For decades, the sandstone in central Australia yielded tantalising segments of some sort of fossil fish. Now, we have finally pieced together a complete picture of this remarkable species.
An artist’s impression of the new pterosaur species, Cheoptera
Mark Witton/Natural History Museum
While NASA rovers on the surface of Mars look for hints of life, researchers back on Earth are studying ‘echoes of life’ from ancient basins – hoping that the two sites might be similar.
Artist reconstruction of Alienacanthus malkowskii, a 365-million-year-old placoderm fish from Poland and Morocco.
(Beat Scheffold & Christian Klug)
What paleontologists had believed to be spiny fins turned out to be elongated jaws. New examination of fossils that were 365 million years old revealed a fish with a remarkable lower jaw.
Ediacaran life as imagined by scientists in the 1980s.
Ryan Somma/Wikimedia
Fossil traces of the oldest complex ecosystems are found in precious few locations worldwide, including Australia. Newly dated fossils from Wales now join the ranks.
Artist’s impression of a group of Gigantopithecus blacki in a forest in southern China.
Garcia/Joannes-Boyau (Southern Cross University)