A fossil misidentified for decades reveals insects before six legs became standard. For nearly 40 years, one of the strangest ...

Ancient fossils suggest insects conquered land through a long amphibious phase rather than making an abrupt jump from water to dry ground. A newly identified 324-million-year-old species still carried ...

Most living mammals are small. Because smaller animals were less likely to survive the researchers’ simulated preservation ...

A newly described fossil reveals that leeches are at least 200 million years older than scientists previously thought, and that their earliest ancestors may have feasted not on blood, but on smaller ...

In a hillside in Yunnan province, southwest China, paleontologists have pulled more than 700 fossils from rock that is roughly 554 million years old. The collection, known as the Jiangchuan Biota, ...

See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. Paleontologists have revealed the fossilized remains of a curious ...

Find out more about Body Fossils and Trace Fossils. Fossils can be categorized in two basic types: body fossils and trace fossils. Body fossils help scientists learn what plants and animals looked ...

The formation of complex terrestrial ecosystems was a significant innovation in the evolutionary history of life on Earth.

Dr. Luis Buatois (Ph.D.) traces a series of hexagons with his finger, following the path carved by tiny organisms millions of years ago that have long since left these unique fossils in their wake. It ...

A research team from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has identified a fossil acanthocephalan, Juracanthocephalus, from the 160-million-year-old ...

Learn how whale fossils and embedded shark teeth reveal feeding behavior and scavenging in the Early Pliocene North Sea ecosystem. Sharks once fed on whales in the North Sea and left their teeth ...

The fossil leech compared with a modern leech. Double arrows indicate the large caudal sucker used for attachment, single arrows indicate body annulations. A newly described fossil reveals that ...