Scientists have described a new species of highly venomous box jellyfish based on specimens that were lurking near a Singaporean island formerly known as Pulau Blakang Mati, or the "Island of Death Behind," in 2020 and 2021.

The newly described species, Chironex blakangmati, was named after the island's original, ominous name in Malay, rather than its name since 1972, Sentosa, which means "peace and tranquility." That's fitting, given how dangerous the animal is.

C. blakangmati is one of four known species of Chironex box jellyfish, all of which are incredibly venomous. Their stings, delivered via special cells on their tentacles called nematocysts, are so powerful they can kill humans. And unlike most other jellyfish that simply ride on currents, Chironex box jellies can actively identify and swim toward prey thanks to their strong musculature and complex eyes.

Previously, scientists had mistaken C. blakangmati for another box jellyfish species, C. yamaguchii. However, it turns out that these box jellies are different, both genetically and morphologically, scientists reported in a new study, published May 15 in the journal Raffles Bulletin of Zoology.

"C. blakangmati looks remarkably like Chironex yamaguchii — a jellyfish species I first discovered in Okinawa while doing my master's degree there," study co-author Cheryl Ames, a professor of applied marine biology at Tohoku University in Japan and a research associate at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., said in a statement. "But we realized they were completely distinct. I actually went back to dust off an old sample of C. yamaguchii I still had in storage in Okinawa to help with the comparisons!"

The researchers found that the newly identified species lacks branched canal structures at the bottom of its bell-shaped body that C. yamaguchii and the other two Chironex species, C. fleckeri and C. indrasaksajiae, exhibit. Specifically, these canals sit within the perradial lappets, which are flaps reinforcing the musculature that propels box jellyfish when they swim. Together with genetic discrepancies, this anatomical difference confirmed that C. blakangmati is a separate species, according to the statement.

"Our thorough review and analysis of all the Chironex species known to date reveal a lot about these box jellyfishes," study co-author Danwei Huang, an associate professor in the National University of Singapore's Department of Biological Sciences and the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum, said in the statement.

The results also revealed for the first time that C. indrasaksajiae, which is typically found off the coast of Thailand, is present in Singapore's waters. Nicknamed the Thai sea wasp, this species can be deadly.

"We were surprised to find C. indrasaksajiae so far away from Thailand," Ames said. "Recording range expansions like these is really important, as we currently know so little about the biodiversity and spatial distribution of box jellyfish."

A better understanding of the distribution of box jellies could help prevent severe injuries and deaths in humans, according to the statement.

Records suggest box jellyfish stings cause around 40 deaths per year globally, but some experts think that number is a huge underestimate.

Two marsupial species that were thought to have gone extinct at least 6,000 years ago have been found on the island of New Guinea.

The discovery was far from swift, with the first clues of the marsupials emerging in 1999 and requiring ample photographic evidence to confirm. But 27 years later, scientists are now sure that the ring-tailed glider (Tous ayamaruensis) and the pygmy long-fingered possum (Dactylonax kambuayai) are alive in the remote rainforests of the Vogelkop Peninsula in Papuan Indonesia.

"The Vogelkop is an ancient piece of the Australian continent that has become incorporated into the island of New Guinea," Tim Flannery, a professor at the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute and a distinguished visiting fellow at the Australian Museum who led the research, said in a statement. "Its forests may shelter yet more hidden relics of a past Australia."

Marsupials are mammals with a characteristic pouch to hold newborns until they are fully developed. The pygmy long-fingered possum and the ring-tailed glider were previously known to scientists only from fossils in Australia dating to the last ice age and the first phase of the early Holocene epoch, which is the current period of geological time.

The pygmy long-fingered possum is a striped marsupial with one digit on each hand that is twice as long as the next-longest finger. The ring-tailed glider is a relative of Australia's three greater glider (Petauroides) species, which are named after their ability to soar through forest canopies using furry membranes that extend from their elbows to their ankles. The ring-tailed glider is smaller than its Australian cousins and has unfurred ears, as well as a tail adapted for grasping and wrapping around objects such as branches.

The pygmy long-fingered possum and the ring-tailed glider are what researchers call "Lazarus taxa," meaning they are animals that vanish from the fossil record and seem to go extinct for an extended period before reemerging as living species. Their recent discovery was possible thanks to Indigenous communities in Papuan Indonesia that helped Flannery and his colleagues track down the animals. Specifically, the researchers collaborated with local elders from the Tambrauw and Maybrat clans.

"The discovery of one Lazarus taxon, even if thought to have become extinct recently, is an exceptional discovery," Flannery said. "But the discovery of two species, thought to have been extinct for thousands of years, is remarkable."

Some local Indigenous groups consider the ring-tailed glider to be sacred and deserving of the highest protection, which might help explain why the species has remained hidden, New Scientist reported.

Ring-tailed gliders form lifelong pair bonds and raise only one young per year. Like greater gliders, they nest in tree hollows, which makes them extremely vulnerable to logging.

The pygmy long-fingered possum also faces threats from logging. Its ears may be adapted to detect low-frequency sounds, including noise from wood-boring beetle larvae, which the possums dig out from rotting wood with their fingers to eat, Flannery told New Scientist.

Much remains unknown about the specific range and ecological needs of each species. The exact locations where they were found is being kept secret to prevent wildlife traders from targeting them. What is known so far about the marsupials was published March 6 in two peer-reviewed studies in the journal Records of the Australian Museum.

"The findings underscore the critical importance of preserving these unique bioregions and the value of collaborative research in uncovering and protecting hidden biodiversity," Flannery said in the statement.

In 2024, scientists announced the discovery of a newfound anaconda species in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Now, in a new nature series, filmmakers have released nail-biting, never-before-seen footage of the moment they encountered the snake in the wild.

The footage transports viewers to the Baihuaeri Waorani Territory in the Amazon rainforest, where researchers were sampling anacondas in 2022 for a snake genetics study. In the video, venom expert Bryan Fry and actor Will Smith travel by boat with Indigenous Waorani guides along the banks of a murky river. In a small clearing, the group spots a gigantic anaconda, which the guides manage to immobilize so that Fry and Smith can take a piece of its scales.

The anaconda in the footage — which features in an episode of National Geographic's upcoming "Pole to Pole with Will Smith" docuseries — is a female measuring 16 to 17 feet (4.9 to 5.2 meters) long, Fry estimates in the show. There is a danger she might bite, says one of the Waorani guides who helps pin down the snake, even if green anacondas aren't venomous. Anacondas are constrictors, meaning they kill prey by wrapping their bodies tightly around it, suffocating the animal before swallowing it whole.

The scale sample and others taken in 2022 revealed that green anacondas, which were previously thought to all belong to one species, actually form two separate species: Eunectes murinus, the already-identified southern green anaconda, and Eunectes akayima, the newfound northern green anaconda.

"Finding a new species is so often not a case of actively searching but rather having rigorous scientific process in place so that serendipity can strike," Fry, who is a professor of toxicology at The University of Queensland in Australia, told Live Science in an email. "The research into the genetics of the iconic green anaconda is textbook in this regard."

Genetic analyses indicate that E. murinus and E. akayima diverged 10 million years ago. Since then, northern and southern green anacondas have accumulated thousands of genetic differences adding up to a whopping 5.5% of their total DNA. By comparison, the level of mismatch between human and ape DNA is about 2%.

As its name suggests, the northern green anaconda inhabits the Amazon's northern basin, which includes parts of Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Trinidad, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana. The southern green anaconda, on the other hand, is found in the Amazon's southern basin, which stretches across Brazil from Peru and Bolivia to French Guiana. Both species live in wetlands and rivers, spending most of their time submerged in water. Their olive-green coloring blends into their surroundings, which helps green anacondas ambush large prey such as capybaras (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris), caimans and deer.

Green anacondas are the world's heaviest snakes, with some specimens weighing more than 550 pounds (250 kilograms) and exceeding 12 inches (30 centimeters) in girth. Female northern green anacondas grow the largest and heaviest, while their male counterparts have more slender bodies. This means female and male northern green anacondas hunt different prey and occupy different positions in the food chain, Fry said.

"Females and males live in the same environment, but they feed differently," he said.

The northern green anaconda is the fifth described anaconda species in the world — and there may be more hiding out there, Fry told Live Science. "Despite anacondas having a state of fame exceeding that of any other reptile, they are really poorly known," he said.

Knowledge of the northern green anaconda's existence is important in and of itself, but the difference in male and female diets could also give clues about the health of the ecosystem — and the people who live in it, Fry said. Female northern green anacondas feed lower in the food chain than males do, preying on animals such as deer. The males eat more predatory fish and caimans, meaning they accumulate more toxins leftover in the environment from events like oil spills than females do, he said.

Male northern green anacondas' diet resembles that of humans living in the Amazon. Therefore, the concentration of toxins in these anacondas provides an estimate of the pollution that people are exposed to — and that pollution is high, Fry said.

"The concentrations of the heavy metals cadmium and lead, potent endocrine disruptors that are the signature of oil spills, were over 1000 percent higher in males than females," he said. "That is not a subtle difference. That is a warning flare."

In light of these findings, Fry is developing a wild food guide for the Waorani. "Recommendations will include pregnant women and young children avoiding top-level predators likely to carry higher contaminant loads, such as arapaima and arowana [two types of predatory freshwater fish]," he said.

"Pole to Pole with Will Smith" premieres Jan. 13 on National Geographic, and Jan. 14 on Disney+ and Hulu.

How to watch "Pole to Pole with Will Smith" in the U.S.

"Pole to Pole with Will Smith" premieres in the U.S. on National Geographic and will be available to stream on Disney+.

The first two episodes will air from 9 p.m. ET / 6 p.m. PT on Tuesday Jan. 13 on TV. Then, on Jan. 14, all seven episodes will be available to stream in one go on Disney+.

How to watch "Pole to Pole with Will Smith" in the U.K.

"Pole to Pole with Will Smith" will also air on the National Geographic TV channel and the Disney+ streaming platform in the U.K.

The premiere is a day later than the U.S. release, landing on Jan. 14 at 8 p.m. GMT. All seven episodes will be available to stream on Disney+ for U.K. subscribers from Jan. 14.

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Scientists have had to create an entirely new spider genus after four new tarantula species were found to have such long genitalia that they couldn't fit into any pre-existing category.

The team believe the males have evolved this impressive appendage to keep themselves as far away as possible from aggressive females, which are known to eat their partners during mating.

Male tarantulas' genitals are typically 1.5 to two times the length of their head and thorax put together. But the newfound spiders' palps — specialized appendages to transfer sperm during mating — are four times as long as their upper bodies and almost half as long as their longest legs, according to a new study.

"The males of these spiders have the longest palps amongst all known tarantulas," study lead author Alireza Zamani, an arachnologist at the University of Turku in Finland, said in a statement. "Based on both morphological and molecular data, they are so distinct from their closest relatives that we had to establish an entirely new genus to classify them, and we named it Satyrex."

The name Satyrex is a combination of the words "satyr" and "rex." In Greek mythology, a satyr is a male nature spirit with the upper body of a human and the lower body of a goat or horse, and "rex" is the Latin word for king. According to the statement, satyrs are often depicted as having exceptionally large genitalia.

The newfound tarantulas live in burrows and cool spaces between rocks on the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa. Zamani and his colleagues first encountered Satyrex arabicus in Saudi Arabia, photographed Satyrex ferox in Yemen and Oman, and described Satyrex somalicus and Satyrex speciosus in Somaliland. They published their findings July 22 in the journal ZooKeys.

Related: We now know why tarantulas are hairy — to stop army ants eating them alive

Of the four newfound species, S. ferox stands out as the largest and fiercest, hence its name. Both males and females have leg spans of about 5.5 inches (14 centimeters), and males' palps stretch an incredible 2 inches (5 cm) long, possibly to provide a safety buffer against cannibalistic females during mating.

"We have tentatively suggested that the long palps might allow the male to keep a safer distance during mating and help him avoid being attacked and devoured by the highly aggressive female," Zamani said.

The species is also highly defensive. "At the slightest disturbance, it raises its front legs in a threat posture and produces a loud hissing sound by rubbing specialized hairs on the basal segments of the front legs against each other," Zamani explained.

Molecular and phylogenetic analyses, where scientists reconstruct the evolutionary history of a species through genetics, revealed that a tarantula previously assigned to the genus Monocentropus is in fact more closely related to Satyrex spiders, too. Researchers first described Monocentropus longimanus from Yemen in 1903, but the spider has now been reclassified as Satyrex longimanus.

"The much longer palps of S. longimanus and the four newly described species were among the primary characters that led us to establish a new genus for these spiders, rather than place them in Monocentropus," Zamani said. "At least in tarantula taxonomy, it seems that size really does matter."

Spider quiz: Test your web of knowledge

Fifty million years ago, lush rainforests blanketed modern-day Antarctica, Australia, New Zealand and the tip of South America. Now, researchers have discovered new fossils that reveal which plant species populated these forests and how they adapted to life near the South Pole.

Recent excavations in western Tasmania uncovered a number of plant fossils, including the remains of two species of conifer previously unknown to science that were part of a 53 million-year-old "polar forest."

The forest thrived during the Eocene epoch (56 million to 33.9 million years ago), when global surface temperatures averaged 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius) and the southern continents formed one giant landmass around the South Pole, according to a study published Aug. 27 in the American Journal of Botany.

"This discovery offers rare insights into a time when global temperatures were much higher than today," study author Miriam Slodownik, a paleobotanist and recent doctoral graduate from the University of Adelaide in Australia, said in a statement. "Tasmania was much closer to the South Pole, but the warm global climate allowed lush forests to thrive in these regions."

Global temperatures spiked during the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum (53 million to 49 million years ago), a period predating the breakup of Australia from Antarctica between 45 million and 35 million years ago. New fossils unearthed near Tasmania's Macquarie Harbor suggest tropical plants from the polar forest traveled north as the continents drifted apart, seeding rainforests that still exist today.

Related: 390 million-year-old fossilized forest is the oldest ever discovered

Researchers excavated more than 400 plant fossils and analyzed them in the lab using advanced microscopes and ultraviolet photography. These techniques revealed well-preserved leaves and cellular structures that helped the team identify 12 different plant species. Most of these were ancestors of flora still found today in Australia, New Zealand and South America, according to the statement. These three landmasses stayed joined together after the breakup of the ancient supercontinent Gondwana and remained so until at least 49 million years ago.

Of the 12 species, at least nine were conifers, according to the study. "The most spectacular fossils are relatives of the Kauri [Agathis], Bunja [Araucaria bidwillii] and Wollemi [Wollemia nobilis] pines that give clues about the evolution of these iconic Australian trees," Slodownik said.

The researchers, in collaboration with the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, also identified ferns, a cycad and two newfound, extinct tree species, which they named Podocarpus paralungatikensis and Araucaria timkarikensis. "Paralungatik" is the original name of Macquarie Harbor and "Timkarik" that of the surrounding area in the Aboriginal language of Tasmania, according to the statement.

The analyses revealed that the fossilized plants adapted to the polar environment, which would have experienced the same extreme seasonal light regime 53 million years ago as it does today. The plants evolved large leaves to maximize light absorption in the summer and deciduousness to preserve resources in low-light conditions during the winter, according to the study.

"The analyses showed how these plants adapted and thrived across the Southern Hemisphere in warm, ice-free conditions, even with the extreme seasonal changes near the polar circle," Slodownik said.

But the new fossils reveal details of even wider changes. "These plants tell the story of big changes in climate and the shifting tectonic plates over millions of years," Soldownik said.

A strange,never-before-seen jellyfish with a distinctive stomach that looks like a red cross has been discovered inside a volcanic structure off the coast of Japan.

Researchers spotted the jellyfish, which has been named the St. George's cross medusa (Santjordia pagesi), 2,664 feet (812 meters) below the Pacific Ocean's surface near Japan's Ogasawara Islands. It was floating around the Sumisu caldera, a 6.2-mile-wide (10 kilometers) hydrothermally active volcano that sits on a volcanic arc, or chain of volcanoes, known as the Ring of Fire.

The umbrella-shaped jellyfish has a diameter of around 4 inches (10 centimeters) and is transparent, except for a bright red cross, which is visible when the creature is viewed from above.

The jellyfish is so rare it has only ever been spotted twice. It was first seen in 2002 by a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) during a dive in the Sumisu caldera. However, researchers could not describe a newfound species based on a single specimen, as it could have been a mutated individual belonging to an already-known species, according to a statement from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC).

Related: City-size seamount triple the height of world's tallest building discovered via gravitational anomalies

In 2020, scientists revisited the region and spotted the mysterious jellyfish again. While they were unable to collect a sample, they filmed the jellyfish swimming around.

This second encounter enabled them to describe the jellyfish as a unique species. The team reported its findings in a study published Nov. 20, 2023, in the journal Zootaxa.

The unusual cross shape at the center of S. pagesi is the jellyfish's stomach. The color helps to disguise the jellyfish and the food it consumes from predators in its dark, deep-sea home. Much of the creature's diet consists of bioluminescent organisms that glow in the dark — having a red stomach diminishes the light they emit, protecting the jellyfish from predators after it has eaten its meal.

S. pagesi differs a great deal to its closest relatives, which include large, deep-sea jellyfish such as Tiburonia granrojo and the giant phantom jelly Stygiomedusa gigantea, according to the statement. The newfound species is much smaller and, unlike its relatives, has tentacles as well as arms, which it uses for feeding. Because of its unusual traits, researchers believe S. pagesi may have a never-before-seen type of venom that could be used in genetic research, for example, in medicines.

The caldera where the jellyfish lives is rich in minerals and could potentially be commercially developed for deep-sea mining. The researchers published information about the jellyfish to try to protect the area and its marine life.

"Maybe it holds secrets more valuable than all the mineral wealth that could be extracted from that place. All this with the advantage of keeping the species and the site intact," André Morandini, a professor of zoology at the University of São Paulo's Institute of Biosciences and part of the research team, said in a statement.

Dinosaurs often steal the limelight when it comes to fossils, but other prehistoric critters are just as deserving of our attention. As 2023 comes to a close, it's time to look back on some of the most  jaw-dropping fossil discoveries that weren't all about T. rex. From a fish with eyes too big for its stomach to the largest ever fossilized flower and mysterious marine fossils that glow gold, here's our pick of non-dino fossils that blew our socks off in 2023.

Largest penguin to walk Earth

In February, scientists described fossils belonging to the largest known species of penguins — Kumimanu fordycei, which weighed a whopping 340 pounds (154 kilograms). These colossal penguins glided through the ocean around what is now New Zealand more than 50 million years ago, bones discovered inside beach boulders in North Otago on the country's South Island revealed.

Researchers estimated the weight of K. fordycei based on the size and density of these bones compared with those of living penguins. The fossilized remains of eight other penguin specimens were also uncovered inside the boulders, including those of the newfound species Petradyptes stonehousei and a known species of giant penguin, K. biceae.

Giant penguins likely disappeared around 27 million years ago, when they were outcompeted by marine mammals similar in size, experts told Live Science.

Tiny penguin skulls

In June, researchers identified two tiny skull fossils from New Zealand's North Island as belonging to a never-before-seen extinct species, which they named Wilson's little penguin (Eudyptula wilsonae). The skulls, one from an adult and the other from a juvenile, were remarkably similar to those of the smallest living species of penguin today — the little penguin (Eudyptula minor).

Researchers don't know exactly how small the extinct birds were, but little penguins grow to a maximum size of 13.5 inches (35 centimeters) and weigh around 2 pounds (0.9 kg), which may be in the ballpark.

Related: Ancient skeletons of largest-ever marsupial unearthed in Australia

Fossilized flower mystery solved

In January, scientists finally got to the bottom of a 150-year-old mystery. They discovered that a flower entombed in a hunk of amber and discovered in the Baltic forests of Northern Europe in 1872 is a newfound species named Symplocos kowalewskii that dates to the late Eocene epoch (roughly 38 million to 33.9 million years ago).

The specimen, which measures about 1 inch (2.8 cm) wide, is the largest fossilized flower ever recorded and is three times the size of the next-biggest amber-encased bloom. 

