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Musk Ox (Ovibos moschatus) (Credit: Tim Bowman, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

ScienceDaily (Mar. 9, 2010) — A team of scientists has discovered that the drastic decline in Arctic musk ox populations that began roughly 12,000 years ago was due to a warming climate rather than to human hunting.

"This is the first study to use ancient [...]

Remnants of the massive rammed-earth platform on the lower eastern slopes of Langya Mountain. This platform was built just above the sea. (Credit: Linda M. Nicholas)

ScienceDaily (Mar. 8, 2010) — The exploits of China's first emperor, Qin Shihuangdi, are richly documented in 2,000-year-old records of his conquests across eastern China. His reign was indeed noteworthy [...]

Russian and German researchers took sediment probes of four silted up lakes in Central and Eastern Europe in order to reconstruct the climate of the Eemian Interglacial 115,000 years ago. At this time the Eemian Interglacial ended and was followed by the Weichselian Glacial which ended 15,000 years ago. (Credit: Frank W. Junge/SAW)

ScienceDaily (Mar. 7, [...]

In this photo from Canada's Yukon Territory, an iron-rich layer of 716.5-million-year-old glacial deposits (maroon in color) is seen atop an older carbonate reef (gray in color) that formed in the tropics. (Credit: Francis A. Macdonald/Harvard University)

ScienceDaily (Mar. 5, 2010) — Geologists have found evidence that sea ice extended to the equator 716.5 million years [...]

ScienceDaily (Mar. 4, 2010) — The Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction, which wiped out the dinosaurs and more than half of species on Earth, was caused by an asteroid colliding with Earth and not massive volcanic activity, according to a comprehensive review of all the available evidence, published in the journal Science.

An artist's rendering of the moment [...]

ScienceDaily (Mar. 4, 2010) — Until now, paleontologists have generally believed that the closest relatives of dinosaurs possibly looked a little smaller in size, walked on two legs and were carnivorous. However, a research team including Randall Irmis, curator of paleontology at the Utah Museum of Natural History and assistant professor in the Department of [...]

Radiographs of the type specimen of Darwinius masillae, new genus and species, from Messel in Germany. (Credit: Franzen JL, Gingerich PD, Habersetzer J, Hurum JH, von Koenigswald W, et al. Complete Primate Skeleton from the Middle Eocene of Messel in Germany: Morphology and Paleobiology. PLoS ONE, 2009; 4(5): e5723 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005723)

ScienceDaily (Mar. 3, 2010) — [...]

ScienceDaily (Mar. 3, 2010) — Newly discovered archaeological sites in southern and northern India have revealed how people lived before and after the colossal Toba volcanic eruption 74,000 years ago.

Mapping of stone tool artefacts on a Middle Palaeolithic occupation surface under the Toba ash. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Oxford)

The international, multidisciplinary research team, [...]

Archaeologists have unearthed 270 pieces of engraved ostrich eggshell dated to around 60,000 years ago from a site called Diepkloof in South Africa’s Western Cape province. The fragments constitute what the researchers say is the “earliest evidence of a graphic tradition among prehistoric hunter-gatherer populations.” As such, the finds help to illuminate the emergence of [...]

This is a life-sized reconstruction of the moment just before preservation. The scales and patterning of Sanajeh’s skin is based on modern relatives of the fossil snake. The hatchling dinosaur is reconstructed from known skeletal materials, but its color is conjectural. The eggs are based directly on the fossils. (Credit: Sculpture by Tyler Keillor and [...]