Early Mammals News

July 7, 2024

Top Headlines

Extinct Humans Survived on the Tibetan Plateau for 160,000 Years

July 3, 2024 — Bone remains found in a Tibetan cave 3,280 m above sea level indicate an ancient group of humans survived here for many ...

Giant Salamander-Like Creature Was a Top Predator in the Ice Age Before the Dinosaurs

July 3, 2024 — Meet Gaiasia jennyae, the swamp creature with a toilet seat-shaped head. It lived 40 million years before the first dinosaurs, and it was the top predator in its ...

The Evidence Is Mounting: Humans Were Responsible for the Extinction of Large Mammals

July 1, 2024 — Human hunting, not climate change, played a decisive role in the extinction of large mammals over the last 50,000 years. This conclusion comes from researchers who reviewed over 300 scientific ...

Last Surviving Woolly Mammoths Were Inbred but Not Doomed to Extinction

June 27, 2024 — The last population of woolly mammoths was isolated on Wrangel Island off the coast of Siberia 10,000 years ago, when sea levels rose and cut the mountainous island off from the mainland. A new genomic analysis reveals that the isolated mammoths, ...

Latest Headlines

updated 8:42am EDT

Tiny New Species of Great Ape Lived in Germany 11 Million Years Ago

June 7, 2024 — Ancient apes in Germany co-existed by partitioning resources in their environment, according to a new ...

Florida Fossil Porcupine Solves a Prickly Dilemma 10-Million Years in the Making

May 28, 2024 — An exceptionally rare fossilized porcupine skeleton discovered in Florida has allowed researchers to trace the evolutionary history for one of North ...

Diverse Headgear in Hoofed Mammals Evolved from Common Ancestor

May 20, 2024 — From the small ossicones on a giraffe to the gigantic antlers of a male moose -- which can grow as wide as a car -- the headgear of ruminant hooved mammals is extremely diverse, and new research ...

Dinosaur Study Challenges Bergmann's Rule

Apr. 5, 2024 — A new study calls into question Bergmann's rule, an 1800s-era scientific principle stating that animals in high-latitude, cooler climates tend to be larger than close relatives living in warmer ...

Early Dinosaurs Grew Up Fast, but They Weren't the Only Ones

Apr. 3, 2024 — The earliest dinosaurs had rapid growth rates, but so did many of the other animals living alongside them, according to a new ...

Researchers Name Prehistoric Amphibian Ancestor Discovered in Smithsonian Collection After Kermit the Frog

Mar. 21, 2024 — Scientists have uncovered the fossilized skull of a 270-million-year-old ancient amphibian ancestor in the collection of the Smithsonian's National ...

Slimming Down a Colossal Fossil Whale

Feb. 29, 2024 — A 30 million year-old fossil whale may not be the heaviest animal of all time after all, according to a new analysis by paleontologists. The new analysis puts Perucetus colossus back in the same ...

Killer Instinct Drove Evolution of Mammals' Predatory Ancestors

Feb. 22, 2024 — The evolutionary success of the first large predators on land was driven by their need to improve as killers, researchers ...

Panama Canal Expansion Rewrites History of World's Most Ecologically Diverse Bats

Feb. 20, 2024 — In a new study, paleontologists describe the oldest-known leaf-nosed bat fossils, which were found along the banks of the Panama Canal. They're also ...

Archaeologists Discover Oldest Known Bead in the Americas

Feb. 12, 2024 — The bead found at the La Prele Mammoth site in Wyoming's Converse County is about 12,940 years old and made of bone from a ...

Earlier Headlines

How Did Humans Learn to Walk? New Evolutionary Study Offers an Earful

Jan. 29, 2024 — A new study, which centers on evidence from skulls of a 6-million-year-old fossil ape, Lufengpithecus, offers important clues about the origins of bipedal locomotion courtesy of a novel method: ...

Woolly Mammoth Movements Tied to Earliest Alaska Hunting Camps

Jan. 17, 2024 — Researchers have linked the travels of a 14,000-year-old woolly mammoth with the oldest known human settlements in Alaska, providing clues about the relationship between the iconic species and some ...

Pacific Kelp Forests Are Far Older That We Thought

Jan. 16, 2024 — Fossils of kelp along the Pacific Coast are rare. Until now, the oldest fossil dated from 14 million years ago, leading to the view that today's denizens of the kelp forest -- marine mammals, ...