Trilobites' hidden third eye

Scientists examining a fossilized trilobite specimen — an extinct marine arthropod that lived during the Paleozoic Era (541 million to 252 million years ago) — discovered that these prehistoric creatures didn't have just a pair of compound eyes, as previously thought, but also sported a third eye in the middle of their forehead.

The trilobite specimen was missing a part of its head, which gave researchers a glimpse under a layer of shell that becomes opaque during the fossilization process and obscures the structures beneath. Hidden median eyes are common among arthropods living today.

Baby turtles mistaken for plants

A re-examination of two ancient "plant" fossils discovered in Colombia 50 years ago revealed they are actually the remains of hatchling turtles from the dinosaur age. The 2-inch-long (5 cm), leaf-shaped fossils fooled their finder, who originally placed them within a group of plants that thrived during the Late Devonian (419.2 million to 358.9 million years ago) and the Permian (298.9 million to 251.9 million years ago). 

In December, it turned out the fossils were extremely rare imprints of the upper shells of baby turtles dating back to the Aptian age (125 million to 113 million years ago) of the Cretaceous (145 million to 66 million years ago).

It's possible the hatchlings were members of the oldest sea turtles on record — Desmatochelys padillai — but researchers would need a complete skeleton to confirm this.

Related: Flesh-eating 'killer' lampreys that lived 160 million years ago unearthed in China

Beheaded in action

A fossil from the Middle Triassic (247 million to 237 million years ago), which was discovered on the border between Italy and Switzerland, showed bone breaks and tooth marks consistent with a brutal beheading. The victim, a giant marine reptile called Tanystropheus hydroides with a neck three times as long as its torso, had its head torn off in one clean bite by an even deadlier creature that likely swooped down from above, experts said.

It's unclear which predator could have killed the 20-foot-long (6 meters) reptile, but researchers narrowed down a list of suspects by measuring the distance between the tooth marks. Potential candidates include the 18-foot-long (5.5 m) ichthyosaur Cymbospondylus buchseri; an enormous reptile measuring up to 23 feet (7 m) long called Nothosaurus giganteus; and Helveticosaurus zollingeri — an enigmatic, 12-foot-long (3.6 m) predator.

Slasher dolphin with jutting teeth

In June, researchers identified a stunningly preserved dolphin skull as a newfound species that lived 25 million years ago during the Oligocene period (34 million to 23 million years ago). The fossil, which was first discovered buried in a cliff face in 1998 and was being held in a museum collection in New Zealand, was recently named Nihohae matakoi, from Maori words meaning "slashing teeth, face sharp."

The skull was around 2 feet (60 cm) long and sported long teeth that stuck out almost horizontally from what would have been the snout. These spade-like teeth were probably unsuited to catching fish, the researchers said, but the creature may have thrashed at its prey to stun it before slurping it up. It's also possible the dolphin's jutting teeth served a sexual or social purpose.

Prehistoric fish's last supper

An intriguing fossil found in a museum drawer captured the moment a prehistoric fish swallowed an ammonite — an extinct marine mollusk — and choked to death on it. The ammonite remained intact inside the fish's body and became imprinted in rocks, lodged up against the predator's spine. The pair likely died together about 180 million years ago, during the Jurassic period (201 million to 145 million years ago).

The fossil was discovered in 1977 near Stuttgart, in southwest Germany, but researchers initially stored it away, as they thought the pairing of the fossilized fish and ammonite was a coincidence. Another look recently revealed the ammonite was inside the fish and likely caused its death due to the mollusk's size — equivalent to a human swallowing a dinner plate.

Related: Low water levels in Lake Powell reveal 'extremely rare' fossils from extinct Jurassic mammal relative

Mysterious golden fossils

Shimmering fossils of marine animals from Germany's Posidonia Shale were long thought to glow gold thanks to a mineral called pyrite, but they turned out to contain very little of it. Instead, researchers traced the fossils' golden glimmer to phosphate minerals with yellow calcite. Unlike pyrite, phosphate minerals need oxygen to form, which revealed new information about the fossilization process in the region.

Fossils from the Posidonia Shale — which include ammonites, bivalves and crustaceans from the Jurassic period — are found in what researchers once thought was a completely oxygen-depleted environment. The discovery of phosphate minerals in the grooves means a burst of oxygen must have reached them at some point, turning the fossils into what looks like gold.

Mystery of prehistoric shrimp's supper solved

A shrimp-like Cambrian critter's choice of food has surprised scientists: It was thought to feed by piercing hard-shelled prey, but it turns out it likely hunted soft-bodied animals instead. In July, computer models of fossils dating to 500 million years ago suggested Anomalocaris canadensis, which was about the size of a house cat and boasted two spiky facial appendages, probably swam like a cuttlefish with its appendages outstretched to pincushion prey.

Contrary to what was previously thought, A. canadensis' appendages probably weren't robust enough to skewer trilobites — extinct marine arthropods with a tough exoskeleton. So the strange creature more likely feasted on squishy animals floating in the water column.

Fleeing vampire with luminous organs

A new analysis of fossils belonging to a group of mostly extinct, octopus-like creatures called vampyromorpha revealed a previously undescribed species with eight arms, sucker attachments like a vampire squid and glow-in-the-dark organs. 

The 3.2-inch-long (8 cm), bullet-shaped creature stalked Earth's oceans 165 million years ago and likely snatched prey using its arms. Researchers in France named it Vampyrofugiens atramentum — a combination of the Serbian word for vampire, "vampir," and the Latin word for fleeing, "fugiens" — meaning the fleeing vampire. 

Scientists in China have unearthed two superbly preserved, 160 million-year-old lamprey fossils — including the largest found to date — shining a light on this group's obscure evolutionary history.

Lampreys are one of two living jawless vertebrate groups that first appear in the fossil record around 360 million years ago, during the Devonian period (419.2 million to 358.9 million years ago). These ancient fish, including 31 species alive today, typically have teeth-filled sucker mouths that they use to latch onto prey to extract blood and other body fluids.

The newly described fossils date to the Jurassic period (201.3 million to 145 million years ago) and bridge a gap between early fossil discoveries and extant lineages. Researchers unearthed the specimens from a fossil bed in northeast China and named them Yanliaomyzon occisor and Y. ingensdentes — their species names meaning "killer" in Latin and "large teeth" in Greek, respectively.

"These fossil lampreys were exquisitely preserved with a complete suite of feeding structures," researchers wrote in a study published Tuesday (Oct. 31) in the journal Nature Communications. 

Looking at early fossils, it has long been clear that lampreys have undergone major changes since the Devonian, the authors wrote. But until now, huge gaps in the fossil record meant scientists didn't know when these changes occurred.

Related: Nightmarish deep-sea footballfish washes up on California beach in rare stranding 

Y. occisor, the larger of the two newfound fossils, measured 25.3 inches (64.2 centimeters) long and is the largest lamprey fossil ever found, according to the study. 

Living lamprey species can get much bigger than this, however; sea lampreys (Petromyzon marinus) grow up to 4 feet (120 cm) long, and Pacific lampreys (Entosphenus tridentatus) reach up to 2.8 feet (85 cm).

The earliest lampreys, on the other hand, were only a few inches long. They had tiny, simple teeth and likely no anticoagulant-producing glands, which their modern counterparts use to keep their prey's blood flowing. The mouthparts of these early lampreys indicate they weren't predatory or even parasitic, the authors wrote, but instead fed on algae. "Their feeding opportunities were rather limited because the vast majority of their potential hosts then all had thick scales or armor" that they would not have been able to penetrate, the researchers added.

The newly described fossils showed "extensively toothed" mouths, suggesting lampreys were preying on other animals at least 160 million years ago, according to the study. The mouthparts of Y. occisor and Y. ingensdentes also bear a striking resemblance to those of extant pouched lampreys (Geotria australis), pointing to "an ancestral flesh-eating habit for modern lampreys," the authors wrote. This predatory lifestyle likely led to an increase in lampreys' body size by the Jurassic period, they added. 

Lampreys also underwent major changes in their life history between the Devonian and the Jurassic, according to the study. The large size of Y. occisor in particular is similar to subsequent species that evolved a three-staged life cycle — comprising a larval, metamorphic and adult stage — indicating it may also have a triphasic cycle and migrated up rivers to spawn.

The discovery fills a gap in the evolutionary history of lampreys, throwing light both on changes in the fishes' feeding habits and on the modernization of their life history during the Jurassic period, according to the study. 

"This history can be divided into two episodes linked by the Jurassic species," the authors wrote.

Scientists have identified a 240 million-year-old giant-salamander-like creature that was first unearthed decades ago in rocks intended for a garden wall in Australia. The species, Arenaerpeton supinatus — meaning "supine sand creeper" — was an estimated 4 feet (1.2 meters) long and inhabited rivers in what is now the Sydney Basin during the Triassic period (251.9 million to 201.3 million years ago), according to a study published Aug. 3 in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

"This fossil is a unique example of a group of extinct animals known as the temnospondyls, which lived before and during the time of the dinosaurs," study lead author Lachlan Hart, a doctoral student in vertebrate paleontology at the University of New South Wales and the Australian Museum, said in a statement.

The amphibian's remains are exceptionally well preserved and even reveal imprints of the creature's skin. "We don't often find skeletons with the head and body still attached, and the soft tissue preservation is an even rarer occurrence," Hart said.

Related: 462 million-year-old fossilized eyes and brains uncovered in 'secret' Welsh fossil site

A retired chicken farmer discovered the fossil 30 years ago in rocks that were cut from a quarry and intended for a retaining garden wall. The retiree donated the relic to the Australian Museum.

The fossil creature was a look-alike of today's Chinese giant salamander (Andrias davidianus). The newly named amphibian is larger than closely related species that lived at the same time, but temnospondyls inflated after A. supinatus went extinct. "The last of the temnospondyls were in Australia 120 million years after Arenaerpeton, and some grew to massive sizes [up to 20 feet (6 m)]," Hart said. "The fossil record of temnospondyls spans across two mass extinction events, so perhaps this evolution of increased size aided in their longevity." 

The creature's ribs and the outlines of its skin suggest it was "considerably more heavyset than its living descendants," which may include modern amphibians (Lissamphibia), Hart added. "It also had some pretty gnarly teeth, including a pair of fang-like tusks on the roof of its mouth."

A. supinatus likely used these tusks to stab and shred its prey, which may have included ancient ray-finned fish, according to the researchers. 

A microscopic worm survived in the Siberian permafrost for a record-breaking 46,000 years, scientists have discovered — tens of thousands of years longer than previously resurrected worms.

The ancient roundworm, or nematode, belongs to the newly described species Panagrolaimus kolymaensis. Researchers discovered it nestled inside a fossilized squirrel burrow that was extracted from permafrost near the Kolyma River, in the northeastern Arctic, in 2002. Scientists resuscitated the frozen nematode in 2018, but its age and species remained unclear.

Now, a study published Thursday (July 27) in the journal PLOS Genetics may have found answers to these questions. "Survival in extreme environments for prolonged periods is a challenge that only a few organisms are capable of," researchers wrote in the study. "Here, we show that a soil nematode Panagrolaimus kolymaensis suspended life for 46,000 years in the Siberian permafrost."

Organisms such as nematodes and tardigrades can enter a dormant state — a metabolic process known as "cryptobiosis" — in response to being frozen or extremely dehydrated, intermediary states known as cryobiosis and anhydrobiosis, respectively. In both cases, the critters reduce their oxygen consumption and the amount of heat produced by metabolic processes to undetectable levels.

Related: 'Prehistoric' mummified bear discovered in Siberian permafrost isn't what we thought 

The newly described nematode entered cryptobiosis in the late Pleistocene (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago), an epoch that included that last ice age. The permafrost that imprisoned the tiny creature had not thawed since then, meaning this is the longest recorded cryptobiosis in nematodes — by tens of thousands of years — according to the study. Until now, the Antarctic nematode species Plectus murrayi and a Tylenchus polyhypnus specimen held this record; the former was frozen in moss for 25.5 years and the latter was desiccated in a herbarium for 39 years.

The researchers analyzed the newly described nematode's genes and compared them to those of Caenorhabditis elegans roundworms, which were the first multicellular organisms to have their entire genome sequenced. In the absence of established genetic methods to study the recently thawed worm, C. elegans provided a well-studied model organism for comparison. The analysis revealed several shared genes linked to cryptobiosis.

To find out exactly how nematodes can survive for such long periods, the researchers got a new group of P. kolymaensis and C. elegans worms and mildly desiccated them in the lab. As the worms entered anhydrobiosis, the team observed a spike in the production of a sugar called trehalose, which they think could help protect the nematodes' cell membranes from dehydration. They then froze the worms at minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 80 degrees Celsius) and found that desiccation improved the survival rates of both species. Worms that were frozen at this temperature without being dehydrated beforehand died instantly, according to the study. 

Equipped with molecular pathways to cope with Arctic conditions, nematodes have evolved to survive in these hibernating states for many thousands of years, the researchers concluded. "Our findings indicate that by adapting to survive [in a] cryptobiotic state for short time frames in environments like permafrost, some nematode species gained the potential for individual worms to remain in the state for geological timeframes," they wrote in the study.

This means that extinct nematode species could be revived if they escape from the permafrost, the researchers noted. "Drastic changes" to the environment in which they lay dormant, including fluctuations in temperature and natural radioactivity, can wake ancient nematodes from their deep slumber, they added. 

Scientists have unearthed the remains of two never-before-seen species of saber-toothed cats that roamed Africa around 5.2 million years ago. The discoveries have changed what researchers previously knew about this group of extinct feline creatures, a new study shows. 

The new findings could also shed light on the environmental changes happening at the time, which could help reveal why human ancestors started walking on two legs. researchers say. 

The partial remains of the two newfound species, Dinofelis werdelini and Lokotunjailurus chimsamyae, were unearthed alongside the bones of two other known species, Adeilosmilus kabir and Yoshi obscura, near the town of Langebaanweg on the west coast of South Africa. The four species belong to the subfamily Machairodontinae — an extinct group of feline predators that included most species of saber-toothed cats. (The name Machairodontinae means "dagger-tooth.") Most members of this subfamily were equivalent in size to most big cats alive today.

In a new study, published July 20 in the journal iScience, researchers described the remains of all four species. The discovery of D. werdelini was not a surprise to the team, because species from this genus had previously been uncovered in the area and across the globe, including Europe, North America and China. However, the researchers were shocked to discover L. chimsamyae because, until now, members of this genus had only ever been found in Kenya and Chad. 

The new findings suggest that a majority of saber-toothed cats may have been much more widespread than previously thought, the researchers wrote in a statement.

Related: Dire wolves and saber-toothed cats may have gotten arthritis as they inbred themselves to extinction

In the study, the researchers compared the bones of the newly uncovered species and known saber-toothed cats to create a new family tree for the group. The four species from Langebaanweg were not closely related to one another and likely occupied very different ecological niches despite living in the same area at around the same time. 

For example, L. chinsamyae and A. kabir were larger and more adapted to running at high speeds, which would make them well-suited to open grassland environments. But D. werdelini and Y. obscura were smaller and more agile, which would have made them more suited to covered environments, such as forests, the researchers said.

The overlap of these species suggests that their habitat included both forests and open grasslands. The researchers think this may have been caused by a shift in Africa's climate, which was slowly turning the continent from a giant forest into open grassland, which is the dominant habitat type today. 

Until rcently, researchers were unsure when the shift in ecosystem type across Africa may have occurred. Understanding this better could help reveal how human ancestors, or hominins, who first emerged in Africa around this time, became bipedal. The change in environment is thought to have been an "important trigger" that pushed hominins to walk on two legs, researchers wrote in the study. 

However, recent studies looking at other ancient ecosystems across Africa have shown that grasslands may have actually started appaearing up to 21 million years ago, which suggests that changing eoccystems may not have impacted hominin bipedalism at all, according to The Conversation.

Moray eels that lurk in gloomy, underwater caves appear to be adjusting to the darkness by growing skin over their eyes.

The newly described bean-eyed snake moray (Uropterygius cyamommatus) is the first moray eel species known to inhabit anchialine caves — caves carved into volcanic or limestone rock that are connected to the ocean and whose water levels fluctuate with the tides. During expeditions to Christmas Island, Australia, and Panglao Island in the Philippines, scientists found two specimens that had no visible left eyes, suggesting that the eels may be adapting to their gloomy environment by going blind, one eye at a time.

"Only two specimens from Christmas Island have reduced left eyes and we are not able to know if it is natural or if they just damaged their eyes after being born," said Wen-Chien Huang, a doctoral student of marine biotechnology at the National Sun Yat-sen University in Taiwan and the lead author of a study published March 29 in the journal Raffles Bulletin of Zoology. "But the proportions of their eyes is the smallest that we have ever seen in moray eels, so we speculate it might be the result of adaptation to the aphotic or low-light environment," Huang told Live Science in an email.

Cave explorers first trapped bean-eyed snake morays on Panglao Island in 2001, and several specimens are housed in the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum in Singapore, Huang said. But until now, nobody had recognized them as their own species. A 2014 study in the Raffles Bulletin of Zoology incorrectly listed a bean-eyed snake moray that researchers had caught on Christmas Island as Echidna unicolor, a fish known as the unicolor or pale moray.

The two species are both a uniform brown color, but as its name suggests, the bean-eyed snake moray has "tiny bean-shaped eyes" and a longer tail with more vertebrae than the pale moray, the researchers wrote in the new study. Whereas pale morays have been found in coral reefs in the Pacific and Indian oceans, bean-eyed snake morays have only been spotted in a handful of caves on Christmas and Panglao islands.

Related: Does evolution ever go backward? 

Researchers caught the most recent specimens more than 10 years ago with baited traps and pickled them in alcohol to preserve them. It's unclear why or when bean-eyed snake morays retreated into the gloomy cave depths, but the authors of the new study suspect it could be linked to their voracious appetites. "I think one of the reasons they went to inhabit caves is the food source, since there are abundant crustaceans inside the caves," Huang said. The scientists who caught them reported that the "greedy" eels hungrily devoured the bait they used to lure them.

For the new study, Huang and his colleagues analyzed nine specimens collected between 2001 and 2011. Two of them had "a reduced left eye embedded in skin," with no apparent change in the underlying bone structure. The researchers think they may have captured evolution in action and that, in the absence of light, skin encroaching on the eels' eyes could save them the high energetic cost associated with eyesight. 

It is not unusual for cave-dwelling fish to go entirely blind, and many of the nearly 300 fish species that live in caves have done so. A species closely related to the bean-eyed snake moray, the few-vertebrae moray (U. oligospondylus), has similarly reduced eyes and lurks in the shadows between wave-crashed boulders, where it relies on its sense of smell to detect prey.

Scientists are still unsure exactly why skin is growing over the eels' eyes and whether this potential adaptation to their cave habitat is spreading among the population. Due to the low number of preserved specimens, researchers haven't performed genetic and other molecular testing to answer these questions, Huang said. "These are issues that we are interested in, but can only be resolved when more fresh specimens are available."

Scientists in Hong Kong have discovered tiny, cube-shaped box jellyfish in a brackish shrimp pond that are completely unknown to science.

The diminutive jellies have a completely transparent and colorless body, or bell, as well as 12 tentacles ending in small, paddle-like structures that enable the critters to speed through water faster than most other jellyfish species. 

Like other box jellies — a group of Cnidarians that includes the Australian box jellyfish (Chironex fleckeri), the world’s most venomous marine animal, according to the National Ocean Service — the newly described jellies have 24 eyes arranged in clusters of six around its cubic bell.

"This box jellyfish connects the base of its tentacles and its bell with a flat base that looks like a boat paddle, making it distinct from other common jellyfish," Qiu Jianwen, a professor in the Department of Biology at Hong Kong Baptist University who led the research, said in a video. "Another feature of the box jellyfish is that it has six eyes located on each side of its body." 

Researchers named the newfound species Tripedalia maipoensis after Mai Po Nature Reserve in Hong Kong, where they found it. They describe its features and relationship to other box jellies in a study published March 20 in the journal Zoological Studies.

