Arranged as they were in life, they would fit comfortably on the tip of your finger. But this assortment of tiny bones — excavated from the same deposit in Montana…
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Wyoming Cave Yields a Trove of Ice Age Fossils — and Ancient Animal DNA
A team of enterprising and adventurous scientists in Wyoming has just finished the first in a series of excavations at one of the largest deposits of Ice Age fossils in…
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First Columbian Mammoth With Hair Discovered on California Farm
Artichoke farmers plowing their fields in northern California have reaped a strange harvest: a trove of exotic animal fossils, including camel, mastodon and — most striking of all — the…
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Tiny, Toothy Mammal Discovered in Wyoming Fossil Named for Lady Gaga
The fossil of a small, deer-like mammal with unusual teeth has earned the name of “little monster.” The little animal browsed on leaves and grasses in what’s now southwestern Wyoming about…
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Ancient Cougars Survived Ice Age Extinction By Not Being Picky Eaters, Study Finds
Among the many puzzles posed by the massive extinction of mammals at the end of the last Ice Age is why North America’s saber-tooth cats and great native lions disappeared,…
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Earliest Ancestor of Plant-Eaters on Land Discovered in Kansas Fossil
The fossil remains of an unusual animal unearthed in Kansas represent the oldest known ancestor of the world’s first land-dwelling plant-eaters, paleontologists say. A seemingly paradoxical creature, the small specimen —…
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‘Bizarre’ Porpoise With Giant Underbite Is First Mammal of Its Kind in Fossil Record
An extinct species of porpoise discovered in California is revealing what paleontologists call “bizarre” features that have been seen in fish and birds but never before in mammals. Namely, the…
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Four-Tusked Walrus, New Whale and 19 Other Fossil Mammals Discovered at California Surf Spot
Ten years after a surfer first tipped him off to some bones eroding out of a sandy bank, a paleontologist says he has uncovered a massive cache of marine mammal…
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700,000-Year-Old Horse Found in Yukon Permafrost Yields Oldest DNA Ever Decoded
The frozen remains of a horse more than half a million years old have reluctantly given up their genetic secrets, providing scientists with the oldest DNA ever sequenced. The horse…
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America’s Saber-Toothed Cats Weren’t ‘Native,’ Study Finds
One of Ancient America’s most distinctive predators — the saber-toothed cat — likely wasn’t native to the continent, as had been thought for decades. Instead, according to a team of…
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Prehistoric Global Warming Caused Dwarfism in American Mammals, Fossils Show
As temperatures climb, animals shrink. It may sound unlikely — and the mechanism behind it is not very well understood — but it’s a pattern that’s been observed many times…
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Ancient ‘Clawed Bat’ Reveals Clues to Flying Mammal’s Evolution
The rare and delicate but perfectly preserved bones of a primordial bat found in Wyoming are offering up new clues to the evolution of the flying mammals, and to at…
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Fossil of Huge Aquatic Mammal, a ‘New Paradox,’ Discovered in Southern California
When it swam the seas that covered California some 10 million years ago, it might have looked something like a slender hippo — but with longer legs, broad webbed feet,…
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15,500-Year-Old Mammoth Bones and Hunting Tools Found ‘Close Together’ in Kansas
The bones of an Ice Age mammoth have been discovered on the Kansas plains, just steps away from where ancient hunters left evidence of having hewed hunting tools out of…
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Giant Ice-Age ‘Longhorn Bison’ Unearthed in San Diego
Highway workers have unearthed the fossilized bones of an unusual giant bison in a suburb of San Diego, the first such discovery in Southern California. The fossil may date back…
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