Mudstone, shale, and limestone are examples of sedimentary rock likely to contain fossils. As the layers of sediment build up on top of one another, they create a physical timeline. The oldest layers, ...

Virginia Tech’s study traces early eukaryotic evolution, highlighting life’s diversification since 2 billion years ago.

Cave-ins and floods may have buried the Cretaceous creatures of the fossil Jehol Biota rather than volcanic eruptions, a new study claims.

The fossil record offers snapshots of the past, revealing how life has evolved over millions of years. By studying fossils, ...

Fossil species that are used to distinguish one layer from another are called index fossils. Index fossils occur for a limited interval of time. Usually index fossils are fossil organisms that are ...

An upper flattened fossil layer even captured some colored feather, which linked how birds and dinos were related. Another layer sometimes captured ancient creatures in 3-D poses that resembled ...

A fragment of upper jaw fossil from the Early Cretaceous is among the oldest examples of a toothless amphibian in the fossil ...

When an organism dies and is quickly covered by layers of mud, sand or silt, it has the potential to become a fossil. Rather than rotting away, some parts of its body are replaced by minerals. In some ...

NAGASAKI--Researchers have determined that a fossil found in the layers of a local beach is the shoulder blade of a 9-meter-long ornithopod dinosaur, one of the largest in Japan and possibly a new ...

A research team said the two fossilized species are some of the oldest in East Asia to have ever been found in adjacent layers of earth. The cylindrical pterosaur fossil, nicknamed “Satsuma ...

The few fossils are enough to start piecing together Buronius’ lifestyle, the team contends. A thin outer layer of tooth enamel would have been suited to a diet of soft foods. Several features ...

Fossil species that are used to distinguish one layer from another are called index fossils. Index fossils occur for a limited interval of time. Usually index fossils are fossil organisms that are ...