100,000-year-old polar bear genome reveals ancient hybridization with brown bears

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An analysis of ancient DNA from a 100,000-year-old polar bear has revealed that extensive hybridization between polar bears and brown bears occurred during the last warm interglacial period in the Pleistocene, leaving a surprising amount of polar bear ancestry in the genomes of all living brown bears. The skull of an ancient polar bear, nicknamed…

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Alaska, Early Mammals, Fossils, Genetics, North America, Palaeobiology, Palaeontology

A large predator from the Pyrenees

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A fossilized lower jaw has led an international team of palaeontologists, headed by Bastien Mennecart from the Natural History Museum Basel, to discover a new species of predator that once lived in Europe. These large predators belong to a group of carnivores colloquially known as “bear dogs.” They could weigh around 320 kilograms, appeared 36…

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Early Mammals, Fossils, French Pyrenees, Palaeontology

Mastodon tusk chemical analysis reveals first evidence of one extinct animal’s annual migration

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Around 13,200 years ago, a roving male mastodon died in a bloody mating-season battle with a rival in what today is northeast Indiana, nearly 100 miles from his home territory, according to the first study to document the annual migration of an individual animal from an extinct species. A mounted skeleton of the Buesching mastodon,…

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Early Mammals, Fossils, North America, Palaeontology

Paleontologists have discovered the jaws of a rare bear in Taurida Cave

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A group of paleontologists, included researchers from the Ural Federal University (UrFU), discovered the jaws of an Etruscan bear from the early Pleistocene period (2–1.5 million years ago) in the Taurida cave. The remains of Etruscan bears (which is the ancestor of brown and cave bears) as part of the fauna of large mammals of…

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Crimea, Early Mammals, Fossils, Palaeontology

Previously unknown dolphin species were present in ancient Swiss ocean

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Twenty million years ago, the Swiss Plateau region, or Mittelland, was an ocean in which dolphins swam. Researchers at the University of Zurich’s Paleontological Institute have now discovered two previously unknown species related to modern sperm whales and oceanic dolphins, which they identified based on ear bones. Life restoration of the dolphins described in this…

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Early Mammals, Fossils, Palaeontology, Switzerland

Eocene ungulates were very selective in their feeding

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A study by the UPV/EHU-University of the Basque Country into the paleodiet of extinct paleotheriidae (or pseudo horses) provides information about their feeding strategy and the environment they inhabited at the end of the Eocene. Plagiolophus was a highly selective perissodactyl and fed on tough foliage. Fossil of plagiolophus [Credit: Ghedoghedo/WikiCommons] In collaboration with Dr….

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Early Mammals, Fossils, Palaeontology, Spain

Study of ancient predators sheds light on how humans did – or didn’t – find food

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A new Rice University-led analysis of the remains of ancient predators reveals new information about how prehistoric humans did — or didn’t — find their food. Examples of the carcass consumption capabilities of Xenosmilus. Complete defleshing and frequent contact with bone resulting in bone breakage and deletion has been documented on scapulae (A), humeri (B), tibiae (C),…

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Anthropology, Early Humans, Early Mammals, Fossils

Rare fossil of ancient dog species discovered by paleontologists

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Sometime around 14,000 years ago, the first humans crossed the Bering Strait to North America with canines, domesticated dogs they used for hunting, by their side. This painting at the San Diego Natural History Museum by William Stout shows what the Archeocyon canid, center, would have looked like during the Oligocene era in what’s now San…

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Early Mammals, Fossils, North America, Palaeontology, USA

Climatic variability might not drive evolutionary change as much as previously thought

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A new study combining climate data with fossil records of large mammals that lived across Africa during the last 4 million years casts doubt on a long-standing hypothesis that repeated shifts in climate acted as major drivers of evolutionary change in mammals, including human ancestors. During the dry season, evaporating water leaves behind trona crystals,…

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Africa, Climate Change, Early Humans, Early Mammals, Earth Science, Fossils, Palaeoclimate, Palaeontology

Darwinian theory of gradual process explained

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Abrupt shifts in the evolution of animals – short periods of time when an organism rapidly changes size or form – have long been a challenge for theorists including Darwin. Now a newly published research paper supports the idea that even these abrupt changes are underpinned by a gradual directional process of successive incremental changes,…

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Biology, Early Mammals, Evolution, Fossils