Related: Alien-like giant phantom jellyfish spotted in frigid waters off Antarctica 

T. maipoensis is the first-ever box jelly to be found in Chinese waters. It is unclear whether the half-inch-long (1.5 centimeters) animal can sting humans, but it may be venomous enough to stun tiny shrimp called Artemia. "It seemed to paralyze Artemia offered in the lab," Qiu told Live Science in an email. "But we did not touch the animal to feel the sting."

The researchers first noticed the unusual creatures in samples collected from an intertidal shrimp pond, known as a "gei wai" locally, during the summers of 2020 to 2022. The jellyfish were "quite abundant," Qiu told Live Science, numbering "up to 400 individuals in an area of the pond." A tidal channel from the brackish pool means that the species could also be present in the adjacent waters of the Pearl River estuary, but no work has been done yet to confirm this, the researchers wrote in the study.

Box jellyfish, which are also known as sea wasps, move by allowing water to enter canals that run along a muscular membrane on the underside of their bodies and then expelling it. The researchers found that, unlike closely related species, T. maipoensis has forked canals separating into multiple branches. The newly discovered species is the third known member of a group of box jellies characterized by tentacles ending in flat, paddle-like structures, called Tripedalia. 

The scientists also noted that each cluster of six eyes on the jellies' cubic bell includes a pair of eyes with lenses that enable image-forming, as well as four eyes that can only sense light.

The species probably feeds on small crustaceans called copepods, which were abundant in the samples taken from the shrimp pond, Qiu told Live Science.

"We are thrilled with this discovery," Qiu said in the video. "Finding a new species in Mai Po, where extensive research has been conducted, highlights the potential for more marine life discovery in the Hong Kong and even the Chinese coastal waters."

An ancient hulk of an eagle that once soared over Australia shares similarities with the fictional giant eagles from J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy epic "The Lord of the Rings," a new study on the extinct raptors shows. While the real-life giants weren't as enormous as their fictional counterparts (and almost definitely couldn't be ridden by a wizard), they were probably hefty enough to pick up hobbit-size prey with their colossal talons.

The newfound species, named Gaff's powerful eagle (Dynatoaetus gaffae), was described from a collection of fossils found between 1959 and 2021 in a 56-foot-deep (17 meters) vertical cave in the state of South Australia. The bones, which include wings, legs, talons, a breastbone and a skull, reveal that the giant bird likely had talons measuring around 12 inches (30 centimeters) long and a wingspan of around 10 feet (3 meters), which makes it Australia's largest bird of prey on record, researchers wrote in a new study published March 15 in the Journal of Ornithology.

"It was humongous," study co-author Trevor Worthy, a vertebrate paleontologist at Flinders University in Australia, said in a statement. It lived between 50,000 and 700,000 years ago and was likely the largest eagle on the planet at the time, he added.

During the eagle's reign, Australia was filled with other giant creatures, including large flightless birds, giant kangaroos (Procoptodon sp.), massive monitor lizards (Varanus priscus) and bear-like marsupials (Diprotodon optatum). Researchers believe that D. gaffae could have preyed upon the infants or small and sickly individuals from these giant species. These prey could have been as large as living kangaroos, such as western gray kangaroos (Macropus fuliginosus), which grow to be around 4.3 feet (1.3 m) tall. (For context, hobbits stood between 3 and 4 feet (0.9 to 1.2 m) tall, according to "The Lord of the Rings" books.)

Related: 10 stunning fossils from 2022 that didn't come from dinosaurs

Despite its extraordinary size, D. gaffae was nowhere near as large as the giant eagles from "The Lord of the Rings," which had a wingspan of up to 75 feet (23 m) in the films by Peter Jackson, according to Wiki Fandom. However, D. gaffae was more than twice the size of Australia's wedge-tailed eagle (Aquila audax), which is alive today and likely co-existed with D. gaffae before the larger eagle species went extinct. 

D. gaffae has a similar body shape to living eagles in the genus Spilornis, which includes six species living in Asia; the largest of these, the Philippine eagle (Pithecophaga jefferyi), preys upon monkeys, lemurs and bats, as well as juvenile pigs and deer. D. gaffae and P. jefferyi both have large and powerful legs for their size, enabling them to attack and carry away large prey, study lead author Ellen Mather, a doctoral candidate of paleontology at Flinders University, wrote in an article for Australasian Science.

Only two known species of extinct eagle were larger than D. gaffae: Gigantohierax suarezi, which hunted giant rodents in Cuba, and New Zealand's giant Haasts eagle (Hieraaetus moorei), which plunged headfirst into dead prey to eat the organs. Both of these species had wingspans similar to D. gaffae but were likely heavier.

D. gaffae is not the only ancient eagle that has been discovered in Australia in recent years. In 2021, researchers revealed Archaehierax sylvestris, a previously unknown species that likely hunted large koalas around 25 million years ago.

Around 70 million years ago, a small, furry, platypus-like creature shuffled along the banks of an ancient lake. This would not have been a remarkable occurrence, except for one thing: The lake was in present-day Argentina, not Australia.

The creature, dubbed Patagorhynchus pascuali, is the oldest fossil of the egg-laying mammal group known as monotremes ever discovered in South America. The discovery may rewrite the story of where these oddball early mammals evolved. Today, all five species of living monotremes — which include the platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus), the short-beaked echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus) and three species of long-beaked echidnas (Zaglossus) — are found exclusively in Australia and a few of its surrounding islands. So how did a platypus ancestor wind up so far from Down Under? 

Millions of years ago, Australia, South America and Antarctica (as well as parts of Africa and Asia) were smooshed together in a supercontinent called Gondwana. This mega landmass began to break up about 180 million years ago, during the Jurassic period, but didn't fully separate until about 66 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period. 

Because more recent monotreme fossils have been found in South America, scientists previously speculated that the group evolved on the Australian landmass after this continental breakup and later migrated back to South America across a land bridge. But the fact that P. pascuali existed in Argentina before the continental breakup tells a different story. 

"Our discovery clearly demonstrates that Monotremes didn't evolve uniquely in the Australian continent, but also in other parts of southern Gondwana," study co-author Fernando Novas, a paleontologist at the Bernardino Rivadavia Natural Science Museum in Buenos Aires, Argentina, told Live Science in an email.

Related: Prickly echidnas stay cool by blowing snot bubbles

The specimen, which was described in the journal Communications Biology on Feb. 16, was identified by a fragment of a lower jaw containing a molar. When it comes to studying fossilized mammal remains, "teeth give us a huge amount of information," Robin Beck, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Salford in the U.K. who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email. In the case of monotremes, though, dental identification is a bit more complicated.

"Living platypuses lack teeth," Novas said. But another extinct platypus relative, the 30 million-year-old Obdurodon, retained teeth in both its upper and lower jaws. The P. pascuali molar closely resembled these teeth, as well as the very small, imperfect teeth that baby platypuses briefly possess.

Based on its teeth and apparent habitat, P. pascuali likely had a diet similar to that of a modern platypus: mainly, small aquatic invertebrates, including insect larvae and snails. The Argentinian fossil bed where it was discovered bears this out; Novas said that they found insects and snail shells in the sediments around P. pascuali. Additionally, the researchers uncovered the fossilized remains of other early mammals, turtles, frogs, snakes, aquatic plants and a variety of dinosaurs. 

While the discovery constitutes an important and interesting new piece of the monotreme evolutionary puzzle, researchers are still far from a complete picture. "There are still huge gaps in the monotreme fossil record," Beck said. For instance, although no monotreme fossils have been discovered in Antarctica, given its previous proximity to Australia and South America, there are likely ancient platypus bones deep beneath the ice.

But as a South American paleontologist, Novas said, it's pretty cool to know that "the great grand-father of the Australian Ornithorhynchus was Argentinian."

About 3 million years ago, giant petrels terrorized the skies and seas of the Southern Hemisphere with their deadly hooked bills and piercing eyes, a new study on a previously unknown bird species finds.

The discovery — based on a well-preserved skull and weathered humerus (upper wing bone) of the ancient predator from New Zealand's North Island — marks the only extinct giant petrel species on record, the researchers reported in a study published Jan. 30 in the journal Taxonomy.

The Tangahoe Formation, where they found the remains, "continues to provide outstanding seabird fossils and is becoming an important piece of the puzzle to understand the evolution and biogeography of seabirds in New Zealand and beyond," the team wrote in the study.

Amateur fossil hunter Alastair Johnson discovered the skull in 2017 and found the humerus two years later in a different spot along the rock formation. The researchers named the newly described species Macronectes tinae, in honor of Johnson's late partner, Tina King. "This giant petrel skull was her favourite fossil, hence the homage," they noted in the study.

As the first distinct evidence of an extinct giant petrel species, M. tinae offers paleontologists insight into how its modern relatives evolved. Although the now-extinct M. tinae is part of the giant petrel genus (Macronectes), it was actually smaller than the modern species Macronectes giganteus and Macronectes halli, which also live in the Southern Hemisphere. 

Related: Monster bird fossils unearthed in Antarctica

The Southern giant petrel (M. giganteus) and Northern giant petrel (M. halli) can grow to about 3 feet (1 meter) long from beak to tail, with wingspans sometimes reaching more than 6 feet (1.8 m). Since scientists have limited fossil evidence of M. tinae, it's hard to know exactly how big the bird was, study co-author Rodrigo Salvador, a paleontologist at UiT, The Arctic University of Norway, told Live Science. But based on the fossils we do have, he estimates that M. tinae was about the size of the smallest giant petrels alive today. That would mean the bird had a wingspan of around 5 feet (1.5 meters) across — nothing to scoff at.

Size-wise, giant petrels are actually an anomaly — most other petrels are slightly smaller than ducks. That means M. tinae's smaller body size isn't surprising, Daniel Ksepka, a paleontologist at the Bruce Museum in Connecticut who wasn't involved in the new research, told Live Science. Because giant petrels are so much larger than the rest of their family, known as Procellariidae, it stands to reason that they've been growing over time, Ksepka said.

But giant petrels have another advantage over other petrels. Many petrel species can't walk well on land due to their skimpy little legs, so they fly around when hunting, skimming or diving into the ocean for food when they spot prey. Giant petrels, on the other hand, have strong legs and wide feet that allow them to walk on land to scavenge for carrion and hunt smaller animals. And they don't use their big beaks to politely poke at dead animals; they often really go to town in a carcass, covering themselves in blood and guts.

"They will not hesitate to put their entire face inside the seal and eat," Ksepka said.

It's possible that M. tinae also enjoyed a face full of blood and guts, based on the sinister-looking beak it sported, Ksepka said. And because none of the other petrel species do this, the authors had an artist depict the newfound species in all its brutishness, featuring M. tinae in a gory, seal-eating scene, Salvador said.

The Tangahoe Formation is typically made up of fine-grained sediment, which helped preserve a lot of fossils, including birds, mammals and invertebrates, Salvador said. But this rock layer may offer more than just a link to the past.

During the late Pliocene epoch (5.3 million to 2.5 million years ago), when these fossils were deposited, temperatures were a few degrees Celsius higher in New Zealand than they are today, Salvador said. And as climate change gets worse, that's a future we might be headed toward again.

"People might not really be caring too much about what giant petrels looked like 2 million or 3 million years ago," Ksepka said. "But understanding how different groups of animals were distributed in a warmer period of Earth history may help us predict how things could change in the future."

About 350 million years ago, long before the dinosaurs stalked the planet, a gigantic fish with deadly fangs hunted river waters on the ancient southern supercontinent Gondwana, a new study finds. 

This fish, measuring up to 9 feet (2.7 meters) long, is the largest bony fish on record from the Late Devonian (383 million to 359 million years ago) and was predatory, prompting researchers to call it Hyneria udlezinye, or the "one who consumes others," in IsiXhosa, a widely spoken Indigenous language in the region of South Africa where the bones were found.

"Picture a huge predatory fish, easily topping 2 meters [6.5 feet] in length and looking somewhat like a modern alligator gar but with a shorter face like the front end of a torpedo," study co-author Per Ahlberg, a professor in the Department of Organismal Biology at Uppsala University in Sweden, told Live Science. "The mouth contained rows of small teeth, but also pairs of large fangs which could probably reach 5 centimeters [2 inches] in the largest individuals."

Researchers discovered the first clues of the ancient fish's existence in 1995, when they unearthed a series of isolated fossilized scales at an excavation site called Waterloo Farm near Makhanda (formerly known as Grahamstown), in South Africa. Now, in a study published Wednesday (Feb. 22) in the journal PLOS One, the researchers have finally pieced together a skeleton of the newfound species of giant tristichopterid, a type of ancient bony fish.

"It's been a long journey ever since then, assembling the answer to where these scales came from," study co-author Robert Gess, a paleontologist and research associate at the Albany Museum and at Rhodes University in South Africa, told Live Science.

Related: 'Never seen anything like it': Impeccably preserved Jurassic fish fossils found on UK farm

The skeleton reveals that H. udlezinye was a voracious predator. "The fins are mainly towards the back of the body. This is an ecological characteristic of a lie-in-wait predator; it can put on a sudden spurt. Hyneria would have lurked in the dark shadows and waited for passing things," Gess said. "It's the one that consumed others."

The giant fish probably preyed on four-legged creatures known as tetrapods, the ancestral group that led to the human lineage. "The tristichopterids evolved into monsters that, in all likelihood, ate [our ancestors]," Ahlberg said.

Previous research identified another species of the same genus, H. lindae, at an excavation site in Pennsylvania, which was part of the supercontinent Euramerica during the Late Devonian.

The fossils from Waterloo Farm are the first to indicate that Hyneria lived in Gondwana. The new study also reveals that giant tristichopterids lived not just in the tropical regions of Gondwana, but across the continent and even in the polar circle.

Most tristichopterid fossils found to date have been excavated in Australia, skewing our perception of the distribution of these animals. Other regions which belonged to Gondwana, like Africa and South America, are less well researched.

"Because Australia was in the tropics, and because all the well-sampled sites from this period and from Gondwana happen to be in Australia, there was a feeling that these giant tristichopterids originated in what is now Australia — along the tropical coast of Gondwana," Gess said.

Now, for the first time, researchers have found the remains of a giant tristichopterid in what would have been a polar region at the time. "We have this guild of ginormous predatory fish and this is the only example we have from the polar regions," Ahlberg said.

Tristichopterids disappeared in a mass extinction event at the end of the Devonian, about 359 million years ago. They have no direct descendants today, but researchers think that a common ancestor with our ancestral lineage existed earlier in the Devonian. "Late Devonian tristichopterids are more our second cousins than our direct ancestors," Ahlberg said.

Scientists in Ecuador have discovered a newfound species of stream frog with pale pink eyes and gold-speckled toes that looks like it came straight out of Middle-earth. That's why the researchers who discovered it named it Hyloscirtus tolkieni after J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of "The Hobbit'' and "The Lord of the Rings" books.

"The new species of frog has amazing colors, and it would seem that it lives in a universe of fantasies, like those created by Tolkien," Diego F. Cisneros-Heredia, director of the Museum of Zoology of the Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ) and associate researcher of the National Institute of Biodiversity in Ecuador, said in a statement.

The researchers describe the "Lord of the Rings'' frog in a study published Jan. 19 in the journal ZooKeys. H. tolkieni is 2.6 inches long (6.5 centimeters) and grayish green in color. Black spots dot its golden-yellow throat, belly, flanks and the undersides of its legs. The frog's fingers and toes too, are covered in black specks and broad skin stripes. The creature boasts an arresting pair of dusty pink eyes with black irises, which reminded the researchers of the otherworldly animals in their beloved author’s fantasy worlds.

Related: Adorable 'chocolate frog' discovered in crocodile infested swamp

Scientists discovered H. tolkieni in the Río Negro-Sopladora National Park, a largely unstudied area of pristine páramo (alpine tundra) and cloud forest protected since 2018 and covering more than 185,000 acres (75,000 hectares). Like other species of stream frog, this critter lives in the clear mountain rivers and streams of the high Andes. Tadpoles mature near rocks in the rapids, while adult stream frogs prefer the protection of lush vegetation on the river banks.

"For weeks, we explored different areas of the Río Negro-Sopladora National Park, walking from páramo grasslands at 3,100 meters [10 thousand feet] elevation to forests at 1,000 m [3.3 thousand feet]. We found a single individual of this new species of frog, which we found impressive due to its coloration and large size," Juan Carlos Sánchez Nivicela, also an associate researcher at the Museum of Zoology at USFQ and the National Institute of Biodiversity, said in the statement. 

Scientific expeditions in this region of Ecuador have led to the discovery of a large number of new species since 2020.

"The tropical Andes are magical ecosystems where some of the most wonderful species of flora, funga, and fauna in the world are present," Cisneros-Heredia said. "Unfortunately, few areas are well protected from the negative impacts caused by humans. Deforestation, unsustainable agricultural expansion, mining, invasive species, and climate changes are seriously affecting Andean biodiversity."

As a result, 57% of amphibian species in Ecuador are at risk of extinction, according to the statement.

Scientists have unearthed the fossilized remains of the largest ever known penguin on Earth, a 340-pound (154 kilograms) behemoth that glided through the oceans around what is now New Zealand more than 50 million years ago.

The fossils of this newfound species, Kumimanu fordycei, were found alongside eight other specimens inside beach boulders in North Otago, on New Zealand's South Island. Five of the remaining specimens belonged to another newfound species, Petradyptes stonehousei, one belonged to another known giant penguin, Kumimanu biceae, and two were unidentified. The rocks dated to between 59.5 million and 55.5 million years ago.

In a study, published Feb. 8 in the Journal of Paleontology, researchers estimated the weight of the two newfound species based on the size and density of their bones compared with those of modern penguins. The team found that P. stonehousei weighed around 110 pounds (50 kilograms), which is slightly above the weight of living emperor penguins (Aptenodytes forsteri). K. fordeycei would have weighed more than three times that, tipping the scales at a whopping 340 pounds. For comparison, the average 20-year-old man in the U.S. weighs 198 pounds (90 kg), according to Healthline. (Without a near-complete skeleton, the researchers weren't able to estimate the body length of the new species.)

"According to our analyses, K. fordycei is the biggest penguin currently known," study first author Daniel Ksepka, a palaeontologist and curator at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut, told Live Science in an email. 

Related: Kids discover giant penguin's fossil skeleton in New Zealand 

Previously, the largest penguin on record was Palaeeudyptes klekowskii, which lived around 37 million years ago in Antarctica, weighed 256 pounds (116 kg) and stood at around 6.6 feet (2 meters) tall, earning it the nickname "colossus penguin." The next largest, K. biceae, weighed around 267 pounds (121 kg) and had a body length of around 5.8 feet (1.8 m). 

The two new species were likely among some of the first ancient penguins. The new discovery could shed light on how the group evolved over time. 

The new species had "relatively primitive flipper bones," Ksepka said. "In many ways [they] resemble those of birds that can both fly through the air and propel themselves underwater with their wings, such as auks and puffins." (But neither of the new species could fly.)

Penguins likely lost the ability to fly in favor of swimming around 60 million years ago, not long before the new species likely emerged. So these early penguins had not yet evolved the super-efficient flippers seen in younger ancient penguins and their living relatives.

The enormous size of K. fordycei shows that gigantism evolved early on in the penguin lineage, Ksepka said. "It goes to show that the advantages of large size, such as more efficient thermoregulation and diving, probably exerted very strong selective pressure on penguins soon after they lost flight."

The unique environmental conditions of ancient New Zealand played a key role in the emergence and success of giant penguins, the researchers speculate.

Related: Noodle-necked swimming dinosaur may have been a diving predator like a penguin

"New Zealand is (and has been) a great place to be a penguin," Ksepka said. "There are good feeding grounds offshore for marine birds, and there were no land mammals other than bats in New Zealand before humans arrived, which makes for safer nesting areas."

Giant penguins like K. fordcyei disappeared around 27 million years ago, according to Australian Geographic. What caused their extinction is still an "unresolved question," but it is likely that the enormous birds were eventually outcompeted by marine mammals of similar size, Kspeka said.

K. fordcyei may be the largest known penguin so far, but it's possible that even larger birds roamed New Zealand. 

"The size of K. fordcyei doesn't necessarily mean there wasn't an even larger species that is yet to be discovered," Ksepka said. 

