Swedish Museum of Natural History in the news https://phys.org/ en-us Latest news from Swedish Museum of Natural History Extraordinary fossils solve a 500-million-year mystery: Bryozoans were there at the dawn of animal life Bryozoans are tiny, filter-feeding colonial invertebrates that thrive in the world's oceans today, yet for decades their origins presented a puzzling gap in the fossil record. While nearly every other major animal group made its first appearance during the Cambrian explosion roughly 530 million years ago, the bryozoan fossil record remained stubbornly silent until the Ordovician period, some 50 million years later. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-extraordinary-fossils-million-year-mystery.html Evolution Wed, 03 Jun 2026 11:00:09 EDT news699636181 Old newspapers track porpoise populations across the Baltic Sea Harbor porpoises were once found across a much wider area of the Baltic Sea than they are today, including regions where they are now rare or absent. This is shown in a new study that uses centuries-old Swedish newspapers to reconstruct past distribution patterns. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-newspapers-track-porpoise-populations-baltic.html Plants & Animals Tue, 12 May 2026 19:40:05 EDT news697817161 Globe-trotting ancient 'sea-salamander' fossils rediscovered from Australia's dawn of the Age of Dinosaurs Around 250 million years ago, what is today scorching desert in remote northwestern Australia was the shore of a shallow bay bordering a vast prehistoric ocean. Fossils recovered from this region over 60 years ago, and almost forgotten in museum collections, have now shed new light on the earliest global radiations of land-living animals adapting to life in the sea. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-globe-ancient-sea-salamander-fossils.html Paleontology & Fossils Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:10:01 EST news690798624 Oldest oceanic reptile ecosystem from the Age of Dinosaurs found on Arctic island More than 30,000 teeth, bones and other fossils from a 249 million-year-old community of extinct marine reptiles, amphibians, bony fish and sharks have been discovered on the remote Arctic island of Spitsbergen. These record the earliest radiation of land-living animals into oceanic ecosystems following cataclysmic extinction and extreme global warming at the dawn of the Age of Dinosaurs. https://phys.org/news/2025-11-oldest-oceanic-reptile-ecosystem-age.html Ecology Thu, 13 Nov 2025 15:45:44 EST news682270828