paleontology
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Utah Officials Drove Over Important Fossil Site With a Backhoe, Paleontologists Say
Paleontologists and locals familiar with a fossil site in Moab, Utah claim that a backhoe drove over dinosaur footprints and other animal trackways, damaging or destroying them. The Utah Bureau of Land Management, which is responsible for protecting Mill Canyon Track Site, has said that its recent dismantling of a wooden boardwalk there caused no…
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120-Million-Year-Old Footprints Reveal a Scary-Fast Dinosaur
Paleontologists in Spain have analysed two sets of fossilized dinosaur footprints and calculated the animals’ speeds at the times the prints were made. The team found the dinosaurs that made the prints could move at nearly 45 km per hour, a speed that equals that of the world’s fastest humans.
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16-Million-Year-Old Tardigrade Found Preserved in Amber
Though it proved difficult to spot, scientists managed to find an itsy-bitsy tardigrade trapped inside a chunk of Dominican amber. The unprecedented discovery of an ancient tardigrade is shedding new light onto this remarkably durable group of microscopic animals.
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How Do We Know How Old Fossils Are?
Paleolithic hunters built mammoth traps in what is now Mexico some 14,700 years ago. An unknown sea creature left footprints in sand some 550 million years ago, making them the oldest known footprints on Earth. The mysterious Denisovan humans reached southeast Asia 160,000 years ago, as evidenced by a jawbone found on the Tibetan Plateau.…