#Ancestor

Author: Tina Hesman Saey / Source: Science News This is part of the Transparency Project. Learn more about the project here. This article refers to a story originally published in April 2018, “New genetic sleuthing tools helped track down the Golden State Killer suspect.” I was in the midst of

Author: Jeremy Rehm / Source: Science News A new dinosaur shows that even Tyrannosaurus rex had humble beginnings. Dubbed Moros intrepidus, or “the harbinger of doom,” the new species is one of the smallest tyrannosaurs yet discovered from the Cretaceous Period. Analyses of the animal’s

Author: Aimee Cunningham / Source: Science News A 240-million-year-old case of bone cancer has turned up in a fossil of an extinct ancestor of turtles. Dating to the Triassic Period, the fossil is the oldest known example of this cancer in an amniote, a group that includes mammals, birds and

Author: Laurel Hamers / Source: Science News Some seals still eat like landlubbers. Just like lions, tigers and bears, certain kinds of seals have claws that help the animals grasp prey and tear it apart. X-rays show that the bones in these seals’ forelimbs look like those found in the earliest

Author: Robby Berman / Source: Big Think It’s long been known that apes and humans share a common ancestor, but not a lot is known about what that ancestor was and where it came from. The fossil record for the Miocene epoch in which it’s expected to have lived is mostly comprised of teeth and