Slithering among shrubs in the foothill forests of Panama, there is a snake the color of burnt embers, with round eyes like glowing coals. The snake, soon to be named DiCaprio's snail-eating snake (Sibon irmelindicaprioae), is one of five newfound species living in the jungles of Central and South America. In a new study, researchers described the new species and shed light on how gold and copper mining operations in the region may threaten other stunning snakes.

"These new species of snake are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of new species discoveries in this region," lead author Alejandro Arteaga, president and research director at the Khamai Foundation, a conservation-focused nongovernmental organization, said in a statement. "But if illegal mining continues at this rate, there may not be an opportunity to make any future discoveries."

S. irmelindicaprioae derives its name from actor and conservationist Leonardo DiCaprio, who asked that the red-eyed snake be named for his mother, Irmelin Indenbirken. DiCaprio's eponymous snake is about 15 inches (38 centimeters) long, and spends its evenings on palm fronds 10 feet (3 meters) above the ground, foraging for snails and slugs. Docile to a fault, the snake defends itself not by biting but by coiling protectively around its head and emitting a foul odor.

The other four newfound species described in the study, published Jan. 25 in the journal ZooKeys, are the canopy snail-eating snake (Sibon canopy), Marley's snail-eating snake (Sibon marleyae), Vieira's snail-eating snake (Sibon vieirai), and Welborn's snail-eating snake (Dipsas welborni).

To identify the new species, Arteaga and colleagues built an evolutionary tree of Dipsadinae — a large and diverse subfamily of arboreal, terrestrial and aquatic snakes found in the Americas — after analyzing 343 sequences of snake DNA. The scientists determined that five species were sufficiently distinct from their closest relatives, in both appearance and genetics, to qualify as new species. DiCaprio's snake, for instance, does not immediately look much different from Siphonops annulatus, a fellow Dipsadine. But in addition to genetic differences, the two species have distinct coloring patterns along their backs and heads, among other telltale signs that they are not quite the same.

Unfortunately, most of these new snail-eating species face substantial challenges; the authors think that DiCaprio's snake already fits International Union for Conservation of Nature criteria for "near-threatened," as gold and copper mining operations are ravaging the rainforests the snakes call home. All five snake species are arboreal, which means they cannot survive in deforested areas, and all rely on a steady diet of slugs and snails that are in decline due to mining-related pollution in streams and rivers, according to the statement.

In Ecuador and Colombia, the challenge is largely illegal open-pit gold mines, which sprung up recently in response to a regional gold rush that has led to violence against park rangers and conservationists who stand in the way of deforestation. "When I first explored the rainforests of Nangaritza River in 2014, I remember thinking the place was an undiscovered and unspoiled paradise," Arteaga said. "In fact, the place is called Nuevo Paraíso [New Paradise] in Spanish, but it is a paradise no more. Hundreds of illegal gold miners using backhoe loaders have now taken possession of the river margins, which are now destroyed and turned into rubble."

In Panama, where DiCaprio's snake lives, the problem is legal copper mining. 

"Both legal and illegal open-pit mines are uninhabitable for the snail-eating snakes," Arteaga said, "but the legal mines may be the lesser of two evils. At the very least they respect the limit of nearby protected areas, answer to a higher authority, and are presumably unlikely to enact violence on park rangers, researchers, and conservationists."

Lurking within the dark waters of Chinese caves is a bizarre fish species that has an uncanny resemblance with mythical equine creature. The newfound fish weirdos, which researchers discovered hiding in a pitch-black pool the size of a kitchen table, have no scales or color, tiny rudimentary eyes that likely cannot see anything and an unusually large horn jutting out of their foreheads, a new study reveals. 

The researchers found the drab, unicorn-like fish while surveying cave fish from the genus Sinocyclocheilus. Fish in this genus are found only in China, usually within small pools that are shrouded in darkness. There are 76 known species of Sinocyclocheilus, most of which share similar characteristics with the newfound species, such as reduced or no vision, a lack of scales and no pigmentation. However, only some Sinocyclocheilus fish possess a horn, and others have lost their eyes completely in a process known as regressive evolution, in which species lose complex features over generations. There are also a handful of Sinocyclocheilus species that live in illuminated waters and lack the unusual features associated with their freaky cousins. 

Researchers discovered the newfound fish swimming in a small pool measuring 5.9 feet (1.8 meters) wide and 2.6 feet (0.8 m) deep, inside a cave in the mountainous Guizhou province. The team collected individuals to take back to the lab and examine, unaware that they were collecting a never-before-seen species. After comparing the fish with other known species and analyzing their DNA, the researchers realized what they had uncovered.

In the new study, published Jan. 17 in the journal ZooKeys, the team described the species, which they named S. longicornus. The fish are between 4.1 and 5.7 inches (10.5 to 14.6 centimeters) long and possess two pairs of whisker-like barbels that they use to feel their way around in the dark. But perhaps their most interesting feature is their unusually long horn-like structure, which has no clear use, and isn't found in closely related species. (The name longicornus is derived from the Latin words longus, meaning "long," and cornu, meaning "horn of the forehead.")

Related: Scientists discover beautiful new rainbow-colored fish lurking among 'twilight reefs' 

These horn-like strucutres differ widely among dark-dwelling Sinocyclocheilus species; they vary in length and can either be forked or non-forked, like in S. longicornus. As light-dwelling species do not have horns, these appendages likely have something to do with living in the dark, but it is not clear what their purpose is, the researchers wrote in the paper. 

The most logical explanation would be that the horns help these fish to "see" in the dark, but their barbels already enable them to navigate around their pool, which is not very big so would likely require minimal navigation skills anyway. Most Sinocyclocheilus species, including S. longicornus, also have a fully formed lateral line — an organ made up of highly sensitive cells that runs laterally down a fish's body and detects changes in pressure, temperature and salinity — so the horn is also unlikely to be needed to detect those. 

However, the unusual size of the horn on S. longicornus, coupled with the fact the new species is not closely related to other long-horned species, suggests that longhorns have emerged on at least two separate occasions in the genus, researchers wrote. Therefore, comparing the environmental conditions of S. longicornus with some of the other long-horned species could finally reveal what the mysterious structures are actually used for. 

About 52 million years ago, when the Arctic was warm and swampy but still shrouded in six months of darkness during the polar winter, two small primates scampered around, using their strong jaw muscles to chew the tough vegetation that managed to survive at the gloomy northern pole, a new study finds.

The two newfound primates — which belong to the already established primate genus Ignacius, and were given the new species names of I. dawsonae and I. mckennai — were small, weighing in at an estimated 5 pounds each (2 kilograms). They are the earliest known example of primates living in the Arctic, according to a new study published Wednesday (Jan. 25) in the journal PLOS One. 

This finding is based on an analysis of fossilized jaws and teeth found on Ellesmere Island in Northern Canada. North of Baffin Bay, the island lies just south of the Arctic Ocean. It is about as far north as you can get in Canada.

"If you think about their modern relatives, either primates or flying lemurs, these are among the most tropically adapted, warm-weather loving of all mammals, so they would be the about the last mammals you would expect to see up there, north of the Arctic Circle," study senior author Christopher Beard, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Kansas, told Live Science.

The two species lived during the Eocene epoch (56 million to 33.9 million years ago), a period of intense planetary warming. At the time, there were no ice caps at the poles, and Ellesmere Island would have had a warm and muggy climate akin to that of today's Savannah, Georgia, according to study first author Kristen Miller, a doctoral student in Beard's lab at the University of Kansas.

Related: Why haven't all primates evolved into humans?

In fact, temperatures on Ellesmere Island were hospitable enough to host a diverse ecosystem of unlikely animals, including early tapir-like ungulates and even crocodiles, snakes and salamanders, according to earlier paleontological discoveries.

While Eocene arctic dwellers did not have to deal with extreme temperatures, life in the warm Arctic wasn't without its challenges. Due to the tilt of the Earth's axis, the sun doesn't rise on the island for half of the year. "We've got six months of winter darkness and six months of summer daylight," Miller said. 

The main challenge for animals living so far north is a lack of food. Under such conditions, vegetation is likely to be scarce during the long, dark winters, so the researchers hypothesize that Arctic animals in the Ignaceous genus likely subsisted on tough-to-chew foods, such as seeds or tree bark. To make meals out of such difficult foods, the researchers found that, compared with the Arctic primates' more southerly relatives, their cheekbones protrude farther out from their skulls, which means that their jaw muscles likely did as well. 

"The mechanical result of moving these masticatory muscles forward is you generate greater bite forces," Beard said.

Adaptations to northern latitudes don't stop with the jaw. The animals were much larger than their southerly relatives, too. "Five pounds doesn't sound very big, but compared to the ancestors of these guys, it's a giant," Beard said. "The close relatives with these animals that we find in Wyoming are the size of chipmunks."

Their relatively large size is expected. Overall, there is a general trend in ecology called Bergmann's rule that states that the farther animals live from the equator, the larger they tend to be. Size is a common adaptation to cooler temperatures, and yes, for a type of animal typically found in the tropics, the climate of modern-day coastal Georgia would be quite cool, necessitating a large size to minimize heat loss. 

The Eocene's warming allowed many species to shift their ranges northward, a trend that ecologists are now seeing among modern species due to human-caused climate change. As the planet warms, more species will likely colonize the Arctic, but as in the case of Ignacius, many won't simply colonize, but may diversify into new species once there. 

"Given a little bit of time, species are going to evolve their own distinctive features that will enable them to adapt even better to the Arctic," Beard said. "I think it's a real dynamic picture of what's going to happen in the Arctic in the future with anthropogenic warming.

During the late Jurassic, a pterosaur with an unusually shaped bill lined with hundreds of tiny, hooked teeth stalked the waters of what is now Bavaria, Germany. The now-extinct animal likely gulped down its seafood prey while wading in ancient ponds and lakes, just like flamingos chow down today, a new study shows. 

The newfound species was accidentally unearthed at an abandoned mine in the Franconian Jura area of Bavaria, a hotspot for pterosaur fossils. The researchers had been attempting to uncover crocodile bones from a limestone slab when they stumbled across the new specimen, which was incredibly well preserved and contained a near-complete skeleton along with some intact ligaments. The remains are likely between 157 million and 152 million years old, based on the surrounding sediments. 

In a study, published Jan. 21 in the German journal PalZ, researchers described the new species, which had a number of striking features that set it apart from other pterosaurs — flying, bird-like reptiles that were cousins of the dinosaurs and roamed the skies during most of the Mesozoic era (252 million to 66 million years ago).

"The jaws of this pterosaur are really long and lined with small, fine, hooked teeth, with tiny spaces between them like a nit comb," study lead author David Martill, a paleobiologist at the University of Portsmouth in the U.K., said in a statement. The creature's bill had a shape similar to modern spoonbills in the genus Platalea and was slightly curved upward, he added. "There are no teeth at the end of its mouth, but there are teeth all the way along both jaws right to the back of its smile."

Related: Bizarre neck bones helped pterosaurs support their giraffe-size necks and huge heads

The specimen, which had a wingspan of around 3.6 feet (1.1 meters), contained 480 teeth that were between 0.08 and 0.43 inches (2 and 11 millimeters) long — the second-highest number of gnashers found in any pterosaur. 

The hooked shape of the teeth was something "we've never seen before in a pterosaur," Martill said. "These small hooks would have been used to catch the tiny shrimp the pterosaur likely fed on — making sure they went down its throat and weren't squeezed between the teeth."

This is similar to how flamingos filter out tiny crustaceans and algae from muddy or silty water in shallow lakes and lagoons. The only difference is that flamingos use small, bristly hairs called lamellae to filter their food instead of hooked teeth. 

The spoonbilled pterosaur's filter-feeding skills have also been compared to whales' feeding habits. The newfound animal was named Balaenognathus maeuseri — the genus name is a nod to the living genus Balaenoptera, which contains filter-feeding baleen whales such as blue whales (B. musculus), fin whales (B. physalus) and minke whales (B. acutorostrata). The toothy pterosaur's species name, maeuseri, was given in remembrance of one of the studies authors, Matthias Mäuser, who died as the paper was being written.

Related: Missing link in pterosaur origins discovered

The new species has been placed in the family Ctenochasmatidae, which contains other pterosaurs that use their teeth to filter feed. But the "new specimen is very different from other ctenochasmatids" because the teeth on its upper and lower jaws are "a mirror image of each other," Martill said. In other species, the lower jaw normally houses slightly longer teeth, he noted.

The fossil's pristine condition enabled the team to infer such detailed characteristics about the new species. "The carcass must have been at a very early stage of decay" when it fossilized, meaning it was likely buried almost straight after it died, Martill said. 

The specimen is currently on display in the Bamberg Natural History Museum in Germany.

At least a millennium ago, a giant tortoise crept through Madagascar, grazing on plants by the boatload — a bountiful diet that made it the ecosystem equivalent of mammoths and other big herbivores. And like the mammoth, this previously unknown giant tortoise is extinct, a new study finds.

The scientists discovered the species while studying the mysterious lineage of giant tortoises living on Madagascar and other islands in the western Indian Ocean. After stumbling across a single tibia (lower leg bone) of the extinct tortoise, they analyzed its nuclear and mitochondrial DNA and determined that the animal was a newfound species, which they named Astrochelys rogerbouri, according to the study, published on Jan. 11 in the journal Science Advances. The tortoise's species name honors the late Roger Bour (1947-2020), a French herpetologist and expert on western Indian Ocean giant tortoises. 

It's unclear when the newfound species went extinct, but the specimen studied appears to be about 1,000 years old. "As we get better and better technology, we are able to provide different types of data that often change our perspective," study co-author Karen Samonds, an associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Northern Illinois University, told Live Science. "It's really exciting to discover a new member of the community."

Related: This may be the biggest turtle that ever lived

Volcanic islands and coralline atolls across the western Indian Ocean were once teeming with giant tortoises. Weighing up to 600 pounds (272 kilograms), these ponderous megafauna heavily influenced their ecosystems, if only through their voracious appetites. The 100,000 giant tortoises still living today on Aldabra — a verdant atoll northwest of Madagascar — consume 26 million pounds (11.8 million kg) of plant matter each year.

Most species native to that region are now extinct due to human activities, and paleontologists are still struggling to piece together the story of these bygone tortoises. But analyzing these giants' ancient DNA is providing a path forward, which, in turn, sheds light on prehistoric island life. 

"If we want to know what these island ecosystems were like originally, we need to include giant tortoises — large, extinct members of the ecosystem which took on the role often occupied by large grazing mammals," Samonds said. "And in order to understand the key role they played, we need to understand how many tortoises there were, where they lived, and how they got there."

By the time explorers began collecting giant tortoise fossils in the 17th century, Madagascar's native giant  tortoise population population had long since vanished — likely victims of colonization by the Indo-Malay people 1,000 years earlier — and their relatives plodding the Mascarene archipelago and the Granitic Seychelles were living on borrowed time. European sailors harvested the tortoises for food and "turtle oil," and all but those native to far-flung Aldabra were gone by the 19th century.

The tricky task of reconstructing their history would fall to modern paleontologists. "Tortoise remains are notoriously fragmented, and i​t's a real challenge to figure out what a tortoise looked like just from part of a shell," Samonds said. Scientists also struggled to make sense of a fossil record muddied by the tortoise trade. Had a particular specimen found in the Mascarene originated there, or was its carcass dropped off by a ship inbound from the Granitic Seychelles?

"In the end, a lot of these fossils sat in a cabinet, unused and unstudied," Samonds said. But recent technological advances in ancient DNA analysis granted Samonds and colleagues a glimpse inside the black box of tortoise evolutionary history. "It's thrilling that we now have this technology and can use ancient DNA to put these broken fossil pieces to good use."

For the study, Samonds and colleagues generated nearly complete mitochondrial genomes from several tortoise fossils, some of which were hundreds of years old. By combining these sequences with prior data on tortoise lineage and radiocarbon dating, the team was able to describe how giant tortoises migrated to various Indian Ocean islands. 

The extinct Mascarene Cylindraspis lineage, for instance, appears to have left Africa in the late Eocene, more than 33 million years ago, and taken up residence on the now-sunken Réunion volcanic hotspot. From there, the species spread around local islands, resulting in the divergence of five Mascarene tortoise species between 4 million and 27 million years ago.

Samonds hopes future paleontological studies will follow the present work's example and benefit from incorporating ancient DNA analyses into more conventional methodologies. 

"Including ancient DNA allowed us to examine how many tortoise species there were and what their relationships were to each other. It also helped us appreciate the original diversity of tortoises on these islands," Samonds said. "We couldn't have explored these topics before." 

About 120 million years ago, a fearsome bird with a skull that looked eerily similar to that of a Tyrannosaurus rex flew the early Cretaceous skies, hunting for a meaty meal to gobble down, a new study finds. A newly described specimen of this previously unknown species provides clues about how birds began to finalize their evolutionary divergence from the rest of the dinosaurs.

Modern birds are descended from dinosaurs, making them the only dinosaur lineage that survived the planet-shaking asteroid impact that wiped out the rest of their kind around 66 million years ago. But exactly how birds evolved from the rest of the theropods — a bipedal group with hollow bones and three toes or claws on each foot, which includes avian dinosaurs as well non-avian dinosaurs, such as raptors like Velociraptor — is still unclear.

Researchers unearthed the new species, which they named Cratonavis zhui, at a fossil site in China. The fossil's age suggets C. zhui likely appeared somewhere between the earliest known bird, Archaeopteryx, which lived about 150 million years ago during the Jurassic period, and the Ornithothoraces, a dinosaur-era group which had already evolved many traits of modern birds.

In a new study, published Jan. 2 in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, researchers analyzed the new fossil to see what traits it shared with both groups. After studying the fossils with a high-resolution computed tomography (CT) scan, which allowed them to virtually reassemble the bones in 3D, the team found that, despite a majority of the skeleton being very similar to Ornithothoraces, certain bones shared a surprisingly strong likeness to non-avian dinosaurs. The most striking similarity was in the skull, which has a shape that is "nearly identical to that of dinosaurs such as T. rex," researchers wrote in a statement.

Related: How did birds survive the dinosaur-killing asteroid? 

The specimen's raptor-like skull is notable because it would have prevented C. zhui from moving its upper bill in relation to its lower jaw. Modern birds are capable of moving both parts independently, which is believed to have greatly contributed to their enormous ecological diversity today, study lead author Zhiheng Li, a paleontogolost at the Chinese Academy of Science's Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP), said in the statement. It is therefore surprising to know that this trait developed so late in birds' evolutionary history, he added.

C. zhui also has an unusually elongated scapula, a shoulder bone used during flight, and first metatarsal, a bone found in the foot, compared with modern birds.

The scapula plays an important role in flight because it helps rotate birds' shoulders and beat their wings. The elongated scapula in C. zhui likely "compensated for the overall underdeveloped flight apparatus in this early bird," study co-author Min Wang, a paleoornathologist at IVPP, said in the statement. 

However, the extended metatarsals are likely leftover from land-dwelling raptors who required longer versions of the bone to help them run. Over time, these bones evolved to be much shorter in birds to allow them to use their hallux, or big clawed toe, to land on branches and grab prey from the air instead of running, study co-author Thomas Stidham, a paleoornathologist at IVPP, said in the statement.

The unexpected lengths of both the scapula and first metatarsal "highlight the breadth of skeletal plasticity in early birds," study co-author Zhonghe Zhou, a paleoornathologist at IVPP, said in the statement. This plasticity suggests that certain skeletal traits could have evolved independently from one another across the birds' evolutionary tree, a phenomenon known as convergent evolution, but more fossils are needed to tell for sure. 

There is a frozen soup of viruses, bacteria and fungal spores lurking beneath the frigid Arctic soil. Unlike the icy leftovers in the back of your freezer, some of these microbes haven't interacted with a cell since well before ancient Egyptians built the Pyramids of Giza about 4,500 years ago. As climate change continues to cook the planet, however, these permafrost-locked germs are beginning to thaw. 

But can newly defrosted microbes "wake up" and infect anything? And how much of a potential threat do they pose to human and environmental health? Those are the questions an international team of scientists began to probe in a new study, published online Feb. 18 in the journal Viruses.

