A perceptive diner has spotted dinosaur footprints in a restaurant in southwestern China, with an international research team confirming that they belonged to the sauropod—a long-necked and small-headed herbivore. Hongtao Ou, a self-reported palaeontology buff, was having a meal at a restaurant in Leshan, Sichuan, when he found evenly divided craters on the floor and…

Researchers from Flinders University and the South Australian Museum have finally corrected the record on a misclassification that has lasted more than 100 years old after unearthing Australia’s first fossil vulture, the Cryptogyps lacertosus. The fossilizinitiallys originally classified as the eagle, Taphaetus lacertosus, in 1905 by Charles Walter de Vis, an English ornithologist—studier of birds— who thought…

Fossils from some of the largest creatures ever to swim Earth’s oceans—whale-sized marine reptiles called ichthyosaurs—have been found in a counterintuitive place: atop three mountains in the Swiss Alps up to 8,990 feet above sea level. Scientists on Thursday described rib and vertebrae fossils from two ichthyosaur individuals: one about 69 feet long and the…

In the heart of Los Angeles, we discovered an area that was inhabited for thousands of years before the arrival of humans: the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum. From viewing the exhibits and reading the signs at each one we learned so much about the natural history of this area. In the late 1800s…

While scouring the glacial till that comprises England’s eastern coastal cliffs, a pair of Yorkshire fossil hunters made a colossal discovery some 180 million years in the making. Late last summer, Mark Kemp, 34, a self-taught, professional fossil finder and preparator, and a friend who shares the pastime were exploring the rugged cliffline of Holderness, northwest…

A team of paleontologists last fall completed the extraction of two dinosaur nests containing some 30 fossilized titanosaur eggs at a site in Loarre, in northern Spain—the continuation of an earlier 2020 campaign. The fossil gathering project was led by the Aragosaurus-IUCA Group of the University of Zaragoza and the Portuguese NOVA University Lisbon, with…

A vast trove of fossils unearthed in Argentina’s southern Patagonia region is offering the oldest-known evidence that some dinosaurs thrived in a complex and well-organized herd structure, with adults caring for the young and sharing a communal nesting ground. Scientists said on Thursday the fossils include more than 100 dinosaur eggs and the bones of…

Fossils found on a rocky beach show there was double trouble on England’s Isle of Wight about 127 million years ago, with a pair of large previously unknown dinosaur predators living perhaps side by side, both adapted to hunting along the water’s edge. Scientists on Wednesday announced the discovery of fossils of the two Cretaceous…

The remains of a huge new half-a-billion-year-old extinct animal have been unearthed in the Rocky Mountains. Scientists uncovered the fossil belonging to the newly discovered species that roamed the seas during the Cambrian period. Named Titanokorys gainesi, these animals had a distinctive protective head shell and were much bigger than many other species at the…

BUENOS AIRES—Scientists have unearthed in Argentina’s Patagonian wilderness fossils of what may be the oldest-known member of the dinosaur group known as titanosaurs that includes the largest land animals in Earth’s history. Researchers said on Monday the fossils represent a dinosaur species named Ninjatitan zapatai that lived 140 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period….