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.
An international team, involving researchers from the University of Seville, the Andalusian Institute of Earth Sciences in Granada and the University of Huelva, has identified the first fossilized vertebrate footprints from ...
Paleontology & Fossils
Dec 17, 2025
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206
A new study led by UCC paleontologists discovered that frogs have conserved their ecology in the last 45 million years. The research is published in the journal iScience.
Evolution
Dec 17, 2025
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60
For the first time, scientists have analyzed metabolism-related molecules from the fossilized bones of animals that lived 1.3 to 3 million years ago, revealing insights about both the animals and their environments.
Molecular & Computational biology
Dec 17, 2025
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73
When studying how fossil hominids moved, researchers usually analyze the morphology of bones—which is crucial for understanding the evolution of bipedalism—focusing mainly on muscle insertion sites. However, the potential ...
Evolution
Dec 17, 2025
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26
A research team led by Prof. Zhu Min—a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and affiliated with the CAS Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP)—has identified a new species of fossil lungfish ...
Evolution
Dec 17, 2025
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70
A team of international scientists, led by Dr. Karen Baab, a paleoanthropologist at the College of Graduate Studies, Glendale Campus of Midwestern University in Arizona, produced a virtual reconstruction of the face of early ...
Paleontology & Fossils
Dec 16, 2025
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78
A new study led by a researcher from the School of Zoology and the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History at Tel Aviv University examined dinosaur fossils preserved with their feathers and found that these dinosaurs had lost ...
Evolution
Dec 16, 2025
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95
The mystery surrounding dozens of small dinosaur fossils has finally been solved. Remains previously thought to belong to miniature armored dinosaurs are actually baby ankylosaurs, offering scientists new insight into how ...
Paleontology & Fossils
Dec 15, 2025
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136
An international study led by researchers from Australia's La Trobe University and the University of Cambridge has challenged the classification of one of the world's most complete human ancestral fossils, raising the possibility ...
Evolution
Dec 15, 2025
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117
Mosasaurs, giant marine reptiles that existed more than 66 million years ago, lived not only in the sea but also in rivers. This is shown by new research based on analyses of a mosasaur tooth found in North Dakota and believed ...
Paleontology & Fossils
Dec 12, 2025
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