Paleontologists and biologists reported an analysis of insect damage to Eocene fossil plantsthat has implications for what may happen as a result of present day global warming in the open access peer reviewed journal Public Library of Science on July 18, 2012. Samples of insect-feeding damage on the two middle Eocene plant groups from the Messeland Eckfeld sites in Germany were examined from specimens from […]

Killing Field” or “Sudden Die-Off?” In the famed Shark tooth Hill Bone Bed near Bakersfield, Calif., shark teeth as big as a hand and weighing a pound each, intermixed with copious bones from extinct seals and whales, seem to tell of a 15-million-year-old killing ground. Yet, new research by a team of paleontologists from the […]

High-tech technology, traditionally usually used to design racing cars and aeroplanes, has helped researchers to understand how plant-eating dinosaurs fed 150 million years ago. A team of international researchers, led by the University of Bristol and the Natural History Museum, used CT scans and biomechanical modelling to show that Diplodocus — one of the largest […]

It took some 10 million years for Earth to recover from the greatest mass extinction of all time, latest research has revealed. Life was nearly wiped out 250 million years ago, with only 10 per cent of plants and animals surviving. It is currently much debated how life recovered from this cataclysm, whether quickly or […]

Sea levels may rise much higher than previously thought, according to scientists from The Australian National University, who have used fossil corals to understand how warmer temperatures in the past promoted dramatic melting of polar ice sheets. Dr Andrea Dutton, formerly of the Research School of Earth Sciences (RSES) in the ANU College of Physical […]

An international team of researchers, including Dr. Anthony Kemp from The University of Western Australia, believes they have found out and their work is published in Nature today. Dr. Kemp, an Australian Research Council Future Fellow in UWA’s School of Earth and Environment, said as far as we know, Earth is the only planet in […]

A layer of partially molten rock about 22 to 75 miles underground can’t be the only mechanism that allows continents to gradually shift their position over millions of years, according to a NASA-sponsored researcher. The result gives insight into what allows plate tectonics — the movement of Earth’s crustal plates — to occur. “This melt-rich […]

Ten Million Years Before Dinosaurs Paleontologists announced the discovery of a dinosaur-like animal – one that shared many characteristics with dinosaurs but fell just outside of the dinosaur family tree – living 10 million years earlier than the oldest known dinosaurs. The researchers conclude that dinosaurs and other close relatives such as pterosaurs (flying reptiles) […]

Mountain belts on Earth are most commonly formed by collision of one or more tectonic plates. The process of collision, uplift, and subsequent erosion of long mountain belts often produces profound global effects, including changes in regional and global climates, as well as the formation of important economic resources, including oil and gas reservoirs and […]