Animal Life news stories

‘Gargantuan’: China fossils reveal 70-tonne dinosaur had 15-metre neck
16th March 2023 | theguardian.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth

A dinosaur that roamed east Asia more than 160m years ago has been named a contender for the animal with the longest neck ever known.

Ancient Structures in The Arabian Desert Reveal Fragments of Mysterious Rituals
16th March 2023 | sciencealert.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Humans

According to an in-depth new analysis, the mysterious, rectangular enclosures were used by Neolithic people for unknown rituals, depositing animal offerings, perhaps as votives to an unknown deity or deities.

Ancient platypus-like fossil could rewrite the history of egg-laying mammals
11th March 2023 | livescience.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth

Fossils of a 70 million-year-old platypus relative called Patagorhynchus pascuali found in South America show that egg-laying mammals evolved on more than one continent.

Human temporal lobes are not very large in comparison with other primates
8th March 2023 phys.org | Ancient, Animal Life, Humans

It had been thought to date that the species Homo sapiens has disproportionately large temporal lobes compared to other anthropoid primates, the group including anthropomorphic monkeys and apes. A new study, one of whose authors is Emiliano Bruner, a paleoneurologist at the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), contradicts that hypothesis.

Ocean treaty: Historic agreement reached after decade of talks
6th March 2023 | bbc.co.uk | Animal Life, Earth, Humans

Nations have reached a historic agreement to protect the world’s oceans following 10 years of negotiations. The High Seas Treaty aims to place 30% of the seas into protected areas by 2030, to safeguard and recuperate marine nature.

Evolution Could Predate Life Itself, Protein Discovery Suggests
6th March 2023 | sciencealert.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth, Humans

Together, amino acids form proteins that play many vital roles in organisms. This new study was designed to help establish why a specific group of 20 ‘canonical’ amino acids is used again and again to build proteins when there are so many more of these amino acids to pick from.

The world’s first horse riders found near the Black Sea
3rd March 2023 phys.org | Ancient, Animal Life, Humans

Researchers have discovered evidence of horse riding by studying the remains of human skeletons found in burial mounds called kurgans, which were between 4,500 and 5,000 years old.

The oldest known pollen-carrying insects lived about 280 million years ago
2nd March 2023 | sciencenews.org | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth

The oldest known fossils of pollen-laden insects are of earwig-like ground-dwellers that lived in what is now Russia about 280 million years ago, researchers report. Their finding pushes back the fossil record of insects transporting pollen from one plant to another, a key aspect of modern-day pollination, by about 120 million years.

Recently ‘Discovered’ Whale Behavior Was Actually Documented Thousands of Years Ago
1st March 2023 | sciencealert.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Humans

An unusual whale feeding technique only recorded for the first time in 2011 may have been around for at least two thousand years, according to researchers from Flinders University in Australia.

The study was published in Marine Mammal Science.

How Did Birds Get Wings? We May Have Found The ‘Missing Link’ in Dinosaur Fossils
28th February 2023 | sciencealert.com | Ancient, Animal Life

Dinosaur fossils featuring arms with a suspect bend at the elbow and wrist could hint at the presence of an unpreserved tendon that underpins all modern avian flight.

The study was published in Zoological Letters.

Fossils suggest early primates lived in a once-swampy Arctic
27th February 2023 | sciencenews.org | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth

The Arctic today is a hostile place for most primates. But a series of fossils found since the 1970s suggest that wasn’t always the case. See study here.

All Living Cells Could Have The Molecular Machinery For a ‘Sixth Sense’
27th February 2023 | sciencealert.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth, Humans

The new findings suggest that magnetoreception could be much more common in the animal kingdom than we ever knew. If researchers are right, it might be an astonishingly ancient trait shared by virtually all living things, albeit with differing strengths. The study was published in Nature.

Fossil discovery reveals complex ecosystems existed on Earth much earlier than previously thought
10th February 2023 phys.org | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth

About 250 million years ago, the Permian-Triassic mass extinction killed over 80% of the planet’s species. In the aftermath, scientists believe that life on Earth was dominated by simple species for up to 10 million years before more complex ecosystems could evolve. Now this longstanding theory is being challenged by a team of international researchers. See paper here.

Proof that Neanderthals ate crabs is another ‘nail in the coffin’ for primitive cave dweller stereotypes
7th February 2023 phys.org | Ancient, Animal Life, Humans

A study published in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology shows that 90,000 years ago, these Neanderthals were cooking and eating crabs.

Neanderthals Hunted Giant Elephants Much Larger Than The Ones Today
7th February 2023 | sciencealert.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Humans

A new analysis of 125,000-year-old bones from around 70 elephants has led to some intriguing new revelations about the Neanderthals of the time: that they could work together to deliberately bring down large prey, and that they gathered in larger groups than previously thought.

Scientist Accidentally Discovers The Oldest Brain of Any Vertebrate
2nd February 2023 | sciencealert.com | Ancient, Animal Life

Paleontologist Matt Friedman was surprised to discover a remarkably detailed 319-million-year-old fish brain fossil while testing out micro-CT scans for a broader project.

News stories covering Animal Science, bacterial life, DNA.