A Secret Code Shapes All Life, Scientists Say. But This Ancient Fossil Refused to Follow It.
This 407-million-year-old species of clubmoss doesn’t follow the Fibonacci sequence like most of its living relatives. Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: The majority…
She Was Half Ape, Half Human—and She May Hold the Secret to What Makes Us Who We Are
In this 4.4-million-year-old skeleton, scientists may have found the missing step between climbing and walking. Gear-obsessed editors choose every product we review. We may earn commission if…
Ammonites: The Spiral Fossils That Swam With the Dinosaurs
You have probably seen one without knowing what you were looking at: a stone coiled into a perfect spiral, sitting on a shelf or sold at a…
The Triassic Reptile Whose Neck Was Longer Than the Rest of It
Every so often, evolution produces a body plan so strange it looks like a mistake — until you realize it worked, for millions of years. Tanystropheus is…
Florida’s 7,000-Year-Old Burial Pond Still Holds Brains
On a quiet stretch of US Highway 1 in Titusville, Florida, there is a pond. It looks unremarkable — dark water, cypress trees, the kind of place…
Stupendemys: The Mystery of the Largest Freshwater Turtle That Ever Lived
When paleontologists first eased that fossilized shell out of the rock in northern South America, there must have been a moment of stunned silence. This was no…
Megalodon’s Terrifying True Size Confirmed By Rediscovered Fossil
Megalodon’s enormous size is estimated from limited fossils, including vertebrae and teeth. (lexaarts/Creatas Video+/Getty Images Plus) In 1978, a wonder emerged from the crumbling earth of the Gram Clay…
`The “Lamborghini of the Ancient World” Was Buried Under Pompeii for 2,000 Years. Looters Missed It by Inches.`
In February 2021, in a muddy suburban excavation site about 700 meters north of Pompeii’s ancient walls, archaeologists doing a routine sweep of a Roman villa complex…
The Severed Head in the Archives: The Last Stare of an Erased Species
Deep in the climate-controlled vaults of the Natural History Museum in London, far removed from the echoing halls and the casual gaze of tourists, the air feels…
The First Maltese: 8,500 Years Ago, Someone Rowed Into the Dark
Approximately 8,500 years ago, a group of people stood on a coastline — most likely in Sicily, or perhaps somewhere along the North African shore — and…