Earths’ of the past?
Megalodons are the latest Hollywood monster to leap out of the fossil record, but what else is lurking in prehistoric seas?
Strange frond-like sea creatures are among the planet’s earliest animals, but new research dates them and the entire animal kingdom to much earlier than first thought.
A drying climate caused a mass extinction among plants, but paved the way for the ancestors of modern reptiles, mammals, and birds.
Are we in the middle of a mass extinction caused by Homo sapiens? Past events can help us to understand the current crisis.
Researchers are looking at whether devastating asteroid strikes are predictable or random.
With no identifiable body parts, it’s hard to know how these fossilized creatures lived. A new approach models how the ocean’s water would interact with their unique shapes – hinting at their lifestyle.
Top contributors
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Professor of Palaeobiology, University of Leicester
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Professor of Palaeobiology, University of Leicester
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Evan Pugh University Professor of Anthropology, Penn State
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Lecturer in Biology, University of Sussex
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Professor of Dinosaur Paleontology, University of the Witwatersrand
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Postdoctoral Researcher in Palaeobiology, University College Cork
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Assistant Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Vanderbilt University
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Junior Research Fellow, University of Oxford
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Research Fellow in Palaeobiology, University of Leeds
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Doctoral Candidate of Lithosphere and Biosphere Science, Lund University
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Swiss National Science Foundation Ambzione Fellow in Geo- and Cosmochemistry, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich
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Assistant professor, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
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Reader in Vertebrate Biology, Liverpool John Moores University
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Doctoral Researcher, University of Sussex
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Lecturer, University of Essex