Oldest Known Fossilized Skin Is 21 Million Years Older Than Previous Examples

Jan. 11, 2024 — Researchers have identified a 3D fragment of fossilized skin that is at least 21 million years than previously described skin fossils. The skin, which belonged to an early species of Paleozoic ...

New Research Sheds Light on an Old Fossil Solving an Evolutionary Mystery

Jan. 10, 2024 — Picrodontids -- an extinct family of placental mammals that lived several million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs -- are not primates as previously ...

AI Provides More Accurate Analysis of Prehistoric and Modern Animals, Painting Picture of Ancient World

Dec. 14, 2023 — A new study of the remains of prehistoric and modern African antelopes found that AI technology accurately identified animals more than 90% of the time compared to humans, who had much lower accuracy ...

Why the Long Face? Scientists Solve a Major Puzzle in Mammal Skull Shape Evolution

Dec. 12, 2023 — Horses have developed long faces simply 'because they can,' a team of evolutionary biologists say. In a major review of how mammalian heads evolve, scientists found that adaptations to ...

Earliest Known European Common Hippopotamus Fossil Reveals Their Middle Pleistocene Dispersal

Nov. 22, 2023 — Modern hippos first dispersed in Europe during the Middle Pleistocene, according to a new ...

Plants That Survived Dinosaur Extinction Pulled Nitrogen from Air

Nov. 16, 2023 — Ancient cycad lineages that survived the extinction of the dinosaurs may have done so by relying on symbiotic bacteria in their roots to fix atmospheric nitrogen. The finding came from an effort to ...

Holy Bat Skull! Fossil Adds Vital Piece to Bat Evolution Puzzle

Oct. 19, 2023 — Bats may have lived in caves and used soundwaves to navigate much earlier than first ...

Extraordinary Fossil Find Reveals Details About the Weight and Diet of Extinct Saber-Toothed Marsupial

Oct. 12, 2023 — A 13-million-year-old saber-toothed marsupial skeleton discovered during paleontological explorations in Colombia is the most complete specimen recovered in the ...

Race to Find World's Oldest Mammal Fossils Led to Mud-Slinging

Oct. 10, 2023 — The hunt for the world’s most ancient mammals descended into academic warfare in the seventies, researchers have ...

Survival of the Newest: The Mammals That Survive Mass Extinctions Aren't as 'Boring' as Scientists Thought

Oct. 5, 2023 — For decades, scientists have assumed that mammals and their relatives that survived challenging times (like those during mass extinctions) made it because they were generalists that were able to eat ...

New Research Reveals Extreme Heat Likely to Wipe out Humans and Mammals in the Distant Future

Sep. 25, 2023 — A new study shows unprecedented heat is likely to lead to the next mass extinction, akin to when the dinosaurs died out, eliminating nearly all mammals in some 250 million years ...

RNA for the First Time Recovered from an Extinct Species

Sep. 19, 2023 — A new study shows the isolation and sequencing of more than a century-old RNA molecules from a Tasmanian tiger specimen preserved at room temperature in a museum collection. This resulted in the ...

Mutation Rates in Whales Are Much Higher Than Previously Reported

Aug. 31, 2023 — An international team of marine scientists has studied the DNA of family groups from four different whale species to estimate their mutation rates. Using the newly determined rates, the group found ...

Scientists Zero in on Timing, Causes of Ice Age Mammal Extinctions in Southern California

Aug. 18, 2023 — Radiocarbon dating on bones in the La Brea Tar Pits lead archaeologists to warn that history may be repeating ...

Unusual Fossil Shows Rare Evidence of a Mammal Attacking a Dinosaur

July 18, 2023 — Scientists have described an unusual fossil from around 125 million years ago in China that shows a dramatic moment in time when a carnivorous mammal attacked a larger plant-eating dinosaur. The two ...

Ice Age Saber-Tooth Cats and Dire Wolves Suffered from Diseased Joints

July 12, 2023 — Ice Age saber-tooth cats and dire wolves experienced a high incidence of bone disease in their joints, according to new ...

Tiny Scales Reveal Megalodon Was Not as Fast as Believed, but It Had a Mega-Appetite Explaining Its Gigantism

July 11, 2023 — A new study reveals the iconic extinct Megalodon, or 'megatooth shark', was a rather slow cruiser that used its warm-bloodedness to facilitate digestion and absorption of ...