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Tag Archives: fossils

Cool Jobs: Delving into dung

By Roberta Kwok / January 23, 2013

Wood’s colleague, Janet Wilmshurst, studies a piece of moa poop. Credit: Jamie Wood

Scientists uncover fascinating secrets through the study of animal feces

Posted in Animals, STEM Careers | Tagged animal navigation, animal reproduction, baboons, beetles, Brazil, Center for Conservation Biology, Cerrado, chemical markers, Chinook salmon, conservation biology, cool jobs, coprolite, Dactylanthus taylorii, diet, digestion, DNA, DNA fingerprint, droppings, dung, ecology, Emily Baird, endocrinology, excretions, feature, feces, fossils, glucocorticoid, Hades flower, hormones, kakapo, killer whale, Landcare Research, Lund University, manure, moa, New Zealand, oceanography, olfaction, orca, paleontology, pollen, Pollination, poo, poop, scat, stress, Tanzania, topstories, University of Washington, Wasser, whiskers

Shoulder bones fuel debate

By Stephen Ornes / November 16, 2012

This shoulder blade is from a 3-year-old humanlike female who lived more than 3 million years ago. Scientists are studying the fossil to learn whether the creature climbed trees. Credit: Courtesy of Zeresenay Alemseged/Dikika Research Project

Fossil shoulder blades suggest an ancient humanlike species may have been at home in the trees as well as on the ground

Posted in Ancient Times | Tagged adaption, Alemseged, anthropology, Australopithecus afarensis, Big Man, California Academy of Sciences, Cleveland Museum of Natural History, David Green, fossils, getinvolved, great apes, hominids, human origins, humanlike, Lucy, Midwestern University, paleontology, primate evolution, scapula, Selam, shoulder blade, topstories, trees, Yohannes Haile-Selassie

A fishy mammal ID

By Sid Perkins / November 13, 2012

fossil_skull

For more than a century, the fossilized skull of an ancient fish was misidentified as a primate

Posted in Dinosaurs & Fossils | Tagged Argentina, Arrhinolemur scalabrinii, Brian Sidlauskas, dentition, Florentino Ameghino, fossils, genus, George Gaylord Simpson, getinvolved, Greek, John Lundberg; Academy of Natural Sciences, Latin, lemur, Oregon State University, paleontologist, paleontology, primate, South America, species, taxonomy, teeth

Four-winged dinosaur

By Stephen Ornes / November 12, 2012

dino_feature

Hind wings helped a small dino make tight turns in midair

Posted in Dinosaurs & Fossils | Tagged Adaptation, aerodynamics, biology, dinosaurs, drag, evolution, fossils, getinvolved, Justin Hall, Luis Chiappe, Michael Habib, Microraptor gui, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, physics, topstories, University of Southern California, wings

The oldest place on Earth

By Douglas Fox / June 13, 2012

Flt-2-Friis-Hills-high-3_feature

Antarctica may seem like the dead continent, but it once bustled with life — a little of which still survives

Posted in Earth | Tagged Adam Lewis, Allan Ashworth, Antarctic Ice Sheet, Antarctica, continental drift, evolution, feature, fossils, Friis Hills, Glossopteris, Jr., Judd Case, Lystrosaurus, marsupial, Noel Potter, Peter Convey

Cool Jobs: People with a taste for chemistry

By Catherine M. Cooney / May 30, 2012

DanaSanza_feature

Chemists contribute to food flavorings, fuel extraction and everything in between

Posted in Chemistry, STEM Careers | Tagged alchemy, analytical chemistry, chemistry, chemistry careers, chromatography, climate change, cool jobs, Dana Sanza, feature, flavor, food chemistry, fossil fuel, fossils, geochemistry, sediment, synthesis

A ghost lake

By Douglas Fox / February 1, 2012

shorelines

Scientists study an ancient lake that once covered much of Utah to learn lessons for the future

Posted in Earth | Tagged evolution, feature, fossils

A Big Discovery about Little People

By Emily Sohn / May 30, 2007

Humans may have once walked the Earth with tiny people—a possible newly discovered species that scientists have nicknamed “hobbits.”

Posted in Body & Health | Tagged anthropology, DNA, evolution, fossils, human evolution