Disease outbreaks from permafrost are not unprecedented. Siberian reindeer herds periodically contract anthrax from bacteria in melted permafrost, according to research published in 2021 in the journal Frontiers in Veterinary Science, and the issue has affected a handful of humans in these regions as well.

For the new study, which has not been peer-reviewed, the researchers isolated 13 newly described viruses from seven permafrost samples and two water samples taken from Siberian rivers. Three of the viruses — named Megavirus mammoth, Pithovirus mammoth and Pandoravirus mammoth — were found inside 27,000-year-old petrified mammoth wool. Another was discovered in the frozen intestines of an ancient Siberian wolf. 

Related: The deadliest viruses in history

In a contained lab setting, the scientists carefully thawed the microbes and sequenced their genomes. Then, the researchers infected amoeba cells with the newly awakened viruses. Despite being up to 48,000 years old, several of the viruses were able to replicate within the amoebas, causing them to burst open and release fresh viral particles.

"The ones we revived are no danger at all; they only infect amoeba," Jean-Michel Claverie, a computational microbiologist at Aix-Marseille University in France and co-author of the new study, told Live Science in an email. "But their presence and infectivity suggests that ancient viruses infecting animals/humans could still be infectious."

The researchers focused on amoeba-infecting viruses because amoebas make good model organisms and because there would be minimal risk of accidental spillover to lab technicians. "We are using [the amoeba's] billion years of evolutionary distance with humans and other mammals as the best possible protection," they wrote in the paper. 

Previous studies of viruses locked within Arctic permafrost have been few and far between. However, the authors said this study disproves an older hypothesis that permafrost contains few viable microbes; in addition to the viruses they revived, the team found trace evidence of numerous other species, including some related to known human pathogens, such as poxviruses and herpesviruses. 

But if one of these strains did awaken and infect humans, modern vaccines likely would offer some protection. The biggest risk, according to the authors, is from unknown viruses. Like SARS-CoV-2, the pathogen responsible for COVID-19, these germs have the potential to spread rapidly through a population that lacks natural immunity, triggering a pandemic. Such a virus would need to be studied and understood even as it infected people, making vaccine development tricky. 

As of now, political upheaval in the region has halted the collection of new permafrost samples. "Because of the Russia-Ukraine war, all our collaborations are stopped now," Claverie explained, adding that his lab will continue to study the viruses they have. And they hope that companies setting up drilling and mining operations on the Siberian permafrost take heed and proceed with caution — for example, by monitoring for unusual diseases and setting up appropriate quarantine facilities.

"We believe the point is made that viruses of any kind can survive in permafrost," Claverie said.

Editor's note: Originally published on Dec. 6, 2022 and updated at 11:33 a.m. EST on March 10, 2023 to note that the study, which was previously posted on the preprint database bioRxiv, had been published on Feb. 18, 2023 in Virus, a peer-reviewed journal. 

A dinosaur with an undulating noodle neck and a streamlined body like those of modern diving birds may have plunged through the depths of a Cretaceous sea about 71 million to 72 million years ago, in what is now Mongolia. This predator belonged to a different lineage of theropods — bipedal and mostly meat-eating dinosaurs — than the one that produced modern birds, but its body shape and limbs hint that it swam and dove as a penguin does, scientists recently discovered.

The skeleton was in exceptional condition with a near-complete skull. It was excavated from the Baruungoyot (also spelled Barun Goyot) Formation, a location in the southern part of Mongolia's Gobi Desert dating to the Cretaceous period (145 million to 66 million years ago). In life, it would have been about the size of a mallard duck, and researchers noted that its gooselike neck, flipperlike forelimbs and proportions of its digits resembled those of the Mongolian theropod genus Halszkaraptor, which is thought to be aquatic.

However, there isn't enough fossil evidence from Halszkaraptor and its closest relatives to suggest what their body shapes may have looked like.

The newfound fossil is more complete than any of the known Halszkaraptor fossils; the skeleton is "mostly articulated" with ribs that are oriented toward the tail, as they are in aquatic diving birds, according to a study published Dec. 1 in the journal Communications Biology. This offered scientists the first evidence of a nonavian theropod with a body that was optimized for reducing drag in aquatic environments.

Related: 'Dwarf dinosaur' that lived on prehistoric island unearthed in Transylvania

These adaptations, along with teeth that were "unusually numerous" and "tightly packed" in the jaw, would have made the diving dinosaur a fearsome aquatic predator, and the number and shape of its teeth suggests that it hunted for fish or insects, according to the study. Researchers named the newly described genus and species Natovenator polydontus; the genus comes from the Latin words for "swim" ("nato") and "hunter" ("venator"), while the species means "many teeth" in Greek.

"The long nares [nostrils] and posterior rib orientation are only known in Natovenator because these parts are not well preserved in Halszkaraptor," said study co-author Yuong-Nam Lee, a professor of vertebrate paleontology in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Seoul National University in South Korea. 

N. polydontus probably wasn't able to soar through the air with its short, flattened forelimbs, though it may have used them to paddle through water. But one of the most compelling clues about its aquatic habits was its ribs — specifically, the direction in which they were pointing. In land-based theropods, the dorsal ribs extended from the spine in a mostly horizontal arc. But in N. polydontus, these ribs curved back toward its tail. Such backward-oriented ribs lower the height of the rib cage, and are a feature in diving birds, Lee told Live Science in an email. This suggests that N. polydontus had a streamlined body, "which would be advantageous because a streamlined body reduces drag in the water and allows efficient swimming," Lee said.

Ever since the first vertebrates crawled out of the oceans to live on land, "many different groups have secondarily adapted to aquatic environments," the scientists wrote in the study. Whales, for example, evolved from four-legged terrestrial mammals before adapting to live exclusively in the oceans. Among dinosaurs, only birds and some of their extinct ancestors evolved aquatic or semi-aquatic forms. (A bizarre sail-backed dinosaur called Spinosaurus was briefly hailed as a "swimming dinosaur", but the claim is controversial among paleontologists, and a 2021 study in the journal Palaeontologia Electronica proposed that Spinosaurus would have been a mediocre swimmer at best.)

However, N. polydontus looks like it would have been right at home in the ocean's depths. 

"Natovenator is a valuable discovery to awaken how diverse dinosaurs' ecological position was," Lee said. "Finding semi-aquatic dinosaurs means that the ecological diversity was very high in dinosaurs, and it could change our prejudice about the lifestyle of dinosaurs. More than 30 different lineages of tetrapods have independently invaded water ecosystems. Why not dinosaurs?"

If you think of Transylvania, you might imagine a place populated by vampires and werewolves. Now, you can add "dwarf dinosaurs" to that list. A group of researchers recently identified a new species of dinosaur from the region, dubbing it Transylvanosaurus platycephalus, or, "flat-headed reptile from Transylvania." And it's part of a group of dwarf dinosaurs that evolved to be much smaller than their relatives. 

T. platycephalus, a member of the Rhabdodontidae family — a group of herbivorous ornithopod dinosaurs — lived about 70 million years ago during the late Cretaceous period (145 million to 66 million years ago). At this point in Earth's past, flowering plants had evolved — and with them the first pollinators — and birds' ancient ancestors were just beginning to experiment with flying. The massive supercontinent Pangea had broken up into several smaller continents and Europe was an archipelago of tropical islands, more like modern-day Indonesia or the Galápagos. 

In a new study, published online Nov. 23 in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, the researchers described  the newfound species from bone fragments from the forehead and from the lower back portion of the skull. In life,  T. platycephalus would have measured just 6.5 feet (2 meters) long. It had a wide, flat head and lived alongside other reptiles, such as crocodiles and turtles.

Related: Ancient Transylvanian turtle survived the extinction of the dinosaurs

Prior research suggested that dinosaur diversity had already significantly declined by this point in Earth's history, just prior to the mass extinction that ended the Cretaceous. But this new finding may suggest that diverse dinosaur forms were still very much a part of Cretaceous Europe's landscape.

"With each newly-discovered species we are disproving the widespread assumption that the Late Cretaceous fauna had a low diversity in Europe," Felix Augustin, lead study author and a doctoral candidate at the University of Tübingen in Germany, said in a statement.

And the dinosaur's diminutive size makes it the newest member of the so-called dwarf dinosaur family found in Romania's Hateg region (Transylvania is the historical and cultural name for the region in central Romania). The Hateg dwarf dinosaurs are an infamous group of dinosaurs that have captivated paleontologists since their discovery in the early 20th century. In 2010, another group of researchers determined that during the late Cretaceous, an island spanning about 30,900 square miles (80,000 square kilometers) lay in the Hateg region where these dwarf dinosaurs have been found. 

Islands commonly produce smaller-than-usual species. Today, there are dwarf lemurs on an island in Northern Madagascar and dwarf foxes in the California Channel islands. Ten thousand years ago, dwarf elephants and dwarf hippos lived on islands in the Mediterranean. In a study published in 2021 in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, researchers analyzed thousands of reports of body size changes for over a thousand species and found that "the island rule" generally holds true — over generations, large animals tend to become smaller when they're isolated on an island.

There are a few hypotheses behind why animals shrink on an island. It could be that the lack of large predators allows animals to stay small, evolutionary anthropologist Caitlin Schrein wrote in 2016 in the anthropology magazine Sapiens. Island ecosystems may offer less variety in food, perhaps leading to stunted growth in some animals, Schrein wrote. And if there are no large predators on the island, those smaller animals won't be removed from the population. 

During the late Cretaceous, Rhabdodontidae dinosaurs were the most common small-to-medium herbivores in what is now Europe. In the new study, the researchers noted that relatives of T. platycephalus have been found in modern-day France, which at the time would have been a separate island. As the archipelago formed and sea levels fluctuated, land bridges between islands could have allowed the dinosaurs to spread out and evolve in isolation from each other. 

They might even have dispersed between islands by swimming short distances, Augustin suggested. Dinosaurs "had powerful legs and a powerful tail. Most species, in particular reptiles, can swim from birth," Augustin said.

Paleontologists have uncovered the remains of a never-before-seen tyrannosaur that was possibly a direct ancestor of the dinosaur king Tyrannosaurus rex. The newfound species could help settle a big debate about T. rex's evolutionary lineage.

The newfound species, Daspletosaurus wilsoni, has a unique arrangement of spiked hornlets around its eyes. The tyrannosaur was identified from parts of a fossilized skull and skeletal fragments, including a rib and toe bone, that date to about 76.5 million years ago during the Cretaceous period (145 million to 66 million years ago). Paleontologists from the Badlands Dinosaur Museum in North Dakota uncovered the fossils at the Judith River Formation, in northeastern Montana, between 2017 and 2021, according to a new study, published Nov. 25 in the journal Paleontology and Evolutionary Science.

The team initially stumbled across the fossils after crewmember Jack Wilson noticed a small, flat piece of bone projecting out from the bottom of a cliff, which later turned out to be part of the dinosaur's nostril. Excavating the bones, however, proved to be immensely challenging because they were buried beneath 26 feet (8 meters) of solid rock. The researchers had to painstakingly chisel away large parts of the cliff with jackhammers before they could even start excavating the individual bones.

The specimen, designated BDM 107, was playfully nicknamed "Sisyphus" in recognition of the enormous effort required to remove the surrounding rock. (Sisyphus is a figure from Greek mythology who, after cheating death twice, was forced by Hades, the god of death, to repeatedly roll a boulder up a mountain for eternity.)

Related: T. rex and its close relatives were warm-blooded like modern birds 

The researchers think that D. wilsoni was the descendant of Daspletosaurus torosus and the predecessor of Daspletosaurus horneri, which likely emerged between 77 and 75 million years ago. The anatomy of the newfound beast supports the idea that the Daspletosaurus lineage is ancestral to the mighty T. rex. All three daspletosaur species belong to the family Tyrannosauridae, which includes nine genera, including Tyrannosaurus. (The genus Daspletosaurus is Greek for "frightful lizard.") 

Until now, the Tyrannosauridae lineage has been difficult to unravel, making it hard to determine the exact evolutionary relationships between individual species.

"Many researchers disagree as to whether tyrannosaurids represent a single lineage evolving in place, or several closely related species that do not descend from one another," study co-authors and palaeontologists Elías Warshaw and Denver Fowler wrote in a statement. This has not been helped by a lack of high-quality specimens to examine, they added.

But the discovery of D. wilsoni suggests that the three daspletosaurs came one after the other, like "consecutive ladder-like steps in a single evolutionary lineage," rather than branching off from one another like "evolutionary cousins," the researchers wrote. 

D. wilsoni is a good candidate for being a transitional species between D. torosus and D. horneri because it shares a number of traits with more ancient tyrannosaurs, such as having a prominent set of horns around the eye, as well as traits seen in younger species, such as expanded air-pockets in the skull, according to the statement. 

"In this way, D. wilsoni is a 'halfway point' or 'missing link' between older and younger tyrannosaur species," the researchers wrote. 

Given that these species could have evolved one after the other, the team suggests that the rest of the tyrannosaurids, including T. rex, could also have emerged in a similar linear fashion. The researchers are currently planning a new study to explore this idea, according to the statement. 

More than 100 million years ago, a fearsome birdlike dinosaur was swept into a lake and transformed into an exceptional fossil in what is now China, preserving one of the few intact gut remnants known from nonavian dinosaurs, a new study finds.

Paleontologists knew they had unearthed something special when they saw "a large bluish layer in the abdomen'' of the fossilized beast, which belongs to the newly discovered species Daurlong wangi, as well as a dinosaur lineage called the dromaeosaurids, which includes the ancestors of modern birds. This bluish layer had "exceptional preservation" of the dinosaur's gut, the researchers wrote in the study, published in the journal Scientific Reports on Nov. 19.

The finding offers valuable insight into both bird and dinosaur gut evolution, giving researchers a clearer window into dinnertime during the Lower Cretaceous (145 million to 100.5 million years ago). 

Related: These 125 million-year-old fossils may hold dinosaur DNA

Dromaeosaurids — also known as "raptors" — like D. wangi were mostly small, feathered and carnivorous. This group roamed the Earth from the mid-Jurassic period (about 167 million years ago) until the end of the Cretaceous period (66 million years ago). Their ranks included some of the most famous pop culture dinosaurs, such as Velociraptor and Deinonychus. But despite their popularity, little is known about their actual guts.

Soft tissue preservation is rare for any fossil, and intestinal preservation is particularly uncommon in dinosaurs. "This is the first case among dromaeosaurids," study co-author Andrea Cau, an independent paleontologist based in Parma, Italy, told Live Science in an email. 

Fossilization conditions have to be just right in order to prevent decay-causing bacteria from eating away delicate soft tissues, such as cartilage and organs. The newly described D. wangi specimen was likely buried very quickly under soft, fine sediments at the bottom of a body of water in what is now the Jehol Biota — an area known for well-preserved fossils in modern-day Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region in northern China. There, in the low-oxygen environment where aerobic bacteria could not survive, the dinosaur's remains mineralized into fossils. 

The researchers named the dinosaur's genus, "Daurlong," after the Daur people of Inner Mongolia and "long," the Chinese word for "dragon." The species name, "wangi," honors Wang Junyou, the director of the Inner Mongolian Museum of Natural History.

The remarkable preservation provides insight into how D. wangi lived, and what it could have eaten. From what the researchers could tell, its intestinal tract appears similar to the very few other remnants known from meat-eating dinosaurs, suggesting that more omnivorous dromaeosaurid gut plans didn't evolve until after the dawn of modern birds following the Cretaceous period. It also appears that D. wangi ate small prey, such as mammals (which were no larger than badgers during the Mesozoic era), fish, other small dinosaurs and possibly amphibians. "Given the abundance of frogs and other amphibians in the Daurlong locality," it's possible that this dromaeosaurid hunted frogs and salamanders, Cau said.

Although D. wangi's guts were preserved, its stomach was not. Perhaps the "extremely acid environment of the stomach immediately after the death of the animal" prevented it from mineralizing and turning into a fossil, the researchers wrote in the study. 

Contrary to their depiction in the 1993 movie "Jurassic Park," most dromaeosaurids were relatively small and lightweight. D. wangi itself was a little less than five feet (1.5 meters) long from tip to tail, about the size of a pony. And, like other members of its family, it sported feathers.

In the future, Cau and his team plan to examine the specimen more closely to glean insight about its feathers, life, and possibly its death. "Our hope is to determine some information about its plumage color in life and to better reconstruct the peculiar conditions which led to soft tissue preservation," he said.

Two ostrich-like dinosaurs — a towering paleo-beast that was among the largest of its kind, and its smaller, fierce cousin — sprinted through what is now Mississippi about 85 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period, new fossil finds reveal.

Scientists still don't know whether these fossils belong to two previously unknown species of ornithomimosaurs, which is Latin for "bird mimics." But the discovery of the remains is remarkable, given that the ancient landmass they once roamed, essentially what is now the eastern half of North America, has a poor dinosaur fossil record from the late Cretaceous that's chock-full of broken, hard-to-decipher bones, scientists wrote in a new study.

The finding fills a "critical gap" in the known range and biodiversity of this type of dinosaur from the region during the late Cretaceous (145 million to 66 million years ago), said study lead author Chinzorig Tsogtbaatar, a postdoctoral research scholar in the Department of Biological Sciences at North Carolina State University. 

The fossils also document "the youngest occurrence of ornithomimosaurs in Appalachia," Tsogtbaatar told Live Science in an email.

Related: Tsunami from dinosaur-killing asteroid had mile-high waves and reached halfway across the world

Ornithomimosaurs are theropods — a group of bipedal, mostly meat-eating dinosaurs — making them distantly related to the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex. But unlike the hulking, tiny-armed T. rex, ornithomimosaurs were lightly built and sported long arms, powerful legs, small skulls and strong beaks — some with teeth and some without, according to the study, published online Wednesday (Oct. 19) in the journal PLOS One. 

These omnivores ranged greatly in size, from the colossal Deinocheirus, which stood as tall as a three-story building and measured about 36 feet (11 meters) long, to pup-size pip-squeaks that were smaller than 3 feet (1 m) long, such as Nqwebasaurus and Pelecanimimus, said Tsogtbaatar, who is also at the Paleontology Research Lab at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

The newly described fossils were unearthed near Luxapallila (also spelled Luxapalila) Creek in Lowndes County, Mississippi. After comparing the proportions of the fossils and the growth lines within the bones (like trees, dinosaur bones have lines associated with their ages and growth spurts), the researchers concluded that the bones likely belonged to two different ornithomimosaur species — one very large, and the other medium-size.

The larger of the two creatures likely weighed over 1,760 pounds (800 kilograms), and was probably about 10 years old and still growing when it died. This weighty size makes it one of the largest ornithomimosaurs on record, the researchers said.

The medium-size dino was likely about 20% to 50% the mass of its bigger counterpart, the team said.

North America divided

When these ornithomimosaurs were alive, North America was split in two by the Western Interior Seaway, a vast body of water that separated Laramidia in the West from Appalachia in the East. 

In Appalachia during the late Cretaceous, vertebrate remains "tumbled through rivers and streams before they finally got into sea sediments. So they really went through the rock tumbler before they ever got to the ocean and estuaries and things like that," Gregory Erickson, a paleobiologist at Florida State University in Tallahassee who was not involved with the study, told Live Science.

As a result, fossils from this period in Appalachia are often scrappy, he said. 

"I applaud them [the researchers] for being conservative, too, and not trying to name a new species on scraps that are probably not that diagnostic," Erickson said.

Despite the fossils' poor preservation, the researchers "did a really nice job of looking at these materials and definitively showing that they are ornithomimids," Erickson said. "These are important specimens in the sense of trying to figure out what kind of radiation the dinosaurs basically isolated on the East Coast were doing."

Millions of years ago, an enormous, long-necked marine reptile undulated through the waters of an ancient seaway in what is now Wyoming, whipping its snaky neck back and forth and using its crocodilelike jaws to snap up fish and other small sea creatures.

Paleontologists discovered fossils of this sinuous sea monster in 1995 during a dig in the minimally explored uppermost portion of Pierre Shale, a geological formation dating to the Upper Cretaceous period (approximately 101 million to 66 million years ago). And unlike other plesiosaurs, this animal had physical characteristics that set it apart from other members of this extinct clade of marine reptiles.

