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 ...

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, ...

Long before dinosaurs became dominant, Earth was ruled by an unsettling cast of reptiles that reshaped life after the ...

Fossilized footprints discovered in southeastern Australia, dating back approximately 355 million years, have forced scientists to rethink the timeline of reptile evolution. Detailed in a recent study ...

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 ...

MSRLSI copy gift of Dr. George R. Zug and signed by author VPAL copy gift of the author; signed by the author and inscribed for the NMNH Library "Over 300 million years ago, an early land vertebrate ...

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, ...

A fossil found over two decades ago on England’s Jurassic Coast has proved to be one of the most significant discoveries of marine reptiles in recent times. The almost complete skeleton of a ...

There are an estimated 50 billion birds flying, walking and even swimming on planet Earth according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That number is divided ...