Palaeontology is the study of prehistoric species, mostly ones that are extinct. It focuses primarily on fossil data, using a variety of physical, chemical and biological techniques to analyse them.

It’s not causing panic! in the fossil record, but a 430-million-year-old mollusk discovery in Britain is a source of excitement for some scientists.

Joseph Caputo is a former editorial intern for Smithsonian and now a freelance science writer and editor based in Boston, Massachusetts. Scientists at the Natural History Museum search for the ...

Feb. 7, 2025 — Researchers have analyzed the soft tissue from a fossilized plesiosaur for the first time. The results show that the long-necked marine reptile had both smooth and scaly skin ...

Feb. 10, 2025 — Evolution is traditionally associated with a process of increasing complexity and gaining new genes. However, the explosion of the genomic era shows that gene loss and ...