Featured
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Research Highlight |
Age-old hidden ecosystem revealed by trail of poo
Primeval droppings show that some animals that lived in what is now Greenland do not appear in the fossil record.
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News & Views |
Lifting the veil on the oldest-known animals
Gaps in the fossil record mean that the origins of ancient animals such as jellyfish and corals have remained a mystery. Now, a long-awaited fossil discovery reveals key features of this group during the early stages of its evolution.
- Marc Laflamme
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Research Highlight |
The Jurassic vomit that stood the test of time
A fossilized pile of small bones is probably a meal that an animal heaved up 150 million years ago.
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News Round-Up |
Levitating nanoparticles, medieval-burial mystery and ancient femur
The latest science news, in brief.
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Article |
Africa’s oldest dinosaurs reveal early suppression of dinosaur distribution
A new Triassic dinosaur assemblage from Zimbabwe reveals that the earliest dinosaurs were confined to a temperate region in the far south of Pangaea.
- Christopher T. Griffin
- , Brenen M. Wynd
- & Hazel R. Taruvinga
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Article |
The origin of placental mammal life histories
Using palaeohistology and geochemistry, the placental-like life history of a pantodont species 62 million years of age is determined.
- Gregory F. Funston
- , Paige E. dePolo
- & Stephen L. Brusatte
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Research Highlight |
Quick-dried Lystrosaurus ‘mummy’ holds clues to mass death in the Triassic
Reptiles that perished during a severe drought 250 million years ago are preserved as spreadeagled and mummified fossils.
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News & Views |
Standing up for the earliest bipedal hominins
A leg bone and two arm bones of a hominin from Chad suggest that, seven million years ago, around the time that the human and chimpanzee lineages split, early hominins were bipedal but were also able to climb trees.
- Daniel E. Lieberman
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News |
Seven-million-year-old femur suggests ancient human relative walked upright
Formal description of the leg bone, which belongs to Sahelanthropus tchadensis, comes two decades after it was discovered.
- Ewen Callaway
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Nature Podcast |
How to make water that’s full of holes
Embedded ‘nanocages’ help water dissolve large amounts of gas, and potential evidence that hominins walked on two legs seven million years ago.
- Benjamin Thompson
- & Shamini Bundell
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Article |
Postcranial evidence of late Miocene hominin bipedalism in Chad
Analyses of a thigh bone and a pair of elbow bones from Sahelanthropus tchadensis discovered in Chad suggest that the earliest hominin exhibited bipedalism with substantial arboreal clambering.
- G. Daver
- , F. Guy
- & N. D. Clarisse
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Article |
Saccorhytus is an early ecdysozoan and not the earliest deuterostome
Analyses of newly discovered specimens of the early Cambrian microscopic animal Saccorhytus coronarius support its taxonomic classification in total-group Ecdysozoa.
- Yunhuan Liu
- , Emily Carlisle
- & Philip C. J. Donoghue
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News Round-Up |
Molecular motor, warm blood’s origin and researcher lay-offs
The latest science news, in brief.
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Article |
The developing bird pelvis passes through ancestral dinosaurian conditions
The developing pelvis in birds revisits its dinosaurian state before transitioning to the characteristic avian form, providing evidence of terminal addition during evolution.
- Christopher T. Griffin
- , João F. Botelho
- & Bhart-Anjan S. Bhullar
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News & Views |
Evolution of thermoregulation as told by ear
An analysis of fossil specimens of the inner ear helps to refine the timeframe of a key transition in vertebrate evolution — when our mammal-like ancestors began to regulate and maintain a high body temperature.
- Stefan Glasauer
- & Hans Straka
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News |
Ear fossils hint at origin of warm-blooded mammals
Analysis suggests that the cold-blooded ancestors of mammals evolved faster metabolisms in the Late Triassic period, roughly 230 million to 200 million years ago.
- Bianca Nogrady
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Nature Podcast |
How researchers have pinpointed the origin of ‘warm-blooded’ mammals
Ancient inner ears give clues to when mammals evolved ‘warm-bloodedness’, and an efficient enzyme that pulls carbon dioxide out of the air.
- Benjamin Thompson
- & Nick Petrić Howe
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Article |
Inner ear biomechanics reveals a Late Triassic origin for mammalian endothermy
The functional morphology of the fluid-filled semicircular ducts of the inner ear is adapted to body temperature and behavioural activity and can be used to investigate the evolution of endothermy.
- Ricardo Araújo
- , Romain David
- & Kenneth D. Angielczyk
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Article
| Open AccessA new elpistostegalian from the Late Devonian of the Canadian Arctic
A new elpistostegalian from the Late Devonian period has been discovered that shows disparity in the group and represents a previously hidden ecological expansion, a secondary return to open water, near the origin of limbed vertebrates.
- Thomas A. Stewart
- , Justin B. Lemberg
- & Neil H. Shubin
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Research Highlight |
President Zelenskyy gets a ten-armed, many-clawed namesake
Ukrainian leader’s name is bestowed on a newfound ancient marine invertebrate.
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News & Views |
Sediment study finds the pulse of tropical glaciers
In regions of the globe at middle and high latitudes, glacial periods have waxed and waned for hundreds of millennia. Glacier-derived sediment in a Peruvian lake suggests that tropical glaciers have moved to a similar beat.
- Aaron E. Putnam
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Article
| Open AccessPost-extinction recovery of the Phanerozoic oceans and biodiversity hotspots
The diversity hotspots hypothesis attributes the overall increase in global diversity during the Late Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras to the development of diversity hotspots under prolonged conditions of Earth system stability and maximum continental fragmentation.
