Before the dinosaurs
Welcome to the dawn of the Permian, 290 million years ago.
Reptiles with waterproof skin and eggs are colonising the land. They are not dinosaurs, but synapsids: a group define...
History
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Top archaeology stories of 2016
Best stories about our extended family tree.
Human evolution is always fascinating so we've gone back through the year to find some of the best stories that revea...
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Our favourite palaeontology stories
Top 10 stories give insight into life millions of years ago.
Credit: Wikimedia Commons What killed off the vicious ichthyosaur? The dolphin-like ichthyosaur was king of the ocea...
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Veggie meal scraps found in ancient pottery
Neolithic meal remnants as early as 10,200 years ago.
Wild grains and leafy greens in a hand-thrown pottery bowl – no, it’s not the lunch special at the fancy café down th...
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Demand for Cypriot-style ceramics
Feasts in Iron Age Anatolia drove demand from Potters.
Cypriot-style ceramics were all the rage in Anatolia – present-day Turkey – during the Iron Age. They're been found i...
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Lucy's bone scans point to life in the trees
Skeleton suggests species swinging among the branches.
Our hominin ancestor Australopithecus afarensis spent a significant amount of time living in the trees – not just on ...
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How whales grew to be largest animals on Earth
Toothed to filter-feeding bridged by suction feeding.
A 25-million-year-old fossilised whale skull nicknamed Alfred provides a missing link between the evolution of filter...
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Paying a heavy price for loving the Neanderthals
Engaged in amorous congress with the evolutionary cousins.
One of the biggest surprises about our evolution revealed over just the last decade is the extent to which our ancest...
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Feathered fossilised friend
Contains the oldest beta-keratin proteins so far found.
A team of international scientists led by researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences reported the oldest fossil...
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Ancient amulet's creative secrets uncovered
The oldest known object made using the ‘lost wax’ method.
Light emitted from an ancient amulet shows it was cast as a solid piece of metal 6,000 years ago. Mathieu Thoury from...
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Building site unearths new bird-like dinosaur
Feathered oviraptorosaurs might have been abundant.
The discovery of a remarkably well-preserved bird-like dinosaur fossil in China’s Ganzhou region suggests an evolutio...
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How to uncover an ancient object's age
Dating samples from thousands to billions of years ago.
When a piece of bone, spearhead or rock is dug from the ground, a long process begins to work out where it came from ...