Now, researchers have revealed their findings about this new species in a study published online Sept. 26 in the journal iScience. 

"Plesiosaurs typically come in two distinct flavors or morphological types and have either a long, snakelike neck with a small head, or a short neck and a long crocodilelike jaw," Walter Scott Persons IV, a paleontologist from the College of Charleston in South Carolina and the study's lead author, told Live Science. "In this case, this weird, unique beast is a cross between the two."

Related: Giant 'sea monsters' evolved big bodies to offset long necks being a total drag

Paleontologists dubbed the animal Serpentisuchops pfisterae, which translates to "snaky crocface." This 23-foot-long (7 meter) creature's remains have been on display in the Glenrock Paleontological Museum near Casper, Wyoming, since the fossils were unearthed more than 25 years ago.

"The first time I saw Serpentisuchops pfisterae," Persons said, "I was still in elementary school."

In the decades since, paleontologists have conducted detailed studies of the animal's remains, which represent about 35% of the body and include its "beautifully preserved lower jaw, sizable amount of its skull, its complete neck, vertebrae, the majority of its tail and some ribs," Persons said.

"The only pieces that we're missing are elements of its limbs or paddles," which it used for swimming, he added.

Also found at the shale-rich site — described by Persons  as resembling "the surface of the moon" or "a trip to Mordor" — were 19 teeth; just one was still in place in the specimen's jaw, while the rest were scattered among the remains. However, according to the study, the presence of roots in the jaw confirmed that the teeth were from this particular specimen and not another plesiosaur.

"The tall, conical teeth are smooth and not serrated with a cutting edge, so this animal wouldn't have been able to bite through thick bones," he said. "The teeth had a single function, which was to do a very good job at stabbing and skewering prey. It likely went after slippery prey that wouldn't put up much of a fight, such as small fish or abundant cephalopods."

This new finding "reveals a whole new ecotype, an animal that is specialized in a way that's different from all the other plesiosaurs that were around at the same time," with adaptations, " to do something different and become good at making a living amongst the other animals that shared its environment," he said.

Originally published on Live Science.

The oldest definitive dinosaur species ever discovered in Africa — and one of the oldest dino species to walk Earth — has been unearthed in Zimbabwe, a new study finds. The finding sheds new light on dinosaur evolution, and on one of the most fundamental questions of Triassic paleontology: Why did dinosaurs live in only some parts of the ancient supercontinent Pangaea?

Scientists began working on the Pebbly Arkose Formation in northern Zimbabwe in 2017. After five years of careful excavation and COVID delays, they've finally unveiled the dig's star specimen: Mbiresaurus raathi, a nearly complete skeleton named after "Mbire," the Shona dynasty that once ruled the region. The species name honors Michael Raath, who helped discover the first fossils in the area. At roughly 230 million years old, the specimen is on par with the oldest dinosaurs ever found. Their results were published online Wednesday (Aug. 31) in the journal Nature.

"The earliest dinosaurs were small — far from the giants we usually think of," Christian Kammerer, a research curator of paleontology at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences who was not involved in the research, told Live Science in an email. The newly named dinosaur is a sauropodomorph, a relative of the towering (and iconic) long-necked sauropods like Brachiosaurus and Apatosaurus. At around 6 feet (2 meters) long, or about as long as a Shetland pony, and 1.5 feet (0.5 m) tall at the hip, M. raathi wasn't tiny, but it would have been dwarfed by later sauropods, such as the massive 122-foot-long (37 m) Patagotitan.

Related: 10 extraordinary dinosaur discoveries from 2021

M. raathi lived during the late Triassic period (252 million to 201 million years ago) along the banks of an ancient river in what would become Zimbabwe. It was a rich ecosystem, filled with more than just dinosaurs. "I think a lot of the story is about all the different animals that we found together," study first author Christopher Griffin, a vertebrate paleontologist at Yale University, told Live Science. The excavation unearthed numerous protomammals known as cynodonts, as well as armored crocodilians, bizarre beaked reptiles called rhynchosaurs, and even evidence of an early meat-eating dinosaur.

This assemblage almost exactly mirrors the fossils paleontologists might expect to find an ocean away, buried in the steppes of Patagonia or tucked away in the rocky outcroppings of Brazil.

During the Triassic period, all of Earth's continents were smooshed together into one giant landmass known as Pangaea. Because of this ancient proximity, many regions that are now separated by entire oceans — such as the coasts of South America and Africa — once shared flora and fauna. "If you draw a line across Pangaea connecting northern Argentina and southern Brazil, you cross northern Zimbabwe as well," Griffin said.

Consequently, M. raathi closely resembles other late Triassic sauropodomorphs, like the deceptively named Eoraptor and the dog-size Saturnalia, both found in Brazil, as well as some found in India. It remains a bit of a mystery as to why certain animal species were relegated to certain regions of Pangaea during this time. "You might think that it would be easy to traverse a supercontinent," Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, who was not involved in the study, told Live Science, "But it seems not."

Sites such as the Pebbly Arkose Formation, however, offer clues to this millenia-old mystery. Building on earlier research, the researchers proposed that varied climate patterns held Triassic animals in place, rather than physical boundaries like oceans. The closely-related dinosaurs found in South America, south central Africa and India indicate that similar animals roamed freely across this particular latitude band, but not outside of it, likely because of climatic barriers like extreme heat or drought, the researchers wrote in the study.

Dinosaurs probably didn't disperse to the other parts of Pangaea until these climatic barriers relaxed. But the stomping grounds of other major animal groups with roots in the Triassic, including mammals, turtles, amphibians and reptiles, are still influenced today by how these climatic bands' affected the groups' ancestors, the team suggested.

Meanwhile, there is one other dinosaur fossil discovered in Africa that may be even older than M. raathi — Nyasasaurus, which was found in a roughly 245 million-year-old fossil formation in Tanzania. However, Nyasasaurus is known only from a handful of bones. Taken together, they do not form a complete enough skeleton to determine whether it was a true dinosaur, or simply a dinosaur ancestor, known as a dinosauromorph. Either way, M. raathi represents a key piece in the mosaic of dinosaur lineage.

"As a rule, the discovery of a new species is very important to science," said study co-author Darlington Munyikwa, a paleontologist and deputy executive director of National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe. And, he told Live Science, the fact that this species is the oldest confirmed dinosaur in Africa makes it particularly "awesome." The specimen now resides in the Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe in Bulawayo, where it will inspire generations of paleontologists to come.

"We've known next to nothing about the earliest dinosaurs in Africa, and the discovery of Mbiresaurus changes that," said Brusatte. "I think it is one of the most important recent dinosaur discoveries anywhere on the planet."

Originally published on Live Science.

A colossal, creamy yellow woodlouse relative that has a vague resemblance to Darth Vader has been discovered deep below the ocean surface in the Gulf of Mexico, a new study finds. 

At more than 10 inches (26 centimeters) long, the creature is 2,500% larger than common roly polies, or woodlice (Oniscus asellus) that are found chewing on decaying matter in most people's backyards. This blond behemoth is the latest addition to a group of about 20 deep-sea crustaceans in the genus Bathynomus that live in the benthic zone, the deepest reaches of the ocean, according to a statement. 

Bathynomus species are sometimes called the "Darth Vader of the Seas," perhaps because their heads share similarities with the "Star Wars" character's helmet, Live Science previously reported. If that's the case then "vanilla Vader" might be an appropriate name for this pale new addition to the genus. 

Researchers identified the species from a single specimen caught off the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico in 2017, and they named it Bathynomus yucatanensis after the region. Bathynomus members look similar, and researchers originally assumed the individual was a known species called B. giganteus, one of two previously identified species that inhabit the Gulf, until a genetic analysis suggested it was an unknown species sharing the same waters. 

"The ecological diversity of the Gulf of Mexico may be more complex than [previously] thought," study lead author Huang Ming-Chih, an associate professor at the National University of Tainan in Taiwan, told Live Science in an email. 

Related: Massive 'Darth Vader' sea bug pulled from waters near Indonesia

Bathynomus species are isopods, an order of crustaceans that includes woodlice. Scavenging in the deep ocean, Bathynomus species are rarely seen by people. The specimen from the Gulf of Mexico used to identify B. yucatanensis came from a baited cage trap set at about 2,000 feet to 2,600 feet (600 to 800 meters) below sea level. 

The Enoshima Aquarium in Japan kept the specimen under the assumption it was B. giganteus until Huang obtained it as part of research investigating Bathynomus. Huang analyzed the specimen's DNA and found that it differed from B. giganteus in the sequence of two genes — cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (COI) and 16S rRNA. A second specimen from the aquarium that underwent the same analysis produced a match for B. giganteus, further suggesting the first specimen was something different. 

"I was skeptical," Huang said. "Since Enoshima Aquarium in Japan only purchased B. giganteus, I always thought it was B. giganteus." Huang studied the morphology of the specimen with two other experts. They found that the specimen with different genes was shorter and more slender than B. giganteus, with longer antennae and a body shape that more closely resembled an inverted triangle. What's more, the newly identified species' creamy yellow coloration differentiated it from its grayer cousins. From these morphological differences and the genetic analysis, the team concluded that it was a newfound species. 

Both species have the same number of spines at the ends of their bodies, called pleotelson spines, that the researchers infer are an expression of age and maturity. The researchers noted this similarity makes it easy to misidentify B. yucatanensis. 

Given that B. yucatanensis is so similar to B. giganteus, it's likely that the two share a common ancestor, the researchers wrote in the study.

The study was published online Wednesday (Aug. 10) in the Journal of Natural History. 

Originally published on Live Science.

New footage showing a giant, peculiar-looking tentacled sea creature floating languidly in the depths of the Pacific Ocean has left researchers questioning if what they’re seeing is a new species.

A team of scientists spotted the strange animal while on board the E/V Nautilus, a research vessel used by the Ocean Exploration Trust — a nonprofit organization conducting deep-sea research. In a recently released video, the expedition researchers oohed and aahed as images of the bizarre creature came into focus. "My mind is blown right now," one of the scientists on board can be heard saying off-camera, as the boat’s remotely operated vehicle (ROV) scanned the ocean floor and inched closer to the strange sight. "I’m not on the edge of my seat or nothing," another scientist quipped.   

Moments later, the scientists spied another of the oddball creatures nearby, though they were unable to record video of the second individual.

With tentacles extending 16 inches (40 centimeters) from a nearly 7-foot-long (2 meters) stalk, and a single feeding polyp with barbed tentacles cupping the polyp like spiky petals, the creature resembled a very strange, free-swimming flower that was roughly the size of the ROV. It was spotted July 7 at 9,823 feet (2,994 m) below the surface near a previously unexplored seamount north of Johnston Atoll, an unincorporated U.S. territory and a National Wildlife Refuge in the Pacific Ocean west of Hawaii.

Researchers initially suspected that they had crossed paths with Solumbellula monocephalus, also known as a Solumbellula sea pen, which is part of the Cnidaria phylum that includes jellyfish, hydras and coral. However, the only known sightings of sea pens prior to this have occurred in the Atlantic and Indian oceans, so it's possible that the scientists may have stumbled upon a new species.

Related: 10 weird creatures found in the deep sea in 2021

Steve Auscavitch, the expedition’s lead researcher and a deep-sea biologist and post-doctoral scholar at Boston University, described the sighting as "fascinating."

"From time to time, we come across something that we never expected to see, and those are often the most powerful observations," he told Live Science.

He added, "We were nearing the end of our cruise and were at the bottom of the seafloor when we observed the two [sea pens]. The one we captured on video was massive, possibly the same size or larger than Hercules, our ROV. When I saw this amazing sea pen on video, I knew exactly what it could be."

But just to be sure, Auscavitch sought input from biologists on shore, who helped confirm his suspicions that it was a sea pen, a coral relative. Based on the animal’s impressive size, Auscavitch surmised that it was rather old, however he can’t give a specific age. (Sea pens reach maturity at five or six years of age, and can live for more than a decade.) 

"Prior to this, Solumbellula monocephalus had never been seen in the central Pacific and never collected," he said.

Interestingly, his team’s discovery came several months after scientists in Spain named two new genera of sea pens: Pseudumbellula. and Solumbellula , the latter of which would include the new species. Those findings were published in February in the journal Invertebrate Systematics.

However, Auscavitch said that more research needs to be done to determine if this is the first Pacific Solumbellula monocephalus or potentially a new species in the ocean basin.  

"Findings like this are rare, and we never expected to see something like this," he said. "The most exciting part of this research is that we come across these things from time to time, and it really does expand our horizon about where animals can live and exist in the deep sea."

Originally published on Live Science.

A newfound species of carnivorous dinosaur had disproportionately small arms, suggesting that this particular anatomical quirk — shared by the mighty but flimsy-armed Tyrannosaurus rex — may have been more common among large predatory dinosaurs than previously thought.

The newly described species, Meraxes gigas, is named after the dragon Meraxes in the fantasy fiction series "A Song of Ice and Fire" (the inspiration for HBO's "Game of Thrones") by writer George R.R. Martin. Meraxes belonged to a group of theropods — mostly bipedal meat-eaters — known as Carcharodontosauridae, which includes other dinosaur titans such as Giganotosaurus, Mapusaurus and Carcharodontosaurus. This group lived during the Cretaceous period (about 145 million to 66 million years ago), but died out before the extinction event that killed off all the non-avian dinosaurs and marked the end of the Cretaceous. 

Paleontologists excavated the new M. gigas specimen, which was in excellent condition, from the Huincul Formation in northern Patagonia, Argentina. The fossils date to the early part of the Cretaceous, and are thought to be between 90 million and 100 million years old. Scientists found the bones, which included a near-complete forelimb, and parts of the skull, femur and pelvis, in a location that was rich in fossil material; four sauropod dinosaurs were also buried in the same rock layer, said Juan Canale, a researcher at the Ernesto Bachmann Paleontological Museum in Neuquén, Argentina, and lead author of a study about the dragon-named theropod. 

Canale and his colleagues dug through several tons of sandstone to reach the fossil, he told Live Science in an email. The study authors suspect that when the dinosaur died, its remains were rapidly covered by sediments carried by flowing water, which protected the body from decay. 

In life, the dinosaur would have weighed well over 4.4 tons (4 metric tons), the scientists estimated. 

Related: Massive bulldog-faced dinosaur was like a T. rex on steroids

Though Meraxes and T. rex both had wimpy-looking front limbs, they are not close relatives; instead, this trait is an example of convergent evolution — when distantly related species evolve similar features, Canale said.

The evolution of diminutive arms in these carnivorous cousins suggests that multiple lineages of large predatory theropods evolved to have reduced forelimbs to fill a specific ecological niche. 

But not all large theropods had tiny arms. Some had long forelimbs, such as the ornithomimosaur Deinocheirus and the bird-like theropod Gigantoraptor. This hints that forelimb reduction was not simply related to body size in theropods. Rather, it tracks to some other trait in large predatory theropod species — likely skull size, the study authors reported.

So, why did some big theropods, like T. rex and Meraxes, have such small arms? One explanation could be that certain predatory functions in earlier species in the Meraxes and T. rex lineages were carried out by the arms — but in species that evolved later in the group's lineage, a large head with powerful jaws became a more effective tool for hunting prey.

Interestingly, preserved structures in Meraxes' arm bones suggest that its small arms had comparatively large muscles. Though proportionally tiny, these limbs may not have been completely useless, Canale said.

"I do not think they were useful in predation, given [that] most of the actions related to this were most likely performed by the head. I’m inclined to think that they were used in other kinds of activities, like holding the female during mating, or helping to raise the body from a prone position," Canale told Live Science.

And Meraxes' puny arms weren’t the only feature that caught the paleontologists' attention. The big dinosaur's skull was surprisingly ornate, decorated with crests, furrows, bumps and miniature horns. This type of ornamentation typically appears late in development, when animals become sexually mature, which hints that the elaborate ornamentation played a role in helping Meraxes find a mate. 

"Given that sexual selection is a powerful evolutionary pressure, I think the cranial ornamentations are related to some kind of display traits," Canale said. "But given that we cannot directly observe their behavior, it is impossible to be certain about this."

The findings were published July 7 in the journal Current Biology. 

Originally published on Live Science.

Millions of years ago, a bipedal dinosaur with knives for fingers stalked the shores of the Asian continent. But those Edward Scissorhandslike weapons were used for slashing vegetation rather than eviscerating animal prey, according to a new study.

The dinosaur belonged to a group known as therizinosaurs — bipedal and primarily herbivorous three-toed dinosaurs that lived during the Cretaceous period, about 145 million to 66 million years ago. Recently, researchers from Japan and the United States described the youngest therizinosaur fossil ever found in Japan; that fossil also happens to be the first to be found in Asia in marine sediments. 

This fossil represents a newly described species, which the researchers named Paralitherizinosaurus japonicus. The genus, which was already known to science, means "reptile by the sea" in Greek and Latin; the species name honors Japan, where the specimen was unearthed.

The hook-shaped fossil, which includes a partial vertebra and a partial wrist and forefoot, was discovered by a different team of researchers in 2008; since then, it was stored in the collections at the Nakagawa Museum of Natural History in Hokkaido, Japan.

Japanese scientists found the specimen in Nakagawa, a district in Hokkaido located on the northernmost of Japan's main islands, a locale known for its rich fossil deposits. The fossil was encased in a concretion — a hardened mineral deposit — and at the time of its discovery, paleontologists said it "was believed to belong to a therizinosaur," though due to a lack of comparative data at the time, the original researchers were unable to draw any definitive conclusions, representatives of Hokkaido University said in a statement. 

Related: How did 'Prehistoric Planet' create such incredible dinosaurs? Find out in a behind-the-scenes peek.

However, new data from many other fossils that were discovered and described in the years since have helped with classifying the fossil based on the shape of the forefoot claw. This prompted a new team of paleontologists to revisit the specimen to get some definitive answers. 

Based on their analysis, the authors of the new study concluded that the fossil, which measures just under 4 inches (10 centimeters) in length, belonged to a therizinosaur that lived approximately 80 million to 82 million years ago. The fossilized foot bone once held the dinosaur's swordlike claw, which it used for combing through vegetation for plants to eat. Because researchers suspect that the animal used its claws for a specific purpose, they determined that the specimen was a derived therizinosaur — one that evolved later in the group's lineage — rather than a basal, or early therizinosaur, with claws that were "generalized and not for specific use," according to the statement.

"[This dinosaur] used its claws as foraging tools, rather than tools of aggression, to draw shrubs and trees closer to its mouth to eat," study co-author Anthony Fiorillo, a research professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, told Live Science. "We believe it died on land and was washed out to sea."

According to the study, therizinosaur fossils have been found throughout Asia as well as in North America (specifically in what is now Denali National Park and Preserve in Alaska), and that, over time, the animals adapted to living in coastal environments. Two more suspected therizinosaur fossils were previously discovered in Japan, but have not yet been described.

Based on this specimen alone, it's impossible to know for sure how large the therizinosaur was, Fiorillo told Live Science. What scientists can say with certainty is that the dinosaur was "sizable," possibly as large as a hadrosaur, or duck-billed dinosaur, which could grow to be 30 feet long (9 meters) and weigh up to 3 tons (2.7 metric tons), according to the University of California Museum of Paleontology. The fossil is so well-preserved, "we could find more of the animal if we revisited the original site," Fiorillo said.

"We remain cautiously optimistic, and it's on our radar,"" added Fiorillo, who is also a curator emeritus at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas.

The findings were published online May 3 in the journal Scientific Reports. 

Originally published on Live Science

A pair of newfound species of glass frog — amphibians with transparent underbellies that put all their internal organs on display — have been discovered in Ecuador. But the naming of one of the species has triggered controversy. 

One of the new species has been, Hyalinobatrachium nouns, is lime-green on top and clear as window glass underneath; it's named after the Nouns decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), a group that buys and sells non-fungible tokens (NFTs) with cryptocurrency. The Nouns DAO won the right to name the frog species after donating (in traditional cash) to the environmental nonprofit Rainforest Trust. But because cryptocurrency is carbon-intensive, some conservationists are unhappy with the association.

