Traces of organic material found in fossil feathers are remnants of pigments that once gave birds their color, as per researchers whose research results are published online this week in the journal Biology Letters. Their findings open the potential to depict the original coloration of fossilized birds and their ancestors, the dinosaurs........

Hidden away in museums for more that 100 years, some recently rediscovered flatfish fossils have filled a puzzling gap in the story of evolution and answered a question that initially stumped even Charles Darwin. All adult flatfishes--including the gastronomically familiar flounder, plaice, sole, turbot, and halibut--have asymmetrical skulls, with both eyes located on one side of the head. Because these fish lay on their sides at the ocean bottom, this arrangement enhances their vision, with both eyes constantly in play, peering up into the water........

View a video interview with researcher John Alroy of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. Diversity among the ancestors of such marine creatures as clams, sand dollars and lobsters showed only a modest rise beginning 144 million years ago with no clear trend afterwards, according to an international team of researchers. This contradicts previous work showing dramatic increases beginning 248 million years ago and may shed light on future diversity........

If you are curious about Earth's periodic mass extinction events such as the sudden demise of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, you might consider crashing asteroids and sky-darkening super volcanoes as culprits. But a new study, published June 15, 2008, in the journal Nature, suggests that it is the ocean, and in particular the epic ebbs and flows of sea level and sediment over the course of geologic time, that is the primary cause of the world's periodic mass extinctions over the past 500 million years........

In today's fast-paced, technologically advanced world, people often take the innovation of new technology for granted without giving much thought to the trial-and-error experimentation that makes technology useful in everyday life. When the "cutting-edge" technology of the bow and arrow was introduced to the world, it changed the way humans hunted and fought. University of Missouri archaeologists have discovered that early man, on the way to perfecting the performance of this new weapon, engaged in experimental research, producing a great variety of projectile points in the quest for the best, most effective system........

More than 30 years ago, when Northwestern University chemist Richard Van Duyne developed a powerful new sensing technique, he never thought he would be using it to learn more about treasures in the Art Institute of Chicago's collection -- including a watercolor recently featured in the museum's exhibition "Watercolors by Winslow Homer: The Color of Light"........

team of forensic researchers at the University of Copenhagen has studied human remains found in two ancient Danish burial grounds dating back to the iron age, and discovered a man who appears to be of arabian origin. The findings suggest that human beings were as genetically diverse 2000 years ago as they are today and indicate greater mobility among iron age populations than was previously thought. The findings also suggest that people in the Danish iron age did not live and die in small, isolated villages but, on the contrary, were in constant contact with the wider world........

New evidence, more questions. That's the thumbnail of the first new data reported in 10 years from Monte Verde, the earliest known human settlement in the Americas. Evidence from the archaeological site in southern Chile confirms Monte Verde is the Americas earliest known settlement and is consistent with the idea that early human migration occurred along the Pacific Coast more than 14,000 years ago, but questions remain about just how rapidly that migration occurred........

Tiny marks on the teeth of an ancient human ancestor known as the andquot;Nutcracker Manandquot; may upset current evolutionary understanding of early hominid diet. Using high-powered microscopes, scientists looked at rough geometric shapes on the teeth of several Nutcracker Man specimens and determined that their structure alone was not enough to predict diet........

Researchers have put more meat on the theory that dinosaurs' closest living relatives are modern-day birds. Molecular analysis, or genetic sequencing, of a 68-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex protein from the dinosaur's femur confirms that T. rex shares a common ancestry with chickens, ostriches, and to a lesser extent, alligators........

While waiting for colleagues at a small natural history museum in the state of Chiapas, Mexico last year, Cornell paleontologist Greg Dietl chanced upon a discovery that has helped rewrite the evolutionary history of crabs and the shelled mollusks upon which they preyed. In a museum display case he recognized a 67- to 69-million-year-old fossil from the Late Cretaceous period of a big crab with an oversized right claw. Such crabs with claws of different sizes were not known to exist until the early Cenozoic era, about 20 million years later. Aside from being larger than most known Late Cretaceous crabs (about the size of today's Florida stone crabs) and having asymmetrical claws, this ancient crab also sported a curved tooth on the movable finger of the larger right claw. This was another specialized adaptation that paleontologists thought developed millions of years later for peeling snail shells open........

