fossil
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The Strangest Amber Fossils Ever Discovered
Amber fossils are like a time capsule, preserving the three-dimensional structure of animals, plants, and other prehistoric items of interest. Every once in a while, however, paleontologists stumble upon some particularly bizarre specimens and scenes. Conventional fossils, with their faintly outlined pancaked specimens, can teach us plenty about the past, but they lack a certain…
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Oldest Fossilized Skin Discovered, Clocks in at 300 Million Years Old
Researchers believe they’ve found the oldest known fossilized skin, hidden away in a limestone cave system in Oklahoma. The skin sample dates to the early Permian Period, between 289 million years ago and 286 million years ago. The skin belonged to an ancient reptile and is epidermis—the outer layer of skin in amniotes, a group…
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Sexing Dinos: Paleontologists Seek Fossilized Hormones
How can you tell if a dinosaur is female or male? It’s one of the most basic aspects of biology and yet, for the most part, it continues to be a mystery in paleontology. We don’t yet know the sex of most extinct species, even if those in museum displays have gender-specific names like Sue…
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The Clumsy, the Weird, the Gross: These Fossils Reveal How Extinct Animals Really Lived
We know them in death. We know how they died, some of what they ate, how they grew, where they may have roamed, and even if they suffered from disease or injury. Preserved bones can tell us a lot, but perhaps just as interesting are the stories they left in traces, where their behaviour, even…