Among the stone tools that early humans left beside a lake in northern Israel, archaeologists found something far bigger: the molar of an elephant, about 8 inches (20 cm) tall and 3 inches (8 cm) wide, lying next to several pieces of tusk. It sat at the same level of ground as handaxes and cleavers […]

The Great Sphinx has been without a nose for centuries. Now a fossil crocodile skull taken from the same rock turns out to be missing the tip of its snout too. The coincidence has put a name on a species science did not know it had, Herugavialis cairensis, which spent almost a hundred years in […]

Around 30 million years ago, a heavily built animal prowled the area that is now Vallbona de les Monges, in Lleida province (Catalonia, northeastern Spain). It had a long head, prominent cheekbones and formidable jaws lined with large, sharp teeth. Paleontologists call it the hell pig. The nickname misleads. Its kinship with modern pigs is […]

A team of paleontologists has discovered on King George Island, in the South Shetland Islands, the first fossil footprint unequivocally attributable to a terrestrial mammal in the Eocene of Antarctica. It is a specimen barely two centimeters long, preserved as a natural mold in fine-grained volcanic sediment, providing direct evidence of the presence of a […]