In South Africa, paleontology has been dominated by white people. Lazarus Kgasi is changing that dynamic — and coloring in the picture of the world our distant ancestors once inhabited.
A group of scientists say in new research that matching dinosaur tracks found in modern-day Brazil and Cameroon were made 120 million years ago in an area that once connected the two continents.
A fossil of an armadillo-like mammal appears to bear cut marks from butchering by humans, suggesting people were living in South America at least 20,000 years ago, even earlier than once thought.
When dinosaurs reigned some 130 million years ago, flowering plants were taking over the world. That change is sealed in ancient amber specimens on the slopes of Lebanon that Danny Azar knows so well.
A father and daughter discovered fossil remnants of a giant ichthyosaur that scientists say may have been the largest-known marine reptile to ever swim the seas.
When the dinosaurs walked the Earth, massive marine reptiles swam. Among them, a species of Ichthyosaur that measured over 80 feet long. Today, we look into how a chance discovery by a father-daughter duo of fossil hunters furthered paleontologist's understanding of the "giant fish lizard of the Severn." Currently, it is the largest marine reptile known to scientists.
Read more about this specimen in the study published in the journal PLOS One.
Have another ancient animal or scientific revelation you want us to cover? Email us at shortwave@npr.org — we might talk about it on a future episode!
Dinocephalosaurus orientalis's snake-like body was 16 feet long and lived in Triassic China. The newly revealed specimen allows scientists to depict the creature in full for the first time.
The ancient extinct shark that starred in the film The Meg is thought to be the largest shark that ever swam the Earth. But there's debate over what it really looked like.
A 125-million-year-old fossil from the early Cretaceous shows the skeletons of a smaller mammal biting a larger horned dinosaur, suggesting a much more complex ancient food web.
A project to replace the boardwalk at the Mill Canyon Dinosaur Tracksite in Moah, Utah, cause minor damage to tracks and trace fossils at the site, a Bureau of Land Management paleontologist found.
A team of scientists dated the footprints along an extinct lake bed in New Mexico and found them to be between 21,000 and 23,000 years old — far older than reliable evidence has suggested to date.
