Category: Archaeologists

For millions of years, dinosaurs transformed the planet — and some of the most famous giants eventually became devoted plant-eaters. But new research suggests their ancestors may have had a very different appetite. A comprehensive study by palaeobiologists at the University of Bristol examined the diets of the earliest dinosaurs and found that these prehistoric…

Millions of years ago, a river flowed through what is now North Florida. Along its banks, something extraordinary happened: multiple elephant relatives died and were buried in the same place, creating what scientists now describe as an astonishing fossil site. The animals were gomphotheres — extinct relatives of modern elephants — and they lived in…

It looked like something from a nightmare — but this strange creature was swimming through Jurassic seas 165 million years ago. Paleontologists have identified a previously unknown genus and species of vampyromorph coleoid from an exceptionally preserved fossil discovered at the Middle Jurassic La Voulte-sur-Rhône Lagerstätte in France. Named Vampyrofugiens atramentum, the ancient animal belonged…

It looks like something that drifted in from another planet. But this bizarre, remarkably detailed fossil was once a living creature that moved across the seafloor of ancient Australia nearly 280 million years ago. The fossil belongs to Jimbacrinus bostocki, a strange-looking crinoid discovered near Gascoyne Junction in Western Australia. Dating to the Permian Period,…

Imagine walking along a beach and stumbling across a piece of rock — only to discover that hidden inside was the fossil of the largest-known invertebrate ever to live on Earth. That is exactly what happened at Howick Bay in Northumberland, England, in January 2018. A chunk of sandstone had fallen from a nearby cliff…

Imagine looking up into the prehistoric sky and seeing an insect with a wingspan of 2.5 feet flying overhead. It sounds impossible today — but around 275 million years ago, a giant dragonfly-like predator called Meganeuropsis permiana really did take to the skies. The enormous insect lived during the late Permian Period, roughly 45 million…

A Colorado high school teacher searching for fossils in North Dakota made an astonishing discovery that may have captured the movements of one of the world’s most famous predators 66.5 million years ago. Kent Hups was volunteering on a paleontological dig in the Hell Creek Formation in southwestern North Dakota in 2025 when he spotted…

A mysterious prehistoric “thunder beast” may have been hiding 12 feet beneath a Southern California construction site for as long as 45 million years. The remarkable fossil discovery was made this month in Oceanside, around 40 miles north of San Diego, when crews excavating for a city infrastructure project unexpectedly encountered ancient bones. Among the…

An eerie Ice Age graveyard containing the remains of hundreds of giant mammoths has been uncovered beneath the site of a new airport in Mexico. Archaeologists working north of Mexico City have unearthed around 200 mammoth skeletons, with many more believed to remain buried beneath the ground. The extraordinary concentration of fossils has transformed the…

A mammoth that was hunted and butchered 45,000 years ago has revealed astonishing evidence that humans were living and hunting in the Arctic thousands of years earlier than previously known. The remains were discovered in the far north of Russia, near the Kara Sea, where the harsh landscape would have presented enormous challenges to any…