ScienceDaily: Fossils & Ruins News

New research shows that the oldest ancestors of the group of animals that includes octopuses and vampire squids had not eight but 10 arms. The study, which describes a new species of vampyropod based on a 328-million-year-old fossil that had not been previously described, pushes back the age of the group by nearly 82 million years.

An ancient Mexican city, Monte Albán, was the biggest settlement in the region and lasted for more than a thousand years. Some hypotheses for the city's success are that people were drawn to fertile farmland in the area, or were forced to move there by powerful rulers. This new study challenges those ideas by showing that the land isn't especially good for farming, and the society didn't have the highly concentrated wealth and power that would come with a powerful ruler forcing people to move there. Instead, the city had a more collective form of government that could have attracted people to the city.

The rapid development of fauna 540 million years ago has permanently changed the Earth - deep into its lower mantle. A team has now found traces of this development in rocks from this zone.

A new study provides vital clues on when killer whales began feeding on other marine mammals.

A new study asks what drove prehistoric humans to collect and recycle flint tools that had been made, used, and discarded by their predecessors. After examining flint tools from one layer at the 500,000-year-old prehistoric site of Revadim in the south of Israel's Coastal Plain, researchers propose a novel explanation: prehistoric humans, just like us, were collectors by nature and culture.

A new study reveals that the iconic extinct Megalodon or megatooth shark grew to larger sizes in cooler environments than in warmer areas.