From horseshoe crabs to crocodiles, some of these creatures have looked about the same for hundreds of millions of years.

Latimeria or Coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae Smith), A living fossil, the oldest known living lineage of Sarcopterygii (lobe-finned fish and tetrapods).© Openfinal/Shutterstock.com Nature craves ...

Scientists say a Chinese fossil site offers the first major look at life after the Sinsk mass extinction.

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about biodiversity and the hidden quirks of the natural world. Life on Earth began over four billion years ago, not long ...

Prehistoric animals are often pictured as distant fossils, yet a surprising number of species still walk, swim, and crawl across Earth with body plans that echo deep time. Strictly speaking, ...

Scientists at MIT have found compelling chemical evidence that Earth’s earliest animals were likely ancient sea sponges. Hidden inside rocks over 541 million years old are rare molecular “fingerprints ...

Cassowaries Judging by its giant, claw-like feet alone, it’s easy to see why people think this giant bird is directly ...

Why do some ancient animals become fossils while others disappear without a trace? A new study reveals that part of the answer lies in the body itself. The research shows that an animal's size and ...

WASHINGTONWASHINGTON — Our very ancient animal ancestors had tails. Why don’t we? Somewhere around 20 million or 25 million years ago, when apes diverged from monkeys, our branch of the tree of life ...

This football-sized creature could grind its teeth like a hard-core plant-eater, back before that was really a thing — and it ...

Ancient DNA shows an old Irish goat breed dates back to the Bronze Age, linking modern goats to animals raised in Ireland ...

Cat Mummy (Third Intermediate Period to Late Period, 780–390 BCE) and ibis mummy from the ibis cemetery at Abydos (Early Roman Period, 30 BCE–early 1st century CE) in ‘Soulful Creatures: Animal ...