ScienceDaily: Fossils & Ruins News

A study finds that there is a 50 percent chance that the common ancestor of birds and dinosaurs had bright colors on its skin, beaks and scales, but 0 percent chance that it had bright colors on its feathers or claws.

A large earthquake off the coast of south-central Chile in 1737 may have caused a substantial tsunami that was absent from historical records. Historical records are used to predict how often tsunamis are likely to occur in a region in the future. Until now, it was previously believed that tsunami-causing earthquakes had occurred in this area of Chile three times since the 1570s, including after the magnitude 9.5 earthquake of 1960. However, this discovery of an unrecorded tsunami means that tsunamis may have struck the Chilean coast more frequently than previously believed. This means the average time between historical tsunami occurrences could be significantly reduced, to an average of 130 years.

Rising as high as 20 feet, ancient stone monoliths in southern Ethiopia are 1,000 years older than scientists previously thought, according to a new study. A research team used advanced radiocarbon dating to determine the often phallic-shaped monoliths, or stelae, at the Sakaro Sodo archeological site in Ethiopia's Gedeo zone were likely created sometime during the first century A.D.

Researchers have revealed the soft tissues of a 165-million-year-old ammonite fossil using 3D imaging.