"When charities get involved in crypto projects, they legitimize them — they legitimize a whole ecosystem that has a very high environmental impact," Peter Howson, a researcher from Northumbria University in the United Kingdom who studies environmental technologies, told Popular Science.

The little frogs at the center of the controversy were discovered in 2019. They're boggle-eyed and almost cartoonishly cute, with an eye-catching pattern on their backs of lime green with light yellow spots. The two new species look nearly identical and are very similar in appearance to other Hyalinobatrachium glass frogs. In fact, researchers led by Juan Manuel Guayasamin, a biologist at Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador, had to use genetic sequencing to discover that the frogs were unique species. 

H. nouns and the other newly described frog, now known as H. mashpi, live in the Ecuadorian Andes. They were quite genetically distinct despite being found only 11.7 miles (18.9 kilometers) apart, the researchers reported March 18 in the journal PeerJ. The species were separated by the Intag-Guayllabamba river valley. Numerous river valleys cut through the Ecuadorian Andes, the researchers wrote, which have led to a great deal of amphibian diversity in the region as populations get cut off from one another and diverge into different evolutionary paths. Of the 1,120 amphibian species reported in the Andes, about 70% are endemic, or found nowhere else on Earth, the researchers wrote. 

Glass frogs are known for their doting parenting style, which is unusual for amphibians. Females will stay on their eggs as the males fertilize them, protecting the brood. In some species, the fathers then take over, staying with the eggs as they develop, according to a 2017 study published in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology.

The Noun DAO is a group of people who pool together their crypto assets, voting on what to spend them on. Noun NFTs are mostly bought with the cryptocurrency Ethereum. One of the members of the Noun DAO is also on the board of the Rainforest Trust, Popular Science reported.

The controversy arises from the fact that cryptocurrencies get their value through a process called "proof of work," in which computers compete against one another to solve mathematical puzzles. This is extremely carbon-intensive, as it involves large amounts of computing power. James Deutsch, the CEO of Rainforest Trust, said the organization's leadership did not want to be seen as promoting cryptocurrencies and is worried about cryptocurrencies' impacts. 

"I am impressed that this group of very energetic, creative and wealthy people have taken the NFT art concept and used it specifically for charitable purposes," Deutsch told Popular Science. "But having said all that, it still wouldn't justify buying into something that was inherently destructive."

Originally published on Live Science

Six newly-described species of miniature frogs from Mexico and Guatemala are so tiny that each can fit comfortably on a human thumbnail. Two of the species are smaller than 0.7 inches (18 millimeters) long, and the tiniest of them — Craugastor candelariensis — is Mexico's smallest frog, measuring no more than 0.5 inches (13 mm) long.

The wee frogs live in moist leaf litter on forest floors and are known as direct-developing frogs, which means that they don't undergo a tadpole stage as part of their life cycle, the researchers who described the species wrote in a new study. Rather, the frogs hatch from eggs as miniature versions of their adult forms. 

Hatchlings are thought to measure less than than 0.4 inches (10 mm) long, but scientists aren't certain about that because no one has ever seen these frogs hatch, said lead study author Tom Jameson, a researcher in the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, and a doctoral candidate in the Cambridge Climate, Life and Earth (C-CLEAR) program. 

"We know very little about their reproduction, life history, and behaviour," Jameson told Live Science in an email.

Related: Cannibal toads eat so many of their young, they're speeding up evolution

Other scientists had collected the frogs years ago and placed them in museum collections, cataloging the minuscule amphibians as undefined species in the Craugastor genus or as possibly belonging to the miniature frog species C. pygmaeus or C. hobartsmithii, the study authors reported April 4 in the journal Herpetological Monographs.

However, the diminutive frogs all looked so similar that scientists couldn't be sure exactly where the frogs fit on the Craugastor family tree. 

"We revisited this classification because one of my co-authors, Jeff Streicher [a senior curator of amphibians and reptiles at the Natural History Museum in London], did some genetic analysis back in 2012 and found a pattern that suggested multiple undescribed species," Jameson explained.

The researchers then followed up on Streicher's findings by conducting DNA analysis of the Craugastor specimens in question, and using computed X-ray tomography (CT) scans to create 3D digital models that highlighted differences in the shapes of frog bones and body parts. When their analysis was done, the scientists grouped the specimens into six new species: C. bitonium, C. candelariensis, C. cueyatl, C. polaclavus, C. portilloensis and C. rubinus.

"We found that each species was genetically distinct," Jameson said. "We also found differences in skull shape, level of ossification of the skeleton, and in external features like the number of tubercles [hardened bumps] on the hands and feet." 

Because the frogs are so small, they're on the menu for just about every predator in their woodland ecosystem, including birds, lizards, small mammals, and even large insects and other frogs, Jameson said. But the frogs face much greater risks from human activities, he added.

"The real threat to these frogs comes from habitat loss, climate change (further modifying habitats), and disease," such as the highly infectious fungal disease chytridiomycosis, or chytrid disease, Jameson wrote in the email. Chytrid disease is caused by the fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, which infects amphibians through their skin and is easily spread to new habitats by humans, according to the Cornell Wildlife Health Lab at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

Despite their small size, these frogs could represent the tip of a very big iceberg of unknown amphibian biodiversity in the region, the study authors reported. 

"We suspect that additional species await discovery, particularly in western Mexico and east of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec where our sampling efforts were limited," the authors wrote.

Originally published on Live Science.

Researchers have found the broken tooth of one of the largest carnivores ever to stalk the Earth.

No, it isn't T. rex. It isn't even a dinosaur. Rather, the tooth belongs to a rare and mysterious species of giant ichthyosaur — a flesh-eating marine reptile that patrolled the world's seas during the late Triassic period, about 205 million years ago.

Though the crown of the tooth is partially missing, the fossil fang's root is twice as wide as any other ichthyosaur tooth known, according to a new study published April 28 in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. The previous record holder for largest tooth was an ichthyosaur measuring nearly 50 feet (15 meters) long, the study authors said — possibly making the owner of this newly described tooth one of the largest animals ever to live on land or sea.

However, because scientists only have half a tooth to base their research on, it's impossible to tell whether the ancient marine reptile was a true leviathan, or simply one of many similarly sized sea monsters that ruled the Triassic seas, the researchers said.

"It is hard to say if the tooth is from a large ichthyosaur with giant teeth or from a giant ichthyosaur with average-sized teeth," lead study author P. Martin Sander, of the University of Bonn in Germany, said in a statement.

Monsters of the deep

Ichthyosaurs, whose name translates to "fish lizards," emerged during the middle Triassic period (about 252 million to 201 million years ago) not long after the end-Permian extinction wiped out roughly 95% of life in Earth's oceans. The aquatic reptiles did very well for themselves in these changing seas; within about 5 million years of their first appearance, ichthyosaurs ballooned to enormous sizes and dominated all the world's oceans, the study authors wrote.

The largest known ichthyosaur is the Shastasaurus sikanniensis — a whale-like creature that measured up to 69 feet (21 m) long, and possibly longer. For comparison, modern blue whales generally measure between 80 and 100 feet (24 and 30 m) long, while the carnivore king T. rex measured an average of 40 feet (12 m) long, according to the American Museum of Natural History.

Many large ichthyosaurs, including the gargantuan Shastasaurus, seem to have become top predators without ever evolving teeth, according to the researchers. Only one species of giant ichthyosaur — the 50-foot-long Himalayasaurus, discovered in Tibet — is known to have had a mouth full of teeth. So, when scientists discovered a single large fossil ichthyosaur tooth in the Kössen Formation of the Swiss Alps — a 9,200-foot-high (2,800 m) rock formation that existed at the bottom of a Triassic sea — the team had a bit of a mystery on their hands.

In the new study, the researchers analyzed that fossil tooth in detail, along with some large ichthyosaur ribs and vertebrae, all discovered in the same Alpine formation between 1976 and 1990. The team compared the sampling of bones to other giant ichthyosaur fossils with more complete skeletons, in order to estimate the size and species of the new specimens.

Measuring about 2.3 inches (60 mm) wide at the root and 4 inches (100 mm) tall from the root to the broken end of the crown, the fossil tooth is twice as wide as any known Himalayasaurus tooth, the researchers said. The unique pattern of dentin — the hard tissue that makes up the bulk of reptile and mammal teeth — proves that the tooth belonged to an ichthyosaur, but the fossil's extraordinary size doesn't fit with any known species. If the creature's body was significantly larger than Himalayasaurus, as the tooth seems to suggest, then researchers could be looking at the largest ichthyosaur ever discovered.

Similarly, the ribs and vertebrae from the Kössen Formation are some of the largest ichthyosaur fossils of their kind ever discovered in Europe, the researchers said. The tooth, ribs and vertebrae appear to belong to three different ichthyosaur specimens — all of them gargantuan.

"These late Triassic giant ichthyosaurs clearly were among the largest animals to ever inhabit our planet," the researchers wrote.

However, given that only a few bones remain of each specimen, it's impossible to reliably categorize them as a particular species. Measurements of the bones may also be slightly skewed, as several of the fossils appear to have been squashed by the movement of tectonic plates that raised the Alps out of the sea over hundreds of millions of years, the team said.

For now, the researchers have assigned the three specimens to the family Shastasauridae — the same family of the giants Shastasaurus, Shonisaurus and Himalayasaurus. Whether or not the specimens dwarf those other goliath sea monsters is a question that cannot be answered without more fossil evidence.

Originally published on Live Science.

Scientists have described a previously unknown species of millipede in the Appalachian Mountains — and named it after pop superstar Taylor Swift.

Researchers discovered the millipede, along with 16 other newly described millipede species, as part of an extensive research project to sequence the DNA of species in the Nannaria genus, known as twisted-claw millipedes, so-named for the twisted and flattened claws on their front legs. Experts analyzed 1,835 millipede specimens, most of which  they collected under leaf litter, trees and rocks, in forest habitats across 17 U.S. states, according to a new study. 

Derek Hennen, lead study author and a researcher at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, is a fan of the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, and so he decided to name one of the millipede species Nannaria swiftae.  

"Her music helped me get through the highs and lows of graduate school, so naming a new millipede species after her is my way of saying thanks," Hennen said in a statement. 

Related: Extreme life on Earth: 8 bizarre creatures

The researchers discovered N. swiftae, known by the common name "Swift twisted–claw millipede" in Van Buren County, Tennessee.

N. swiftae play a vital role in their ecosystem, by releasing nutrients into the soil of forest floors. As they eat decaying leaf litter, the millipedes break down the organic matter, aiding decomposition. Often these burrowing arthropods are completely buried in soil, making them challenging to find and capture, according to the researchers.  

Many of the species in the new study had previously been collected and preserved in museums and universities but had not yet been described scientifically, the study revealed.

All of the newly described species measure between 0.7 and 1.5 inches (18 and 38 millimeters) long, and have white legs and brown or black bodies spotted with red, white or orange. Features separating N. Swiftae from the very similar species N. austricola and N. scutellaria include bumps on the modified legs. 

Hennen named another of these newfound millipede species after a person: Nannaria marianae was named after his wife, Marian. 

Not all of the newly described Appalachian millipedes were named after people; some names reference specific plants that grew near specimen collection sites. These include N. liriodendra, named after tulip trees (Liriodendron tulipifera), and N. rhododendra, after rhododendrons, Hennen explained in an April 15 tweet.  

"Thanks to the plants, these millipedes have great habitat to live in," Hennen said in the tweet.

With the naming of N. swiftae, Taylor Swift joins a select group of musicians with animal namesakes, including Lady Gaga (whose namesake is a treehopper from Nicaragua named Kakaia gaga), Elton John (a shrimplike crustacean named Leucothoe eltoni) and Shakira (a parasitic wasp named Aleiodes shakirae). 

The findings were published April 15, 2022 in the journal ZooKeys.

Originally published on Live Science.

Researchers digging in Peru's Ocucaje desert have uncovered the skull of an enormous marine predator thought to be the ancestor of modern whales and dolphins.

Four feet long (1.2 meters) and lined with knife-like teeth, the skull appears to be a new species of Basilosaurus — a genus of ferocious marine mammals that lived some 36 million years ago during the Eocene epoch, researchers from the National University of San Marcos (UNMSM) in Lima told Reuters. From snout to tail, the creature probably measured about 39 feet (12 meters) long, or about the size of a city bus.

For now, researchers are calling this ancient beast the "Ocucaje Predator." It won't be formally named until the team publishes a scientific description of the species in a peer-reviewed journal.

"It was a marine monster," Rodolfo Salas, founder and director of the paleontology department at the Museum of Natural History at UNMSM, told Reuters and other media outlets at a news conference on March 17. "When it was searching for its food, it surely did a lot of damage."

Related: Image gallery: 25 amazing ancient beasts

According to the researchers, the Ocucaje Desert was once the bottom of an ancient ocean. Basilosaurus and its ferocious cousins swam these seas as apex predators from 41 million to 34 million years ago, gliding through the water with bodies that resembled enormous snakes, but with a large pair of flippers near their heads.

"Basilosaurus" means "king lizard," and the creature's serpentine skeleton was once mistaken for a marine reptile, according to Smithsonian. Scientists now know that Basilosaurus was a mammal — a fully aquatic cetacean, like the whales and dolphins that would follow it millions of years later.

Earlier whale ancestors were mammals who lived on land full-time, then gradually evolved to be semi-aquatic over millions of years, Live Science previously reported. Beginning about 55 million years ago — 10 million years after the mass extinction that killed the dinosaurs — whale ancestors finally became fully aquatic, giving rise to the first cetaceans. Today, there are more than 90 species of cetaceans.

The Ocucaje desert is abundant in fossils, some dating back more than 42 million years, according to the researchers. Previous excavations have uncovered other early whale ancestors, dolphins, sharks and other creatures of the ancient deep.

Originally published on Live Science.

Researchers have described a stunning multicolored wrasse in the Maldives as a newfound species, after the fish spent decades being misidentified as a closely related species. The rainbow-colored fish lives among unusually deep coral reefs known as "twilight reefs." 

The newly described species, which has been named the rose-veiled fairy wrasse (Cirrhilabrus finifenmaa), resembles the red velvet fairy wrasse (Cirrhilabrus rubrisquamis), which is found across the western Indian Ocean. Both species live on mesophotic coral reefs, which grow much deeper than most tropical coral reefs — between 100 and 490 feet (30 and 149 meters) below the ocean’s surface, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Scientists collected the first C. finifenmaa specimen in 1990, but its similarity to C. rubrisquamis meant that experts didn't recognize the fish as a distinct species.

Recently, after noticing this mistake, another group of researchers collected specimens of C. finifenmaa from the twilight reefs surrounding the Maldives. When they compared the new specimens to C. rubrisquamis wrasses, they found that C. finifenmaa females (which are mainly red, pink and blue) were a close match to C. rubrisquamis. However, C. finifenmaa males were not; their scales featured  more orange and yellow hues. The researchers also found that C. finifenmaa has a different number of scales in certain body regions and taller dorsal spines than its look-alike cousin. DNA analysis confirmed that these two species were genetically distinct.   

In addition, the study revealed that C. finifenmaa has a much smaller geographic range than C. rubrisquamis, which will inform conservation efforts to protect the species.  

Related: 11 strange things that washed ashore in 2021 

"What we previously thought was one widespread species of fish is actually two different species, each with a potentially much more restricted distribution," lead author Yi-Kai Tea, a doctoral student at the University of Sydney in Australia, said in a statement. "This exemplifies why describing new species, and taxonomy in general, is important for conservation and biodiversity management."

During the survey, the researchers also collected specimens from eight more newly discovered species that are still waiting to be described, according to the statement.

The species name "finifenmaa means "rose" in the Maldives' Indigenous Dhivehi language, referencing not only the beautiful pink and red colors displayed by the new species but also the Maldives' national flower. This marks the first time that a Maldivian researcher has chosen the scientific name of a local fish species, despite the island chain being home to around 1,100 fish species, according to study co-author Ahmed Najeeb, a biologist at the Maldives Marine Research Institute. 

"It has always been foreign scientists who have described species found in the Maldives, without much involvement from local scientists," Najeeb said in the statement. "This time it is different, and getting to be part of something for the first time has been really exciting."

However, the researchers suspect that the Maldives' C. finifenmaa population may be in danger of declining. C. rubrisquamis wrasses have long been targeted by local fishers to be sold for the global aquarium trade, which generates around $330 million each year, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. Because the two wrasse species look so much alike, C. finifenmaa may also be affected by such activities, according to the statement. 

"Though the species is quite abundant and, therefore, not currently at a high risk of overexploitation, it's still unsettling when a fish is already being commercialized before it even has a scientific name," study co-author Luiz Rocha, an ichthyology curator at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, said in the statement. 

The study was published online March 8 in the journal ZooKeys.

Originally published on Live Science.

Octopuses and vampire squid are famous for their eight arms, but one of the oldest relatives of the group that includes them didn't get the memo. This newly described creature, named Syllipsimopodi bideni after President Joe Biden, had a total of 10 arms when it was alive during the Carboniferous period about 328 million years ago, a new study finds.

The beastie was wee, with a mantle (the body, not including the eyes or arms) measuring 3 inches (7.7 centimeters) long, about the length of an adult's palm. It's the oldest record ever of a vampyropod — a group that includes octopuses and vampire squid (Vampyroteuthis infernalis) — pushing the group's existence back 82 million years. The new date supports evidence from molecular clock models that calculate, based on the expected rate of genetic mutations, when an animal likely evolved, the researchers said.

Some scientists, however, disagree with the assessment of the creature, pointing out that parts of the fossil are difficult to interpret and that the specimen might belong to a previously known species that was described in the late 1980s.

Related: Photos of the vampire squid from hell

The vampyropod fossil was discovered in Fergus County, Montana and donated to the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada in 1988. But it remained unexamined until recently, when two researchers determined that it was a newfound species. Its 10 arms appear to have suckers, which would be the oldest known suckers of any cephalopod, a group that includes octopuses, squid and nautiluses, the researchers said.

Some cephalopods, like squids, cuttlefish and bobtail squids, have 10 appendages — eight arms and two longer tentacles. "Octopuses and squid are both types of cephalopods, but they're very distantly related," said study lead author Christopher Whalen, a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow of paleontology hosted at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City and co-hosted by the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences at Yale University.

So, it was surprising that this newly described creature had 10 arms. "It's the earliest ancestor of octopuses [and] things related to octopuses, but it looks a lot like a squid," Whalen told Live Science. 

Vampire squid — which are not squid or vampires, but are named for the cloak-like webbing between their arms — have eight arms and two thin filaments. It's thought that these filaments are vestigial arms, which octopuses lost completely. "However, all previously reported fossil vampyropods preserving the appendages only have eight arms, so this fossil is arguably the first confirmation of the idea that all cephalopods ancestrally possessed ten arms," Whalen said in a statement. 

"Prehensile-foot" Biden 

Whalen and study co-author Neil Landman, a curator emeritus in the AMNH's Division of Paleontology, named the critter "Syllipsimopodi" from the Greek words for prehensile and foot. "The name prehensile-foot is chosen because this is the oldest known cephalopod to develop suckers, allowing the arms, which are modifications of the molluscan foot, to better grasp prey and other objects," the researchers wrote in the study. The species name honors  Biden. "When we submitted the article, initially, it was actually just a few weeks after his inauguration," Whalen told Live Science. 

Related: What's the difference between arms and tentacles?

When S. bideni was alive, North America was a very different place. Montana, near the equator, was submerged under a tropical marine bay. Seasonal monsoons swept across the region. Just like fertilizer runoff can lead to algal blooms today, it's possible that heavy rainfall brought on by the monsoons led to a rapid influx of nutrients in the water, which in turn could have led to oxygen-poor waters; a pristine environment for fossilization, Whalen said.

S. bideni likely ate the ancient creatures whose fossilized remains were found nearby in the formation, including crustaceans, sponges, brachiopods and conulariids, which are thought to be related to jellyfish. "It probably had a lifestyle similar to modern nearshore squid," Whalen said.

