There’s nothing like a big mass extinction to open up ecological niches and clear out the competition, accelerating evolution for some lucky survivors. Or is there? A new study suggests that the rate ...

Body coverings such as hair and feathers have played a central role in evolution. They enabled warm-bloodedness by insulating the body, and were used for courtship, display, deterrence of enemies and, ...

Challenging a 75-year-old notion about how and when reptiles evolved during the past 300 million-plus years involves a lot of camerawork, loads of CT scanning, and, most of all, thousands of miles of ...

A breakthrough in paleontology has emerged with the unearthing of a remarkable fossil, which challenges long-standing assumptions about the evolution of body coverings in reptiles. Published in ...

An extinct reptile’s oddly shaped chompers, fingers, and ear bones may tell us quite a bit about the resilience of life on Earth, according to a new study. In fact, paleontologists at Yale, Sam ...

A statistical analysis of that vast database is helping scientists better understand the evolution of these cold-blooded vertebrates by contradicting a widely held theory that major transitions in ...

Tridentinosaurus antiquus was discovered in the Italian alps in 1931 and was thought to be an important specimen for understanding early reptile evolution—but has now been found to be, in part a ...

A delicate, innocuous little fossil reptile known as Mirasaura grauvogeli – “Grauvogel’s wonder reptile” – is forcing a rethink about the evolution of skin and its appendages such as feathers and hair ...

Ichthyosaurs represent a diverse clade of Mesozoic marine reptiles that rapidly adapted to fully aquatic lifestyles following the end-Permian mass extinction. Their streamlined, 'fish-like' body plan, ...

The newly described Mirasaura grauvogeli from the Middle Triassic had a striking feather-like crest, hinting that complex skin appendages arose far earlier than previously believed. Its bird-like ...

Our bones did not begin deep inside the body. They started in the skin , not long after the first complex animals took shape.Author Roy Ebel PhD ...