- Pedro Cermeño
- , Carmen García-Comas
- & Sergio M. Vallina
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News |
Russia’s war in Ukraine is disrupting studies of ancient life
Russia has been at the centre of major palaeontological finds including the Denisovans, but its brutal war is threatening the research that uncovers the past.
- Freda Kreier
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Research Highlight |
What did megalodon the mega-toothed shark eat? Anything it wanted
These extinct uber-predators occupied an ecological niche that has no known equivalent in the modern ocean.
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Article |
Life rather than climate influences diversity at scales greater than 40 million years
- Andrej Spiridonov
- & Shaun Lovejoy
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Research Highlight |
Fred the mastodon’s tusk tells of his restless travels
A bull mastodon journeyed from the home of his youth to distant mating grounds.
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News |
How the giraffe got its neck: ‘unicorn’ fossil could shed light on puzzle
A newly described species of ancient giraffoid had a thick helmet designed for fierce headbutting.
- Nicola Jones
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News |
Education evidence, new-physics hunt — the week in infographics
Nature highlights three key graphics from the week in science and research.
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News & Views |
Clues to the identity of the fossil fish Palaeospondylus
For more than a century, scientists have pondered over mysterious fossils of an aquatic vertebrate, and argued about the type of creature this species represents. Newly analysed specimens might help to solve this puzzle.
- Jorge Mondéjar Fernández
- & Philippe Janvier
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Nature Podcast |
X-ray analysis hints at answers to fossil mystery
New insights into a mysterious fossil animal, and uncovering ancient settlements hidden in the Bolivian Amazon.
- Benjamin Thompson
- & Noah Baker
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Article |
Morphology of Palaeospondylus shows affinity to tetrapod ancestors
Detailed structural analysis of Palaeospondylus gunni from the Middle Devonian period shows strong resemblance to Eusthenopteron and Panderichthys, indicating that it was a sarcopterygian and most probably a stem-tetrapod.
- Tatsuya Hirasawa
- , Yuzhi Hu
- & Shigeru Kuratani
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Article |
Fossil biomolecules reveal an avian metabolism in the ancestral dinosaur
Molecular analyses of modern and fossil skeletal samples reveal that elevated metabolic rates consistent with endothermy evolved independently in mammals and plesiosaurs, and ornithodirans: Exceptional metabolic rates are ancestral to dinosaurs and pterosaurs and were acquired before energetically costly adaptations, such as flight.
- Jasmina Wiemann
- , Iris Menéndez
- & Derek E. G. Briggs
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News |
Ancient tooth suggests Denisovans ventured far beyond Siberia
Molar found in Laos could be the first fossil evidence that the hominin species was far-ranging and able to adapt to different climates.
- Freda Kreier
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Research Highlight |
Gigantic toothy swimming reptile was among the largest beasts ever
A huge fang suggests that the biggest of the extinct marine creatures called ichthyosaurs could be either toothy or toothless.
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Book Review |
How ancient DNA hit the headlines
The origins, politics and motivations of the people who sequence age-old genomes.
- Victoria L. Herridge
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News |
How a Brazilian dinosaur sparked a movement to decolonize fossil science
Rather than excitement, the discovery of the species set off a Latin American movement to stop colonial palaeontology.
- Mariana Lenharo
- & Meghie Rodrigues
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News & Views |
A colourful view of the origin of dinosaur feathers
Birds and their dinosaur ancestors had feathers, and now it seems that a distantly related group called pterosaurs had them, too. The finding extends the origins of feathers back to long before birds evolved, and sheds light on their role.
- Michael J. Benton
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Article
| Open AccessPterosaur melanosomes support signalling functions for early feathers
Melanosomes preserved in the skin and feathers of a tapejarid pterosaur from the Early Cretaceous found in Brazil provide evidence of the early use of feathers for visual communication.
- Aude Cincotta
- , Michaël Nicolaï
- & Pascal Godefroit
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Article |
Subaqueous foraging among carnivorous dinosaurs
In extinct species including non-avian dinosaurs, bone density is shown to be a reliable indicator of aquatic behavioural adaptations, which emerged in spinosaurids during the Early Cretaceous.
- Matteo Fabbri
- , Guillermo Navalón
- & Nizar Ibrahim
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Research Highlight |
The surprisingly huge reptile that prowled the Jurassic skies
Pterosaurs living during the Jurassic period were thought to have been relatively small, but a stunning new skeleton shows otherwise.
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News |
Fossil fish reveal timing of asteroid that killed the dinosaurs
The discovery is likely to reignite controversy over the US site where the fossils were found.
- Colin Barras
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Research Highlight |
Petrified puke shows that ancient winged reptiles purged
Pterosaurs, prehistoric beasts that lived alongside the dinosaurs, not only flew like birds, but also vomited like them.
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News |
Thwarted vaccines, strange metals — the week in infographics
Nature highlights three key infographics from the week in science and research.
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News |
How rich countries skew the fossil record
Scientists from wealthier nations in Europe and North America contribute the lion’s share of fossil data.
- Ewen Callaway
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Article |
A species-level timeline of mammal evolution integrating phylogenomic data
Bayesian analysis of datasets comprising genomes from multiple mammalian species can efficiently and precisely decipher their evolutionary timeline.
- Sandra Álvarez-Carretero
- , Asif U. Tamuri
- & Mario dos Reis
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Research Highlight |
Lift off! The biggest known flying creature had an explosive launch
The gigantic flying reptile Quetzalcoatlus northropi, which lived in the age of the dinosaurs, could also walk and even run, with the help of ‘ski pole’ front limbs.
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Research Highlight |
This enormous eagle could have killed you, probably
The extinct Haast’s eagle — known from fossils found in New Zealand — hunted like its modern relatives, but also had habits of a scavenger.