cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7487509

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/23531

Australian and New Zealand scientists have unearthed the remains of ancient wildlife in a cave near Waitomo on Aotearoa's North Island, the first time a large number of million-year-old fossils have been found—including an ancestor of the large flightless Kākāpō parrot.

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What a title!

My son and I found this next to a reservoir in a super crumbly wall. We gave it to the rangers (we weren't allowed to keep, since it was on public land).

We also found this,but have no idea what it is:

I've asked a couple paleontologists and they also weren't sure.

Camarasaurus tooth found by my son while volunteering on a dig site on the Utah/Colorado border this summer.

The paleontologist on site said it looked like an adult as it's very worn/square. The blacker parts are likely the enamel.

Camarasaurus tooth found by my son while volunteering on a dig site on the Utah/Colorado border this summer.

The paleontologist on site said it looked like an adult as it's very worn/square. The blacker parts are likely the enamel.

The fossilised remains of two dinosaurs locked in combat have unleashed a fresh drama, suggesting diminutive specimens thought to be Tyrannosaurus rex teenagers could instead be separate, smaller species.

A near-complete skeleton found on Dorset's Jurassic coast has been identified as a new species of ichthyosaur, a type of prehistoric marine reptile that once ruled the oceans.

A newly described fossil reveals that leeches are at least 200 million years older than scientists previously thought, and that their earliest ancestors may have feasted not on blood, but on smaller marine creatures.

New research has uncovered a species of hook-toothed lizard that lived about 167 million years ago and has a confusing set of features seen in snakes and geckos—two very distant relatives. One of the oldest relatively complete fossil lizards yet discovered, the Jurassic specimen is described in a study, published today in the journal Nature, from a multinational collaboration between the American Museum of Natural History and scientists in the United Kingdom, including University College London and the National Museums Scotland, France, and South Africa.

The species was given the Gaelic name Breugnathair elgolensis meaning “false snake of Elgol,” referencing the area in Scotland’s Isle of Skye where it was discovered. Breugnathair had snake-like jaws and hook-like, curved teeth similar to those of modern-day pythons, paired with the short body and fully-formed limbs of a lizard.