To try to solve the puzzle of Lark Quarry, experts have turned to a special subfield of paleontology -- paleoichnology, or the study of trace fossils -- to reconstruct exactly what happened on that spot, on that day, nearly 100,000...

This ancient species had the same six legs and segmented body that we’d recognize from an ant today. But it also had a huge, scythe-like jaw and a horn coming out of its head. This bizarre predator belonged to a group known as “hell...

How the therizinosaurs lived and evolved ended up being just as weird as their mixed-up anatomy.

Because of their strange combination of bear-like and dog-like traits, they’re sometimes confusingly called the beardogs. And even though you’ve never met one of these animals, the beardogs are key to understanding the history of an...

In the Eocene Epoch, there was a reptile that had teeth equipped for biting through flesh, its hind legs were a lot longer than its front legs and instead of claws, its toes were each capped with hooves. How did this living nightmare...

Around 30 million years ago, a new group of predators began to push nautiloids from their former global range into a single remaining refuge. But who were these predators?

A new discovery raises an important question: from an evolutionary perspective, who really has the stranger wings?

Mystacodon is the earliest known mysticete, the group that, today, we call the baleen whales. But if this was a baleen whale, where was its baleen? Where did baleen come from? And how did it live without it?

When pterosaurs first took flight, you could say that it marked the beginning of the end for the winged reptiles. Because, strangely enough, the power of flight -- and the changes that it led to -- may have ultimately led to their downfall.

The world of the Jurassic was a lot like ours - similar interactions between plants and insects were happening, but the players have changed over time. Because it looks like pollination by insects actually got going twice.

They have survived every catastrophe and every mass extinction event that nature has thrown at them. And by being the little, filter-feeding, water-cleaning creatures that they are, sponges may have saved the world.

Today, chilis are the most widely cultivated spice crop in the world - grown everywhere from their native home in the Americas to Europe, Africa, and Asia. But how and why did chilis evolve this weird, fiery trick in the first place? And...

Charles Darwin encountered a tiny fox-like creature during his famous voyage but instead of discovering its fascinating evolutionary story, he just knocked it on the head with his geology hammer.

The unexpected discovery of an entirely new domain of life was pretty huge and surprising - even if archaea do just look like bacteria. But, in recent years, it’s been their connection to us that's turned out to be particularly full of...

There were a huge number of croc-like animals that flourished during the Triassic Period. Dinosaurs had just arrived on the scene but it was these animals that truly ruled the Earth, becoming both abundant and diverse.

There’s one kind of herpesvirus that’s specific to one species of primate, and each virus split off from the herpesvirus family tree when the primate split off from its own tree. But of course, humans are a special kind of primate.

Lots of the traits we think of as defining us as mammals show up pretty early, during the time of the dinosaurs. And, in some cases, they show up a lot earlier and in things that weren’t mammals at all.

The biggest turtle ever described wasn’t an ancestor of today’s leatherback turtles or any other living sea turtles. But it looks like there are some things about being a giant, skin-shelled sea turtle that just work, no matter where, or...

Our DNA holds evidence of a huge, ancient pandemic, one that touched many different species, spanned the globe, and lasted for more than 15 million years.

If we can see ourselves in the way our ancient cousins dealt with death…what else could we have in common?

The Wrangel Island mammoths would end up being the final survivors of a once-widespread genus. In their final years, after having thrived in many parts of the world for millions of years, the very last mammoths that ever lived...

Toxodon was one of the last members of a lineage that vanished 11,000 years ago after thriving in isolation for millions of years. And its fossils would inspire a revolutionary thinker to tackle a bigger mystery than Toxodon itself:...

This video contains images and video of snakes and spiders. It's possible Euchambersia possessed venom about 20 million years before the first lizards and over 150 million years before the first snakes evolved. We’ve teamed up Sarah...

Fossil evidence suggests Diictodon used burrows to breed, and that a parent stayed behind to feed and protect their young. And the parent that stayed behind? It might’ve been the male.