Through careful study of an ancient ancestor of modern turtles, researchers now have a clearer picture of how the turtles' most unusual shell came to be. The findings help to fill a 30- to ...

Fossils provide a vital record of ancient life, preserved primarily within sedimentary rocks . The journey from death to discovery involves rapid burial, lithification, and chemical replacement.

Imagine there are ten different types of shells, each the size of a grain of sand, mixed in the bowl of mud in front of you. You want to find each type of individual shell —what do you do? For ...

An international team of scientists unearthed a remarkable diversity of fossil eggshells in Utah's Cedar Mountain Formation, challenging long-held assumptions about the prehistoric ecosystems of ...

Scientists have identified a mineral signature for sites that are more likely to contain rare fossils that preserve evidence of soft tissue — essential information to understanding ancient life. Much ...

Three undergraduate students from the University of Arkansas made a world-class discovery this week when they uncovered a 325-million-year-old nautiloid fossil just yards from two of ...

ALTHOUGH Wells 1 and Scrutton 2 suggested methods of studying fossils to determine probable changes in day length, few studies have followed these suggestions. We have examined fossil bivalve shells ...