Far before modern humans ever walked the Earth, our Homo erectus ancestors made arduous journeys to the present-day islands of Southeast Asia. Fossil remnants of H. erectus have been left all across this region, and now, two newly discovered skull fragments belonging to the species have added a new angle to their story. A study published in the journal Quaternary Environments and Humans reveals that the fossil remains were found after a marine sand extraction project in the Madura Strait, a stretch of water between the Indonesian islands of Java and Madura. By examining the fossils, archaeologists have opened a window into the lives of H. erectus who took advantage of low sea levels to spread across a now-submerged landmass 140,000 years ago. H. erectus Fossils on JavaAfter leaving Africa nearly 2 million years ago, H. erectus trekked all the way through Asia and eventually hit the Southeast Asian islands closer to 1.5 million years ago. Fast-forward to the late 19th century, and the first set of H. erectus fossils was found by Dutch scientist Eugène Dubois on Java, enshrined in archaeological history as the Java Man. But with Java surrounded by water in modern times, one may wonder, how did H. erectus land there in the first place? In the ancient past, this part of the world was much different than it is today. Millions of years ago, a landmass called Sundaland connected islands like Bali, Borneo, Java, and Sumatra. Sundaland was exposed during glacial periods when sea levels were low, forming a land bridge that paved the way for human migration flows at various points in history. This is how H. erectus and other species could reach Java. Rare Vertebrate FossilsThe new fossils shed light on Javanese H. erectus much later in their existence, around 140,000 years ago. Researchers involved with the study say that vertebrate fossils have never been found in the area that was once Sundaland, now submerged in the ocean. “This makes our discoveries truly unique,” said Harold Berghuis, an archaeologist at Leiden University, the Netherlands, in a statement. “The fossils come from a drowned river valley, which filled up over time with river sand. We have been able to date the material to approximately 140,000 years ago. That was the penultimate glacial period. Large parts of the northern hemisphere were covered by glaciers, and so much water on Earth was stored in ice caps that the global sea level was 100 metres lower than today.”The fossils show that H. erectus living on Java at the time dispersed throughout the lowlands of Sundaland when the sea level had receded enough. They would have traveled along river systems such as the Brantas and Solo Rivers, finding edible plants and shellfish. Read More: Who Was Homo Soloensis, the “Solo Man?”The Extinction of H. erectusThe researchers say that Javanese H. erectus hunted bovids, and potentially learned hunting practices through contact with more modern human species living on the Asian mainland. The final survivors of the entire H. erectus population were living in Java at the time of their death. Homo erectus soloensis, a subspecies of H. erectus, is believed to have lived along the Solo River from around 117,000 years to 108,000 years ago, marking the last known record of H. erectus. The extinction of the species may have occurred as a result of a changing climate that caused Java to morph from an open woodland environment into a rainforest.Article SourcesOur writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:Britannica. Java manJack Knudson is an assistant editor at Discover with a strong interest in environmental science and history. Before joining Discover in 2023, he studied journalism at the Scripps College of Communication at Ohio University and previously interned at Recycling Today magazine. #homo #erectus #crossed #ancient #land

36 fossil fragments from vertebrate animals were documented by researchers. Credit: Quaternary Environments and Humans Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. For years, archeologists assumed the ancient Homo erectus population that lived on present-day Java existed in general isolation from nearby island relatives. However, a pair of fossilized skull fragments recently found off the Javanese coast are helping experts recontextualize the lives of the region’s H. erectus populations as they existed around 140,000 years ago. According to a study published May 15 in the journal Quaternary Environments and Humans, life for the Javanese H. erectus wasn’t always as lonely as we thought. Today, Indonesia consists of multiple islands between Asia and Australia, but that hasn’t always been the case. Beginning roughly 2.6 million years ago, the larger area has occasionally existed during periods of lower ocean levels as a larger, unified lowland landmass known as Sundaland. While H. erectus fossils have previously been found on Java itself, none were known to exist further outward in areas like the Madura Strait, which separates the islands of Madura