Ichthyosaurs represent a diverse clade of Mesozoic marine reptiles that rapidly adapted to fully aquatic lifestyles following the end-Permian mass extinction. Their streamlined, 'fish-like' body plan, ...

Our bones did not begin deep inside the body. They started in the skin, not long after the first complex animals took shape.

Viviparity, the live-bearing mode of reproduction, has evolved independently in several vertebrate lineages, including squamate reptiles and seahorses. In reptiles, evolutionary transitions from ...

The newly described Mirasaura grauvogeli from the Middle Triassic had a striking feather-like crest, hinting that complex skin appendages arose far earlier than previously believed. Its bird-like ...

"I'm stunned." says Per Ahlberg of Uppsala University, who coordinated the study; "A single track-bearing slab, which one person can lift, calls into question everything we thought we knew about when ...

For more than a century, biologists assumed that the bony plates embedded in the skin of lizards – like natural chain mail – ...

Body coverings such as hair and feathers have played a central role in evolution. They enabled warm-bloodedness by insulating the body, and were used for courtship, display, deterrence of enemies and, ...

MSRLSI copy gift of Dr. George R. Zug and signed by author VPAL copy gift of the author; signed by the author and inscribed for the NMNH Library "Over 300 million years ago, an early land vertebrate ...

A groundbreaking fossil discovery in northern Victoria, Australia, is shaking up paleontology. Fossilized footprints from the Carboniferous Period, around 359 million years ago, suggest that reptiles ...

A fossil found over two decades ago on England’s Jurassic Coast has proved to be one of the most significant discoveries of marine reptiles in recent times. The almost complete skeleton of a ...