In Earth's fossil record, soft-bodied organisms like jellyfish rarely stand the test of time. What's more, it's hard for any ...

Exceptionally preserved fossils from the Ediacaran period challenge what scientists thought was possible in sandstone. In the fossil record, creatures without hard shells or skeletons, such as ...

Eleanor has an undergraduate degree in zoology from the University of Reading and a master’s in wildlife documentary production from the University of Salford. Eleanor has an undergraduate degree in ...

A fossilized larva dating back over half a billion years has been discovered with its brain, digestive system, and nerve structures remarkably preserved. The tiny creature, an early arthropod ancestor ...

This week’s WoW is a beautiful example of how the natural processes of fossilization and diagenesis* can sometimes create breathtakingly unique and intricate pattern formations. This fossil is a ...

Studying fossils is critical to understanding how life evolved on Earth. They can help us understand plants and animals that have been extinct for millions of years and our own human evolutionary ...

A pilot study shows that nanoscopic 3-D imaging of ancient bone not only provides further insight into the changes soft tissues undergo during fossilization, it also has potential as a fast, practical ...

Many feathered dinosaurs couldn’t fly — at least, not like birds do today. But the reptiles’ feathers may have been more birdlike than scientists thought. Yet fossilization can change feather proteins ...

The world’s first fossilized plant gum has been discovered by a student at the University of Portsmouth. The gum has endured for millions of years—an impressive feat considering it has been exposed to ...

How similar are dinosaurs to modern birds? This question is at the heart of a new study that examined how proteins found in dinosaur feathers changed over millions of years and under extreme heat.

Two baby pterosaurs that died 150 million years ago have helped scientists uncover the prehistoric event that claimed their lives and shaped their preservation. Researchers from the University of ...

New research has found that a long held belief by paleontologists about the fossilization process may be wrong. The team has found that while low oxygen environments set the stage, it takes air to ...