from Central Java. A: The Sunda Shelf of Southeast Asia, with the Indonesian archipelago. Box indicates the position of map B. B: Eastern Java, the Madura Strait, the Solo River, Surabaya and other sites mentioned in the text. Box indicates position of map C. C: The Madura Strait north of Surabaya, with the sand extraction area and the BMS land reclamation. Map data: GEBCO and ALOS / Credit: Quaternary Environments and Humans That all changed thanks to over 176.5 million cubic feet of sand. The massive amount of sediment was dredged over 2014 to 2015 as part of an Indonesia land reclamation project, but it soon became clear that the sand also contained valuable historical remains. Scouring the material ultimately yielded around 6,000 fossil specimens from ancient fish, reptiles, and mammals–including the unexpected pair of H. erectus skull fragments. According to Harold Berghuis, study co-author and an archeologist at Leiden University in the Netherlands, their team’s discoveries are “truly unique.” “The fossils come from a drowned river valley, which filled up over time with river sandapproximately 140,000 years ago,” he said in an accompanying statement. Berghuis described that era as the “penultimate glacial period.” Earth’s Northern Hemisphere was so populated with glaciers, that the global sea level averaged nearly 1,100 feet lower than it does today. Because of this, Sundaland in the time of H. erectus greatly resembled the African savannah of today—largely dry grassland broken up by major rivers surrounded by narrow strips of forests. “Here they had water, shellfish, fish, edible plants, seeds and fruit all year round,” said Berghuis. Sundaland also featured a variety of animals, including multiple species of elephants, rhinos, and crocodiles. Strikingly, the bones the team found even have evidence of butchery by H. erectus. “Among our new finds are cut marks on the bones of water turtles and large numbers of broken bovid bones, which point to hunting and consumption of bone marrow,” Berghuis added. While this contrasts with earlier Javanese H. erectus populations, it had previously been documented in more modern human species who lived on the Asian mainland. According to the study’s authors, this indicates that Sundaland’s H. erectus may have learned those techniques from them. “This suggests there may have been contact between these hominin groups, or even genetic exchange,” theorized Berghuis. #these #human #ancestors #werent #lonely

Horses migrated back and forth repeatedly between North America and Eurasia, during the Late Pleistocene. But when a warming environment flooded a land bridge, it cut off travel between the continents, leading to both the decline of the horses in North America and changes to the land caused by their absence, according to a report in the journal Science by an international team that includes 18 indigenous scientists.The team drew upon both tribal knowledge of environmental events as well as the cutting-edge scientific tools. The study both provides a glimpse of the horse’s history on two continents as well as ways to think about conservation in the future.Grazing and Roaming HorsesHorses, when unfenced, tend to graze in a flower petal pattern around a water source. When the food runs out, they move on to another area and repeat the process. Along the way, they do what horses do — fertilize the land. Horse droppings often contain seeds and attract bugs. Some seeds grow into plants. Some bugs attract animals. When the horse disappears from an area, this process stops.“In this way, the horse is not only responding to change, it is also actually part of the change,” says Yvette Running Horse Collin, a member of the Lakota Nation, a scientist at the University of Toulouse, France, and an author of the paper. “If provided the opportunity, you would find that horses today would also move great distances in response to changes in the environment. In doing so, they provide a great service to all life. Where the horse goes, other life follows.”Ancient Horse FossilsHorses were both agents and objects of change over the past 50,000 years. The scientific team analyzed genomes from 67 ancient horse fossils found across Beringia, Siberia, and continental North America, dated them with radiocarbon and isotopes, and compared the data to all known lineages.The study reveals a wider range of horse genetic diversity during the late Pleistocene period than we see today, as well as long, bi-directional transcontinental migration. For example, some lineages found in Siberian and Iberian fossils show genetic traces of North American horses.The study suggests that not only did the closing of the bridge between continents affect the North American horse population, but other effects of warming made an impact as well. As eras shifted from Pleistocene to Holocene, grasslands turned to wet, boggy tundra unsuitable for horses to graze and difficult for them to travel upon.Climate and Geological ChangeThe authors emphasize that the study shows the necessity of looking at whole systems, not just an individual species to understand the past impacts of climate and geological change. The same applies to future conservation efforts.