Outside take

Although the fossil is in fairly good shape, some parts are difficult to interpret. For instance, the researchers noted that each arm has two rows of suckers, rather than just one as was thought to have been present in the early relatives of vampire squid and octopuses, said Michael Vecchione, an invertebrate zoologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., who specializes in living cephalopods and was not involved with the study. 

"That is really surprising to me," Vecchione told Live Science. It's possible that this interpretation isn't correct, he added. 

And it's not clear if this fossil represents a new genus, said Christian Klug, a curator at the University of Zurich's Palaeontological Museum and a professor at its Palaeontological Institute, who was not involved in the study. The new specimen looks an awful lot like Gordoniconus, an early cephalopod, co-described by Landman, in 1988, from the same place in Montana. 

"The proportions are identical, the size is identical [and the] conch shape is similar," Klug, who wrote about Gordoniconus in a 2019 study in the journal Communications Biology, told Live Science in an email. "Even if you accept that this is a different species: How likely is it to have two different species with almost identical shape in the same habitat?"

Whalen disagreed. "I also do not consider Syllipsimopodi to be similar to Gordoniconus in terms of proportion, size, or conch shape," he told Live Science in an email. Moreover, he noted "it is not in any way unusual for similar species to have overlapping ranges. For example, most people are used to seeing multiple species of similarly sized birds in their neighborhood; similarly, it would not be unusual to see multiple species of butterflies in the same garden at the same time."

The study was published online Tuesday (March 8) in the journal Nature Communications. 

Originally published on Live Science.

A 70 million-year-old fossil unearthed in Transylvania is a newfound species of freshwater turtle that likely survived the extinction event that wiped out the nonavian dinosaurs.  

Researchers initially found the reptilian fossil at a site called Haţeg Basin in Romania in the 1990s. The remains include near-complete sections of the turtle's carapace (upper shell) and plastron (lower shell), as well as a bone from one of its arms and another from its pelvis. Based on these body parts, the researchers estimated that the turtle would have had a body length of around 7.5 inches (19 centimeters), they reported in a new study. The team named the new species Dortoka vremiri in honor of Mátyás Vremir, an expert in Cretaceous vertebrates who died in 2020.

D. vremiri belongs to a group of turtles known as side-necked turtles, of which there are 16 living species found in South America, Africa and Australia. Fossils of a similar species that likely descended from D. vremiri date back to around 57 million years ago, which suggests that D. vremiri survived the end-Cretaceous extinction event that wiped out around 75% of all life on Earth. 

Related: 10 coolest non-dinosaur fossils unearthed in 2021 

"Intriguingly, members of the same family of turtles did not survive this extinction event in western Europe," lead author Felix Augustin, a doctoral student at the University of Tübingen in Germany, said in a statement. The newfound species' geographic range and freshwater habitat likely helped it survive when its relatives and most terrestrial species could not, the researchers said.

The researchers think that, during the Cretaceous period (145 million to 66 million years ago), the Haţeg Basin was likely a separate island that later merged with Eastern Europe. This island could have somewhat isolated D. vremiri from the ecological destruction caused by the falling asteroid, Augustin said in the statement. 

However, a previously discovered ancient tortoise, Kallokibotion bajazidi, which experts believe shared the island with D. vremiri during the late Cretaceous, did go extinct along with the dinosaurs. "This fits a previously observed pattern from North American faunas where terrestrial vertebrates were notably more impacted by the end-Cretaceous extinction than freshwater species," co-author Zoltan Csiki-Sava, a paleontologist at the University of Bucharest in Romania, said in the statement. 

Freshwater food chains rely on decaying organic matter in the water, which would have continued to remain abundant, or potentially even increased, during the end-Cretaceous extinction event. However, the base of the terrestrial food web is plants, and around half of plant species on Earth were killed off by either massive wildfires set off by the crash or reduced sunlight from a period of global dimming that followed the initial impact, and limited their ability to photosynthesize. This difference in food availability is what allowed D. vremiri to outlive its terrestrial counterpart, the researchers said in the statement.

In May 2021, paleontologists in Madagascar discovered another Cretaceous freshwater side-necked turtle that they also suspect survived the mass extinction event before later becoming extinct, Live Science previously reported.  

Evidence of freshwater ecosystems being more resilient than terrestrial ecosystems to extinction events remains rare, but findings like those in the new study could provide clues as to how freshwater species could fare when faced with upcoming ecological crisis caused by human activity such as climate change, senior author Márton Rabi said in the statement. 

The study was published online Feb. 8 in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.

Originally published on Live Science.

The remains of a newly discovered stegosaur with huge backplates, long tail spikes and a teensy head belong to one of the oldest dinosaurs of its kind on record, a new study finds.

The armored dinosaur, a newfound species called Bashanosaurus primitivus, lived during the Middle Jurassic period (174.1 million to 163.5 million years ago) in what is now China. As one of the oldest stegosaurs on record, its discovery adds more evidence that these plant-eating dinosaurs possibly originated in Asia, the researchers said.

"Bashanosaurus primitivus is one of the earliest records of Stegosauria in the world so far," study co-lead researcher Ning Li, a scientist at the Chongqing Laboratory of Geoheritage Protection and Research in China, told Live Science in an email. 

Related: 10 extraordinary dinosaur discoveries from 2021

The discovery of B. primitivus' remains began in 2015, when a shepherd named Zheng Zhou found a bone-like stone in Chongqing, in southeast China. He told Li's lab, which confirmed that the "stone" was actually a dinosaur fossil. After excavating the site at Laojun Village for two years, Li and his colleagues found a remarkable mishmashed assortment of dinosaur bones — about 5,000 in all — that included the fossils belonging to the newly described stegosaur. 

"It's like where I work at Dinosaur National Monument [in Utah], where they are getting a lot of different kinds of dinosaurs preserved in one gigantic bone bed," ReBecca Hunt-Foster, a paleontologist at Dinosaur National Monument who was not involved in the study, told Live Science. "I'm curious to see what else they get out of that site."

The team named the 168 million-year-old herbivorous beast Bashanosaurus for "Bashan," the ancient name of Chongqing, and primitivus, which is Latin for "first." During its lifetime, B. primitivus measured more than 9 feet (2.8 meters) long from snout to tail. This is a little smaller than later stegosaurs, Hunt-Foster noted.

Based on an analysis of the sediments where B. primitivus was found, the team determined that the stegosaur lived in a delta by a shallow lake during a hot drought, Li said.

The ancient beast joins a growing number of known stegosaurs. These dinosaurs, of which there are 14 known species, lived on every continent except Antarctica and Australia. The new species has a few differences from its relatives — including the bases of its armor plates, which are thicker and curve outward, unlike the plates on the backs of its later relatives, Li said.

"Bashanosaurus can be distinguished from other Middle Jurassic stegosaurs, and clearly is a new species," Li said. "However, it does have similarities with some of the first armored dinosaurs, which are over 20 million years older."

The other earliest known stegosaurs, Chungkingosaurus (Chongqing "lizard") and Huayangosaurus (Huayang "lizard"), are also from the Middle to Late Jurassic Shaximiao Formation in China, which Li said may hint that stegosaurs originated in Asia.

The new spiky dinosaur "is a pretty critical animal for figuring out stegosaur evolution," said Andrew Farke, the director of the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology in Claremont, California, who was not involved with the new study. "Even though this group is so iconic, we still have a ton to learn about their initial evolution." By studying B. primitivus, scientists can learn how early stegosaurs did — or didn’t — resemble their better-known descendants, he added.

As for whether stegosaurs originated in Asia, that's still up in the air. "There is also an early stegosaur of about the same age known from South America, so I suspect that the global picture may have been pretty complicated," Farke told Live Science in an email. "We just don't have the fossils yet."

The study was published online Thursday (March 3) in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Originally published on Live Science.

During low tide on Scotland's Isle of Skye, a graduate student hunting for dinosaur bones looked down at the coastal rocks and made the discovery of a lifetime: the remains of the largest pterosaur on record from the Jurassic period.

Since collecting the specimen in 2017 — an eventful excavation that involved cutting out the pterosaur chunks with diamond-tipped saws and almost losing the fossil when the tide returned — researchers have studied its anatomy and determined that it's a previously unknown species. They gave the beast the Scottish Gaelic name Dearc sgiathanach (jark ski-an-ach), a double meaning of "winged reptile" and "reptile from Skye," as Skye's Gaelic name (An t-Eilean Sgitheanach) means "the winged isle." 

D. sgiathanach would have sported a wingspan of more than 8 feet (2.5 meters) long, a wild size for a pterosaur dating to the Jurassic period (201.3 million to 145 million years ago), the team said.

"Dearc is the biggest pterosaur we know from the Jurassic period, and that tells us that pterosaurs got larger much earlier than we thought, long before the Cretaceous period, when they were competing with birds — and that's hugely significant," study senior researcher Steve Brusatte, a professor and personal chair of paleontology and evolution at the University of Edinburgh, said in a statement.

Related: Photos: Ancient pterosaur eggs & fossils uncovered in China

Pterosaurs (which are not dinosaurs) are the first known vertebrates to have evolved powered flight — a feat they accomplished about 50 million years before birds did. The oldest pterosaurs on record date to about 230 million years ago, during the Triassic period, and it was previously thought that they didn't reach huge sizes until the very late Jurassic or the Cretaceous period (145 million to 66 million years ago). For example, the largest pterosaur on record, Quetzalcoatlus, likely had a 36-foot-long (11 m) wingspan, meaning it was as large as a small passenger aircraft during its lifetime about 70 million years ago.

However, to fly, pterosaurs needed lightweight, delicate bones — a feature that means their remains rarely fossilized well. 

"To achieve flight, pterosaurs had hollow bones with thin bone walls, making their remains incredibly fragile and unfit to preserving for millions of years," study lead researcher Natalia Jagielska, a doctoral candidate of paleontology at the University of Edinburgh, said in the statement. "And yet our skeleton, about 160 million years on since its death, remains in almost pristine condition, articulated [the bones are in anatomical order] and almost complete. Its sharp fish-snatching teeth still retaining a shiny enamel cover as if he were alive mere weeks ago."

An analysis of the pterosaur's bone growth revealed that it wasn't fully grown. So, while this near-adult individual was roughly the size of today's largest flying birds, like the wandering albatross (Diomedea exulans), it's likely that an adult D. sgiathanach would have had an even longer wingspan, the researchers said. Moreover, computed tomography (CT) scans revealed that D. sgiathanach had large optic lobes, meaning it likely had excellent vision.

When D. sgiathanach was alive, the area that is now Scotland was humid and had warm waters, where the pterosaur likely fed on fish and squid with its sharp fangs and well-defined teeth, Jagielska said in a video.

The excavation of this fossil at Rubha nam Brathairean (known as Brothers' Point) was found by Amelia Penny, a former doctoral student at in the School of GeoSciences at the University of Edinburgh who is now a research fellow in the School of Biology at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. The specimen will be added to the National Museums Scotland's collections for further study. 

The excavation was paid for by the National Geographic Society. The study was published online Tuesday (Feb. 22) in the journal Current Biology. 

Originally published on Live Science.

Paleontologists in Argentina have uncovered an unusual dinosaur skull that belonged to an "armless," tiny-brained carnivore that lived about 70 million years ago, a new study finds. 

The newfound species — named Guemesia ochoai for General Martín Miguel de Güemes, a hero of the Argentine War of Independence — is a member of Abelisauridae, a clade of carnivores that roamed what is now South America, Africa and India during the dinosaur age.

It's possible that G. ochoai is a close relative of the ancestors of abelisaurids, the researchers said. However, G. ochoai is different from its abelisaurid relatives in two key ways: It lacks horns, perhaps because abelisaurid ancestors hadn't evolved these pointy skewers yet; and it likely lived in what is now northern Argentina where its skull was found, far away from most abelisaurid remains in Patagonia, southern Argentina, suggesting that this dinosaur group could live in varied ecosystems.

"This new dinosaur is quite unusual for its kind," study co-author Anjali Goswami, a research leader at the Natural History Museum in London, said in a statement. "It shows that the dinosaurs that live in this region were quite different from those in other parts of Argentina, supporting the idea of distinct provinces in the Cretaceous of South America."

Related: Image gallery: Tiny-armed dinosaurs

Abelisaurids likely preyed on long-necked titanosaurs, an impressive feat given that their tiny arms were vestigial and essentially useless. They weren't the only theropod — or bipedal, mostly meat-eating dinosaurs — with short arms. Tyrannosaurus rex has embarrassingly short arms for its stature, although its arms were longer than those of abelisaurids and unpublished research suggests that the dinosaur king could use its wee arms to bring prey in close.

With such puny arms, abelisaurids had to take down prey almost entirely with their skulls and fearsome jaws.

The skull is all that's left of this G. ochoai individual. So, after researchers uncovered it in the Los Blanquitos Formation near Amblayo, they got to work studying it. The team analyzed the dinosaur's well-preserved braincase, or the area where the brain sat. Like other abelisaurids, G. ochoai's braincase was small, indicating that it had a little brain. In fact, its entire cranium is about 70% smaller than its abelisaurid relatives, suggesting that this individual was a juvenile, although this matter is not yet settled. 

The research team of Argentine and U.K. scientists also noticed a unique feature called foramina, or rows of small holes at the front of the skull. These holes could have helped G. ochoai cool down when the animal pumped blood into the thin skin at the front of its head, where it could release heat, the researchers said.

There are already 35 other abelisaurid species described from Argentina, but nearly all of them are from Patagonia. The discovery of G. ochoai and other extraordinary paleo-species, such as a huge turtle with a 3-foot-long (1 meter) shell, in this northern region suggest that it was a unique part of the world during the late Cretaceous.

Researchers hope to discover more specimens of G. ochoai and its relatives so they can learn more about life in ancient Argentina. The study was published online Feb. 10 in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 

Originally published on Live Science.

About 240 million years ago, a fearsome archosaur with "very powerful jaws and large knife-like teeth" stalked what is now Tanzania, a new study finds.

Measuring more than 16 feet (5 meters) long from snout to tail, this newly described beast — called Mambawakale ruhuhu, which means "ancient crocodile from the Ruhuhu Basin" in Kiswahili — "would have been a very large and pretty terrifying predator," when it was alive during the Triassic period, said study lead researcher Richard Butler, a professor of paleobiology at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom.

This apex predator "walked on all fours with a long tail," Butler told Live Science in an email. "It's one of the largest predators that we know of from the Middle Triassic [247 million to 237 million years ago]," or around the same time that the first dinosaurs emerged.

Related: Photos: Early Dinosaur Cousin Looked Like a Croc

It took paleontologists nearly 60 years to properly describe M. ruhuhu. Its fossils were discovered in 1963, a mere two years after Tanzania gained its independence from Britain. During the expedition, scientists, largely from the U.K., heavily relied on Tanzanians and Zambians to find fossil hotspots, discover the fossils, build roads to the site and transport the fossils from the field, according to the study. However, the Tanzanian and Zambian involvement ended there; the fossils were taken from Ruhuhu Basin in southwest Tanzania to the Natural History Museum in London, where they awaited analysis.

One specimen — a beast with a 2.5-foot-long (75 centimeters) skull, as well as a preserved lower jawbone and a fairly complete left hand — was dubbed Pallisteria angustimentum by English paleontologist Alan Charig (1927-1997), who helped collect the creature's remains. But Charig, who named the Triassic terror's genus after his friend, geologist John Weaver Pallister, and its species name with the Latin words for "narrow chin," never formally published a description of the animal. So, when Butler and his colleagues examined the specimen decades later, they chose a Kiswahili name "to formally recognize the substantial and previously unsung contributions of unnamed Tanzanians" on the 1963 expedition, the researchers wrote in the study. 

"Our key results are the formal recognition of Mambawakale as a new species for the first time," said Butler, who along with John Lyakurwa, a Tanzanian neoherpetologist at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, helped name the archosaur.

M. ruhuhu is one of the largest known early archosaurs, a group that emerged following the end-Permian extinction about 252 million years ago. The archosaur clade includes living birds and crocodilians, as well as the extinct pterosaurs and nonavian dinosaurs. When M. ruhuhu was alive during the Middle Triassic, archosaurs "really start to diversify for the first time," Butler said. 

For example, M. ruhuhu is just one of nine ancient archosaur species discovered at the Tanzania site. "Mambawakale adds to this picture of a rapid early diversification of archosaurs and moreover was the largest predator within its ecosystem," Butler said.

The study was published online Wednesday (Feb. 9) in the journal Royal Society Open Science. 

Originally published on Live Science.

Paleontologists in subantarctic Chile have discovered the remains of a "very weird" ankylosaur that had a deadly armored tail like no other known dinosaur, the researchers said.

"The tail would have looked like a sword; it's so flat," study co-lead researcher Alexander Vargas, a vertebrate paleontologist in the Department of Biology at the University of Chile, told Live Science. It would have looked "a bit like an Aztec sword, or the Aztec club called the macuahuitl."

In addition to revealing its weaponized tail, the dinosaur's remains tell a previously unknown tale about ankylosaur evolution: The breaking apart of the supercontinent Pangaea during the Jurassic period (201.3 million to 145 million years ago) led to extreme differences between ankylosaurs on the northern supercontinent Laurasia and those on the southern supercontinent Gondwana, like this newfound species, named Stegouros elengassen. The newfound species was described in a study published online Wednesday (Dec. 1) in the journal Nature. 

Related: Photos: See the armored dinosaur named for Zuul from 'Ghostbusters'

Paleontologists found S. elengassen in Cretaceous period rocks dating to between 71.7 million and 74.9 million years ago in February 2018. The well-preserved skeleton was about 80% complete, and "it's weird, because it's articulated [the bones are in order] from the waist down, and everything from the waist up was kind of scattered," Vargas said. The beast died by a river, perhaps in quicksand, which would explain why its bottom half is so well preserved, although this is just speculation, he said. 

The team had only five days left in the field season to excavate the dinosaur remains, and that short timeline led to a painstaking effort involving a sprained ankle, a broken rib and near-hypothermia among the crew, Vargas said. But their hard work paid off: Now, the largely Chilean team has an exquisite specimen of a roughly 6.5-foot-long (2 meters) ankylosaur sporting a tail that looks like a fern frond.

The dinosaur's genus name, Stegouros, comes from the Greek words for "roof" (stego) and "tail" (uros) — a nod to its covered tail — and its species name, elengassen, refers to an armored beast in the mythology of the local Aónik'enk people.

S. elengassen is strikingly different from Laurasian ankylosaurs; it's lightly armored with a few rows of osteoderms, or bony plates, and has a "rather large head with a narrow, curved beak, which is not common for ankylosaurs," Vargas said. "It has slender limbs. … It doesn't have pointed claws; it has rounded, hoof-like claws on both hands and feet."

What's more, the ankylosaur's pelvis is wide and stegosaur-like. "If you had only the pelvis, you would think you had the first Stegosaurus of the Cretaceous," he said. (Stegosaurus lived earlier, during the Jurassic period.)

S. elengassen's most distinctive feature, its tail, is the shortest tail of any known armored dinosaur. It's made of seven paired large and flattened osteoderms. The first two pairs are near the body, and the next five pairs are fused together as a flat, powerful weapon, Vargas said. In contrast, other ankylosaurs have paired spikes or clubs on their tails.

Until now, it wasn't clear whether Laurasian ankylosaurs had somehow journeyed south to populate Gondwana, Vargas said. But now, S. elengassen, "the first completely studied ankylosaur from the Southern Hemisphere," shows that it and two other known Southern Hemisphere ankylosaurs — Antarctopelta, from Antarctica, and Kunbarrasaurus, from Australia — "are lacking many of the specialized traits that the ankylosaurs of the North had and that they already had in the mid-Jurassic," Vargas said. "So these must have split off before the mid-Jurassic, which speaks of very ancient roots."

Related: In images: Newfound dinosaur from Venezuela 

It's exciting to find an armored dinosaur with a never-before-seen tail, Vargas said. 

"We all know tail clubs, we all know the tail spine, but this is a new lineage … a Southern Hemisphere lineage that evolved a third kind of tail weapon," Vargas said. 

According to Matt Lamanna, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, who wasn't involved with the study, "It's just exceptional material and just a really unexpected dinosaur."

Originally published on Live Science.