Paleontology & Archeology

First fruitful, then futile: Ammonites or the boon and bane of many offspring
For 300 million years, they were the ultimate survivors. They successfully negotiated three mass extinctions, only to die out eventually at the end of the Cretaceous along with the dinosaurs: Ammonoids, or ammonites as they are also known, were marine cephalopods believed to be related to today's squid and nautiloids.

Forensic science used to determine who's who in pre-Columbian Peru
Analysis of ancient mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has been used to establish migration and population patterns for American indigenous cultures during the time before Christopher Columbus sailed to the Americas. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Genetics has used more detailed DNA analysis of individuals from Arequipa region to identify the family relationships and burial traditions of ancient Peru.

Glass sponge as a living climate archive
Climate scientists have discovered a new archive of historical sea temperatures. With the help of the skeleton of a sponge that belongs to the Monorhaphis chuni species and that lived in the East China Sea for 11,000 years, an international team around scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry were now able to show that the deep ocean temperature changed several times over the past millennia.

Dino eggs shape Easter eggs, says new study
An international group of researchers has helped to determine that dinosaurs have shaped the Easter eggs we buy in the high street.

What triggers a mass extinction?
The second-largest mass extinction in Earth's history coincided with a short but intense ice age during which enormous glaciers grew and sea levels dropped. Although it has long been agreed that the so-called Late Ordovician mass extinction-which occurred about 450 million years ago-was related to climate change, exactly how the climate change produced the extinction has not been known.

Eggs of enigmatic dinosaur discovered
An Argentine-Swedish research team has reported a 70 million years old pocket of fossilized bones and unique eggs of an enigmatic birdlike dinosaur in Patagonia.

When dinosaurs roamed a fiery landscape
The dinosaurs of the Cretaceous may have faced an unexpected hazard: fire! In a paper published online, researchers from Royal Holloway University of London and The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago have shown that during the Cretaceous (145-65 million years ago) fire was much more widespread than previously thought.

CO2 was hidden in the ocean during the Ice Age
Why did the atmosphere contain so little carbon dioxide (CO2) during the last Ice Age 20,000 years ago? Why did it rise when the Earth's climate became warmer? Processes in the ocean are responsible for this, says a new study based on newly developed isotope measurements. This study has now been published in the scientific journal "Science" by scientists from the Universities of Bern and Grenoble and the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association.

Rare animal-shaped mounds discovered in Peru by MU anthropologist
For more than a century and a half, scientists and tourists have visited massive animal-shaped mounds, such as Serpent Mound in Ohio, created by the indigenous people of North America. But few animal effigy mounds had been found in South America until University of Missouri anthropology professor emeritus Robert Benfer identified numerous earthen animals rising above the coastal plains of Peru, a region already renowned for the Nazca lines, the ruined city of Chan Chan, and other cultural treasures.

Mystery human fossils put spotlight on China
Fossils from two caves in south-west China have revealed a previously unknown Stone Age people and give a rare glimpse of a recent stage of human evolution with startling implications for the early peopling of Asia.