Why are there so many species of coral reef fish? According to a new study, it's because about 50 million years ago, some fish figured out how to bite food from hard surfaces.

In “The Story of Birds,” the familiar creatures in our skies and backyards are reintroduced as the last surviving dinosaurs.

A tiny ancient reptile just revealed the moment breathing as we know it began — and it changed life on Earth forever.

Oil seep hydrocarbons and oxygen-free mud protected not only bones but also delicate tissues such as skin and cartilage.

Human aging is not what natural selection failed to prevent. It is what happens when selection simply has nothing left to act ...

A remarkably preserved, mummified reptile from 289 million years ago is rewriting what we know about how animals first ...

A fossil fish skull, Macropoma gombessae, that sat unnoticed in a London museum for nearly 140 years has now changed fish ...

A rediscovered fossil reveals Eosphorosuchus lacrimosa, an ancient relative of crocodiles, with a powerful bite and unique ...

A reconstructed dinosaur skull reveals a new Triassic species and suggests early dinosaurs may have gone extinct in the ...

In most narratives, the story of evolution is the story of organisms emerging from the ocean and eventually populating the land. But for some species that evolution also involved a return trip. Dozens ...

Unusually well-preserved fossils have provided the earliest known evidence of a land vertebrate that could pump air in and out of its chest using muscles between the ribs—the same strategy used by ...