“In order to have successful conservation efforts for the horse, you must also put in place successful conservation efforts for other forms of life," Collin says. “It is for this reason that one of the research outcomes of this study is to suggest the creation of corridors that would allow life to move — together — as needed."Some tribes involved in the study intend to put those concepts into practice in the Black Hills of South Dakota. They will provide scientific measures of those efforts and intend to share the results with the wider scientific community.Article SourcesOur writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:Before joining Discover Magazine, Paul Smaglik spent over 20 years as a science journalist, specializing in U.S. life science policy and global scientific career issues. He began his career in newspapers, but switched to scientific magazines. His work has appeared in publications including Science News, Science, Nature, and Scientific American. #ancient #horse #fossils #reveal #migration

OpinionMay 14, 20255 min readFederal Budget Cuts Would Sabotage NASA’s Plans to Find Alien LifeNASA’s astrobiology ambitions are at risk of collapsing under the White House’s proposed budget. But your voice can make a differenceBy Michael L. Wong An artist’s illustration of a potentially habitable exoplanet orbiting a red dwarf star. NASA's Goddard Space Flight CenterWe’ve never been so close to discovering life beyond Earth. Our generation could be the one that finds it—provided two essential ingredients exist. First, that there’s life out there. Second, that we’re willing to look.Alien life’s existence is outside our control, but the universe seems to encourage our attention. Many people rest their optimism about alien life on the remarkable fact that our cosmos is brimming with planetary possibilities. To date, we’ve discovered nearly 6,000 exoplanets, most of them around only the nearest of the Milky Way’s hundreds of billions of stars. That means all our astonishingly successful planet-hunting surveys have studied just a mere teardrop of a vast cosmic sea—and implies there are at least as many planets as stars in our galaxy alone, plus some 1025 worlds in the rest of the observable universe. Chances are we’re not alone—so long as the probability that planets spring forth life is not astronomically miniscule.Discovering alien life, on the other hand, rests squarely on us. For the first time in human history, we can meaningfully answer once-timeless questions. Countless generations before us could only ask “Are we alone?” as passive stargazers. Today our rockets reliably reach otherworldly destinations, our robotic emissaries yield transformative knowledge about our planetary neighbors, and our telescopes gaze ever farther into the heavens, revealing the subtle beauty of the cosmos.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.NASA has led the way on this work, but it now faces an existential threat in the form of short-sighted budget cuts proposed by the White House. If passed into law by Congress, these cuts would axe critical space missions, gut NASA’s workforce, and abandon one of the most captivating quests in all of science. Additional sweeping cuts planned for the National Science Foundation would be similarly ruinous for ground-based astronomy and a host of other endeavors that support NASA’s work at the high frontier.Led by NASA, for more than a half-century the U.S. has been building toward a golden age of astrobiology, a field of research the space agency helped invent. The groundwork was laid on Mars, beginning with the Viking missions of the 1970s and continuing into today, where the agency has “followed the water” to dried-up lakebeds. In 2014 NASA’s Curiosity rover uncovered clues pointing to an ancient, life-friendly Mars, and more recently NASA’s Perseverance rover has been caching promising rock samples for return to Earth. Researchers eagerly await their arrival, because if Mars ever did harbor life, then some of Perseverance’s specimens may well contain some sort of Martian fossils.Besides our own familiar Earth, Mars isn’t the only promising incubator of life around the sun. In the outer solar system, NASA’s Galileo probe and Cassini orbiter lifted the icy veils of Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus, respectively. Beneath thick shells of ice, both moons harbor global subsurface oceans, which could be teeming with bacterial or even macroscopic denizens. NASA’s Clipper spacecraft launched in 2024 and is hurtling toward Europa, where it will make close flybys of the moon to assess its habitability. The agency has developed concepts for follow-on missions to land on both worlds and taste the chilly chemistry there for the telltale signs of life.Every organism on Earth requires liquid water, but perhaps that’s not a strict requirement elsewhere. Astrobiologists speculate about “weird life” in Venus’s sulfuric acid clouds and in the liquid hydrocarbon seas of Saturn’s frigid moon Titan. NASA plans to visit each of these worlds with state-of-the-art spacecraft—two to Venus and one to Titan—in the 2030s.And then there’s the great expanse of exoplanets. