Mosasaurs were true sea monsters of late Cretaceous seas. These marine lizards — related to modern snakes and monitor lizards — grew as long as fifty feet, flashed two rows of sharp teeth, and shredded their victims with enormous, powerful jaws.
A new imaging study of the mummified arteries of people who lived thousands of years ago revealed that their arteries were more clogged than originally thought, according to a proof-of-concept study.
Read moreA key theory that attributes the climate evolution of the Earth to the breakdown of Himalayan rocks may not explain the cooling over the past 15 million years, according to a new study. The study could shed more light on the causes of long-term climate change. It centers on the long-term cooling that occurred before the recent global warming tied to greenhouse gas emissions from humanity.
Read moreGiant, predatory croc-like animals that lived during the Triassic period in southern Africa preyed on early dinosaurs and mammal relatives 210 million years ago. These predators, known as 'rauisuchians' preyed on early herbivore dinosaurs and their mammal relatives living at the time.
Read moreThe Sahara Desert is vast, generously dusty, and surprisingly shy about its age. New research looking into what appears to be dust that the Sahara blew over to the Canary Islands is providing the first direct evidence from dry land that the age of the Sahara matches that found in deep-sea sediments: at least 4.6 million years old.
Read moreEtched onto the steep walls of Arizona's 6,000-foot-deep, 277-mile-long Grand Canyon are clues that chronicle the sweeping changes the region has experienced during the past two billion years. The canyon's colorful layers narrate tales of ancient environments come and gone, from lofty mountain ranges and tropical seas to a Saharan-scale desert that once stretched across much of western North America.
Read moreAnthropologist contributed a large, multi-institutional study explaining how the human-influenced mass extinction of giant carnivores and herbivores of North America fundamentally changed the biodiversity and landscape of the continent.
Read moreMany people are familiar with the existence of Neanderthals, the humanoid species that was a precursor to modern humans, but far less is known Denisovans, a similar group that were contemporaries to the Neanderthals and who died out approximately 50,000 years ago. Researchers have now made a reconstruction of a Denisovan girl based on patterns of methylation (chemical changes) in their ancient DNA.
Read moreSince they first arrived on land, plants have likely been using the same genetic tools to regulate whether they grow bigger or reproduce. The discovery was made using liverwort, one descendant of the first plants to move out of the ancient oceans and onto land.
Read moreThe rate at which the planet warms in response to the ongoing buildup of heat-trapping carbon dioxide gas could increase in the future, according to new simulations of a comparable warm period more than 50 million years ago.
Read more