The identification of preserved organic material within fossils is challenging. Well-established vibrational spectroscopy techniques, such as micro-FTIR (Fourier Transform Infra-Red spectroscopy), have been widely used to investigate organic fossils molecular […]
Hiding in the shadows, euglenoids are a fascinating group of single-celled protists that are neither plant nor animal.
Microorganisms were the first forms of life on our planet. The clues are written in 3.5 billion-year-old rocks by geochemical and morphological traces, such as chemical compounds or structures that […]
Curtin-led research has for the first time precisely dated some of the oldest fossils of complex multicellular life in the world, helping to track a pivotal moment in the history […]
Most of life’s diversity and history is microbial but it has left a meagre fossil record, greatly hindering understanding of evolution in deep time.
Karma Nanglu says his favorite animal is whichever one he’s working on. But his latest subject may hold first place status for a while: a 500-million-year-old fossil from the wonderfully […]
The newly discovered record of so-called protosteroids was shown to be surprisingly abundant throughout Earth´s Middle Ages.
Visually striking layers of burnt orange, yellow, silver, brown and blue-tinged black are characteristic of banded iron formations, sedimentary rocks that may have prompted some of the largest volcanic eruptions […]
A new discovery by scientists at the University of Bristol changes ideas about the origin of branching in plants.
The discovery of an 80-million-year-old fossil plant pushes back the known origins of lamiids to the Cretaceous, extending the record of nearly 40,000 species of flowering plants including modern-day staple […]