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has furnished unprecedented data about exoplanet atmospheres, most of them hot and puffy—the easiest to observe. But the most alluring exoplanets for astrobiologists—those the size and temperature of Earth—are just beyond our sight. Currently, teams of scientists are conceptualizing NASA’s next great eye in space, the Habitable Worlds Observatory, whose mission is as its name suggests: to image and examine dozens of notionally Earth-like planets for the global exhalations of alien biospheres.Taken together, these recent developments mean we could be at the doorstep of the next Copernican revolution, the next paradigm shift, the next epoch of human discovery.But the president’s recently proposed budget for the 2026 federal fiscal year strikes NASA’s Science Mission Directorate with a devastating 47 percent cut. Many of the boldest, most transformative space missions will be on the chopping block if the proposal passes. It specifically defunds the Mars Sample Return project, a cancellation that would squander billions of dollars and decades of investment. It also cancels the upcoming missions to Venus, which would investigate how the only other Earth-sized planet in our solar system turned out so drastically different from our own. And it scraps the launch of the already-built Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, a project which among other things is a proving ground for imaging technologies essential to future exoplanet investigations; the loss of Roman would render prospects for the Habitable Worlds Observatory perilously dim. Also at grave risk are funding sources for brilliant early-career scientists working to make astrobiology’s future as bright as can be.NASA simply cannot continue its trend of breakthrough discoveries on only half its present budget. As talent departs the U.S. and organizational memory fades, brain drain will doom its global leadership in space science in what experts have called an “extinction-level event.”And because there is no profit-driven incentive for discovering life on a distant world, corporate entities cannot and will not fill NASA’s void. SpaceX is great at building rockets, not robotic geologists on wheels. Commercial rocket companies hone their success by reliably building the same product over and over again, but most every NASA exploration mission must do something new.A mentor of mine once described astrobiology as “a gateway drug to science.” Astrobiology invites anyone—regardless of age or background—to cultivate curiosity, creativity, humility and patience. It motivates collaboration across fields and across borders. Even if we never discover life beyond Earth, astrobiology would still offer humanity a profound gift, allowing us to marvel as never before at our existence on this lonely and precious blue-green dot.So, we must choose to do astrobiology. That means you, dear reader, have the power to influence this field’s fate. Whether through contacting elected officials, informing your friends and family about NASA’s precarious position, or simply sharing your love for space exploration, your actions can make a difference in humanity’s search for life in the universe.In the best of times, we have only a few opportunities per generation to launch revolutionary space missions, let alone ones that could forever change our sense of place in the cosmos—and perhaps even our destiny. Now we have just a fleeting moment to prevent a multigenerational disaster. If we fail, we’ll lose the future of astrobiology and all the insight it could bring.Worst of all, we wouldn’t even know what we’d be missing.This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are solely their own and not those of any organization they are affiliated with or necessarily those of Scientific American. #trumps #budget #cuts #would #sabotage

