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How Did Life Arise? Three Turning Points in Early Evolution

Where did it start? How did it grow complex? Why did it get big? Three moments in Earth’s early history when evolution suddenly, inexplicably turned up the dial.

© Photoillustration by Will Warasila for The New York Times

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A 45-Million-Year-Old New Crocodile Species Found in the Same Rock as the Great Sphinx Is Missing Its Nose, Too

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 […]

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This Fossil Predates Dinosaurs by 300 Million Years — and Scientists Still Aren’t Sure What It Was

Finding fossils usually means months of fieldwork, a hammer, and a lot of patience. In Finnmark, Norway’s northernmost region, it took none of that. According to the University of Cambridge, a cluster of rocks had broken loose from a cliff above a sheep field. When they split open on landing, they exposed a fossil of […]

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Why Did Only Some Birds Survive the Asteroid That Killed the Dinosaurs? The Answer May Be Hiding in a Feather Found in T. Rex’s Poop

In 2016, paleontologist David DeMar Jr. was crawling across a rocky outcrop in northeastern Montana, hunting for fish fossils, when he spotted a dark, reddish-brown nodule about half the size of a golf ball. He picked it up and looked at it through his hand lens. On its surface was something he didn’t expect: a […]

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