ScienceDaily: Fossils & Ruins News

One of the great mysteries of late medieval history is why did the Norse, who had established successful settlements in southern Greenland in 985, abandon them in the early 15th century? The consensus view has long been that colder temperatures, associated with the Little Ice Age, helped make the colonies unsustainable. However, new research upends that old theory. It wasn't dropping temperatures that helped drive the Norse from Greenland, but drought.

Those who have visited the park may have asked themselves, 'Where does all the hot water come from?' A study now provides stunning subsurface images that begin to answer that question.

Spinosaurus is the largest predatory dinosaur known -- over two metres longer than the longest Tyrannosaurus rex -- but the way it hunted has been a subject of debate for decades. In a new paper, palaeontologists have taken a different approach to decipher the lifestyle of long-extinct creatures: examining the density of their bones.

The ancestors of many animal species alive today may have lived in a delta in what is now China, new research suggests.

Archaeologists show that a site in Belize was critical in studying the origins of the ancient Maya people and the spread of maize as a staple food.

Researchers have found that beetles first roamed the world in the Carboniferous and later diversified alongside the earliest dinosaurs during the Triassic and Jurassic.