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.
For the first time, a research team from the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment at the University of Tübingen and the Schöningen Research Center have reconstructed the genomes of an extinct horse ...
Evolution
Oct 2, 2025
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114
New research has uncovered a species of hook-toothed lizard that lived about 167 million years ago and has a confusing set of features seen in snakes and geckos—two very distant relatives. One of the oldest relatively complete ...
Plants & Animals
Oct 1, 2025
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107
An international research team from Switzerland and Germany, led by Gaël Spicher (JURASSICA Museum, Porrentruy, Switzerland), has described a new ichthyosaur species based on fossils curated at the Urwelt-Museum Oberfranken ...
Paleontology & Fossils
Sep 26, 2025
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213
How can we guess the size of an extinct animal when all that remains are a few scattered bones? A study conducted by researchers at ULiège now provides an answer to this question. Using mathematical methods applied to hundreds ...
Molecular & Computational biology
Sep 24, 2025
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26
During the course of evolution, the mammalian cranio-mandibular secondary joint—formed by the dentary condyle and the squamosal glenoid fossa, which replaced the reptilian articular–quadrate joint—represents an innovative ...
Evolution
Sep 24, 2025
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77
For the more than 242 million years that lizards and snakes appear in the fossil record, they show up mostly as pieces of lizard jaws and snake vertebrae. Exactly why these parts survive as fossils has been a mystery—until ...
Evolution
Sep 24, 2025
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68
Scientists have discovered a new dinosaur from Argentina with powerful claws, feasting on an ancient crocodile bone.
Paleontology & Fossils
Sep 23, 2025
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223
Studies of newly discovered fossils of the predatory dinosaur Camarillasaurus cirugedae from Spain show that the giant bipedal spinosaurids from Africa apparently originated in Europe. An international team led by SNSB paleontologist ...
Evolution
Sep 18, 2025
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297
Peruvian paleontologists on Wednesday unveiled the 12-million-year-old fossil of a prehistoric porpoise found near the country's Pacific coast.
Paleontology & Fossils
Sep 18, 2025
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375
A "teenaged" pachycephalosaur from Mongolia's Gobi Desert may provide answers to lingering questions around the dinosaur group, according to new research published today in the journal Nature. The fossil represents a new ...
Paleontology & Fossils
Sep 17, 2025
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