German palaeontologists have dug up the remains of nine turtle pairs that died while mating some 47 million years ago, sinking into poisonous waters while locked in a final embrace, a report said Wednesday.

The US government is suing to force an auction house to return the fossil of a dinosaur that roamed Mongolia 70 million years ago to the Asian country.

South African paleontologist Phillip Tobias, an internationally respected scientist associated with some of the world's most famous hominid fossil finds, died Thursday aged 86.

One of the heftiest dinosaurs that strode the Earth may have weighed as much as six buses less than thought, according to a new formula that will also place other dinos in a lower weight class.

Argentine experts have discovered the near-complete remains of a new species of Jurassic-era dinosaur that stood on its rear legs and had tiny arms, according to a leading paleontologist.

Argentine experts have discovered the near-complete remains of a new species of Jurassic-era dinosaur that stood on its rear legs and had tiny arms, according to a leading paleontologist.

The turtle is a closer relative of crocodiles and birds than of lizards and snakes, according to researchers who claim to have solved an age-old riddle in animal evolution.

The smallest-ever mammoth roamed Crete up to 3.5 million years ago, measuring some four feet (just over a metre) at the shoulder, the size of a baby elephant today, said a study published Wednesday.

Giant dinosaurs that roamed the Earth millions of years ago may have warmed the planet with the gas they produced from eating leafy plants, British scientists said on Monday.

Scientists said Monday a new fossil discovery suggested Australia's dinosaurs were cosmopolitan globe-trotters, unlike the "unique weirdos" of its current wildlife.

A university in Russia's Chechnya claimed on Tuesday to have found an unprecedented stash of giant fossilised dinosaur eggs in a remote mountainous area of the North Caucasus region.

The coelacanth, a "living fossil" fish that predates the dinosaurs, is some 17 million years older than previously thought, scientists have found.

Palaeontologists in China said on Wednesday they had found a bizarre species of giant feathered dinosaur that weighed as much as a car and was related to the Tyrannosaurus rex.

Conventional wisdom holds that during the Mesozoic Era, mammals were small creatures that held on at life's edges, but now scientists say at least one mammal group flourished.

US and Chinese researchers have found the oldest evidence of iridescent black feathers in Microraptor, a dinosaur the size of a small crow that perched in forest tree branches 130 million years ago.

Our ancestors made the evolutionary split with gorillas around 10 million years ago, but we still share a remarkable number of genes with the great ape, according to a groundbreaking study published on Wednesday.

Paleontologists have traced the origins of humans and other vertebrates to a worm that swam in the oceans half a billion years ago, said a study published Monday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The world's oceans are turning acidic at what could be the fastest pace of any time in the past 300 million years, even more rapidly than during a monster emission of planet-warming carbon 56 million years ago, scientists said on Thursday.

High levels of pollution may be turning the planet's oceans acidic at a faster rate than at any time in the past 300 million years, with unknown consequences for future sea life, researchers said Thursday.

The giant dinosaurs that roamed the world some 150 million years ago shared the planet with equally daunting parasites: blood-gobbling fleas that were up two centimetres (almost an inch) long.