Vertebrate paleontology is the scientific discipline within paleontology that focuses on the study of fossilized remains of vertebrate animals, including their morphology, systematics, evolutionary relationships, and paleoecology. It integrates anatomical analysis, comparative biology, stratigraphy, and geochronology to reconstruct the origin, diversification, and extinction patterns of vertebrates through deep time. Research in vertebrate paleontology often involves detailed examination of skeletal elements, functional morphology, and phylogenetic methods to infer evolutionary trajectories and biogeographic histories, as well as to interpret environmental and climatic conditions recorded in vertebrate fossil assemblages and associated sedimentary contexts.
The fastest land animal in North America is the American pronghorn, and previously, researchers thought it evolved its speed because of pressure from the now-extinct American cheetah. But recently, that theory has come under ...
Evolution
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New pieces have been added to the puzzle of the evolution of some of the oldest fish that lived on Earth more than 400 million years ago. In two separate studies, experts in Australia and China have found new clues about ...
Evolution
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Flying is really hard work. Compared to walking, swimming, or running, flying is the form of movement that takes the most energy and requires the most calories. That means that birds have had to evolve specialized ways to ...
Evolution
Feb 2, 2026
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University of Queensland research has confirmed Brisbane's only dinosaur fossil is Australia's oldest, dating back to the earliest part of the Late Triassic period 230 million years ago. The 18.5-centimeter footprint was ...
Paleontology & Fossils
Feb 2, 2026
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An international team has described Foskeia pelendonum, a tiny Early Cretaceous ornithopod from Vegagete (Burgos, Spain), measuring barely half a meter long. Led by Paul-Emile Dieudonné (National University of Río Negro, ...
Evolution
Feb 2, 2026
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Southern Africa is world renowned for its fossil record of creatures that lived in the very distant past, including dinosaurs. But, about 182 million years ago, a huge eruption of lava covered much of the landscape (the inland ...
Paleontology & Fossils
Jan 31, 2026
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New research conducted by paleontologists from the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the CNRS (France) documents the earliest occurrence of a fossilized regurgitation produced by a strictly ...
Ecology
Jan 30, 2026
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Babies and very young sauropods—the long-necked, long-tailed plant-eaters that in adulthood were the largest animals to have ever walked on land—were a key food sustaining predators in the Late Jurassic, according to ...
Ecology
Jan 30, 2026
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Whether it's digging up weathered bones from a paleontological site or reexamining forgotten trays in museum and university collections, the study of dinosaurs still throws up something new.
A new study using advanced artificial intelligence (AI) has revealed that the asteroid strike that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago caused only a modest decline in shark and ray species. The findings, published ...
Evolution
Jan 28, 2026
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