New geological evidence indicates the Grand Canyon may be so old that dinosaurs once lumbered along its rim, as per a research studyby scientists from the University of Colorado at Boulder and the California Institute of Technology. The team used a technique known as radiometric dating to show the Grand Canyon may have formed more than 55 million years ago, pushing back its assumed origins by 40 million to 50 million years. The scientists gathered evidence from rocks in the canyon and on surrounding plateaus that were deposited near sea level several hundred million years ago before the region uplifted and eroded to form the canyon........

Paleontologists from the University of Rennes (France) and the ESRF have found the presence of 356 animal inclusions in completely opaque amber from mid-Cretaceous sites of Charentes (France). The team used the X-rays of the European light source to image two kilogrammes of the fossil tree resin with a technique that allows rapid survey of large amounts of opaque amber. At present this is the only way to discover inclusions in fully opaque amber........

I''ve been a little lax keeping up with paleontology these days, despite my daughter''s frequent reminder that I''ve yet to make the hadrosaur T-shirts she''s been asking for. Last month A Hadrosuarian dinosaur was found in the Coahuila desert of Mexico:

You can learn more about theVelafrons coahuilensis HERE and HERE.

Now this month they''ve uncovered another skull in that same area, this of a creature similar to triceratops. The expectation is that several other new species may be found.

I think a lot of us in who aren''t in the sciences tend to loose track of the .........

An international group of researchers, led by Fiona Marshall, Ph.D., professor of anthropology in Arts and Sciences, has found evidence for the earliest transport use of the donkey and the early phases of donkey domestication, suggesting the process of domestication may have been slower and less linear than previously thought........

CHICAGOImagine future archaeologists trying to understand Illinois, California or New York based on a few excavations in each of those states. They might excavate small areas in city centers, since those sites would probably be the first ruins they would come across. Meanwhile, the archaeologists they might fail to notice or study farms, suburbs, shopping malls, canals and airports........

A 40,000-year-old tooth has provided researchers with the first direct evidence that Neanderthals moved from place to place during their lifetimes. In a collaborative project involving scientists from the Gera number of, the United Kingdom, and Greece, Professor Michael Richards of the Max Planck institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Gera number of and Durham University, UK, and his team used laser technology to collect microscopic particles of enamel from the tooth. By analysing strontium isotope ratios in the enamel - strontium is a naturally occurring metal ingested into the body through food and water - the researchers were able to uncover geological information showing where the Neanderthal had been living when the tooth was formed (Journal of Archaeological Science, February 11th, 2008)........

A team of researchers, led by Stony Brook University paleontologist David Krause, has discovered the remains in Madagascar of what may be the largest frog ever to exist. The 16-inch, 10-pound ancient frog, scientifically named Beelzebufo, or devil frog, links a group of frogs that lived 65 to 70 million years ago with frogs living today in South America........

An intrepid archaeologist is well on her way to dislodging the prevailing assumptions of scholars about the people who built and used Maya temples. From the grueling work of analyzing the "attributes," the nitty-gritty physical details of six temples in Yalbac, a Maya center in the jungle of central Belize - and a popular target for antiquities looters - primary investigator Lisa Lucero is building her own theories about the politics of temple construction that began nearly two millennia ago........

Crayfish body fossils and burrows discovered in Victoria, Australia, have provided the first physical evidence that crayfish existed on the continent as far back as the Mesozoic Era, says Emory University paleontologist Anthony Martin, who headed up a study on the finds. "Studying the fossil burrows gives us a glimpse into the ecology of southern Australia about 115 million years ago, when the continent was still attached to Antarctica," says Martin, a senior lecturer in environmental studies at Emory and an honorary research associate at Monash University in Melbourne. During that era, diverse plants grew in what is today Antarctica and dinosaurs roamed in prolonged polar darkness along southern Australia river plains. The period is of particular interest to researchers since it is thought to bethe last time the Earth experienced pronounced global warming, with an average temperature of 68 degrees Fahrenheit - just 10 degrees warmer than today........