The closest living relatives of crocodiles and alligators are, perhaps surprisingly, birds. Both are archosauriforms, a group of species that originated about 250 million years ago near the beginning of the Triassic period.
Paleontology & Fossils
Aug 14, 2026
0
99
How many sharks should a coral reef have? It sounds like a simple question, but almost nowhere on Earth is there a reef that has not at some time been fished or otherwise affected by humans, so there is no yardstick against ...
Ecology
Aug 13, 2026
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94
Imagine the Western Plains of North America, from Texas to Alaska, submerged under a broad, shallow seaway. To the west lay the ancestral Rocky Mountains. To the east were low-lying plains traversed by large, sluggish rivers.
Paleontology & Fossils
Aug 26, 2026
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87
Two tiny ant fossils recovered in southern Saskatchewan are helping scientists better understand the evolutionary history of modern ants. Ant fossils dating from 72–56 million years ago are rare. What happened to insects ...
Evolution
Sep 3, 2026
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48
The Mauritian dodo—a global symbol of human-caused extinction and one of the world's largest pigeons—may not have deserved its reputation as a silly simpleton and may have been the only member of its group to live in the ...
Ecology
Aug 8, 2026
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47
In productive marine environments, a square meter (10.8 square feet) of seafloor can be perforated by hundreds to thousands of isolated and interconnected tunnels through which crawl and writhe a cornucopia of clams, shrimp, ...
Paleontology & Fossils
Aug 21, 2026
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43
An international team of researchers from Belgium, France, Switzerland, Spain and the U.S. has reconstructed the evolution of body mass in carnivorous mammals during the Paleogene—a crucial window in the diversification of ...
Ecology
Aug 13, 2026
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42
About 200 million years ago, furry, little egg-laying creatures evolved the ability to feed their offspring with a secretion from special glands: milk. Their evolutionary journey continued, and by about 160 million years ...
Evolution
Sep 3, 2026
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34
Thirty-five years on—well, 12 million, technically—Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park continues to offer important glimpses of prehistoric life in Nebraska.
Paleontology & Fossils
Aug 28, 2026
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32
We often think of microbes as organisms that live around us, like the Salmonella bacteria and flu viruses that cause illness. But some of our most intimate relationships are with the microbes living inside us.
Evolution
Sep 2, 2026
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30