May 15, 20253 min readNewly Discovered Fossil Tracks May Rewrite Early History of ReptilesFossilized claw tracks discovered in Australia show that the animal group that includes reptiles, mammals and birds formed earlier than expectedBy Rita Aksenfeld & Nature magazine Illustration of an amniote animal thought to have left fossilized claw prints in Victoria, Australia. Marcin AmbrozikFossil claw prints found in Australia were probably made by the earliest known members of the group that includes reptiles, birds and mammals, according to a study published in Nature today. The findings suggest that this group — the amniotes — originated at least 35 million years earlier than previously thought.Early amniotes evolved to lay eggs on land, because they were encased in an amniotic membrane that stopped them drying out. Before this study, the earliest known amniote fossils had been found in Nova Scotia, Canada, and were dated to the mid-Carboniferous period, about 319 million years ago. The latest findings suggest that amniotes also existed in the early Carboniferous period, around 355 million years ago.“This discovery is exciting, and if the tracks have been interpreted the right way, the findings have important implications for our understanding of tetrapod evolution,” says Steven Salisbury, a palaeontologist at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.The tracksThe claw tracks were found in a sandstone block on the bank of the Broken River at Barjarg in the state of Victoria, by two co-authors of the paper who are not professional scientists. This area of the river is known as Berrepit to the Indigenous Taungurung people who own the land.The sandstone block is part of a larger structure that had already been dated to the early Carboniferous on the basis of radiometric and tectonic evidence. Fossilized tracks of aquatic invertebrates and fish found in the same layer were also dated to this time period.The Snowy Plains Formation trackway slab with footprints and trackways highlighted. Manusprints are shown in yellow; pesprints are shown in blue.Grzegorz NiedzwiedzkiThe three sets of tracks in the study have clear footprints with indentations from claws, a feature of reptiles but not of amphibians. “Having these hooked claws on the trackways indicates they’re definitely a reptile-like animal,” says John Long, a palaeontologist at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia.There are no marks of dragging bellies or tails, and the authors suggest that the amniotes that left the tracks were able to keep their bodies and tails off the ground while they walked on land. But Salisbury questions that interpretation, because it would mean the animals had developed sophisticated structures for complex locomotion, which would be surprising given how early they are. “It seems more likely that the tracks were made by an animal that was ‘punting’ in shallow water, rather than walking on land,” he says.Common ancestorUntil now, evidence suggested that the last common ancestor of modern amphibians and amniotes lived around 352 million years ago. But if the ancestors of reptiles existed during the early Carboniferous, their split from amphibians must have occurred even earlier, says Long. Dating by the team suggests that the groups diverged in the Devonian period, about 380 million years ago.To estimate the probable time of divergence, Long and his colleagues used several dating methods. One included geological evidence from radioactive decay in volcanic rock layers above and below the fossil tracks. They also used molecular phylogenetics, which compares similarities and differences in the DNA of living species to estimate their evolutionary relationships and how recently their last common ancestor lived.The discovery could also shift the origin of amniotes to the Gondwana landmass. This formed the southern portion of the Pangaea supercontinent and gave rise to multiple current landmasses, including Africa and Australia. Previously, the earliest known amniotes were found in North America, leading palaeontologists to think that the group originated in the Northern Hemisphere. But more evidence from Australian fossils is needed before definitively shifting their origin site, says Long. “Australia is a vast area with fewer palaeontologists on the ground,” Long says. “We’ve got a lot more unexplored fossil sites where new things like this keep turning up.”This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on May 14, 2025. #newly #discovered #fossil #tracks #rewrite

The Famous, Feathered Dinosaur Archaeopteryx Could Fly, Suggests New Study of a ‘Beautifully Preserved’ Fossil The Chicago Archaeopteryx features more soft tissue and delicate skeletal details than any known fossil of its kind, and paleontologists discovered it has a set of feathers key to flight in modern birds The Chicago Archaeopteryx, seen under UV light, shows soft tissues alongside the skeleton. Delaney Drummond Archaeopteryx—a small, feathered dinosaur that lived around 150 million years ago—changed how humans understand the world, “maybe more than any other fossil,” as Jingmai O’Connor, a paleontologist at Chicago’s Field Museum, tells the New York Times’ Asher Elbein. That’s because fossils of Archaeopteryx, which are considered by many to be the oldest known birds, “proved Darwin right” by confirming that all birds are dinosaurs, according to a Field Museum statement. Thanks to an exceptionally preserved and prepared fossil named the Chicago Archaeopteryx recently acquired by the Field Museum, O’Connor and her colleagues have revealed more crucial insight into the species—including that it likely could fly. They detailed their work in a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. As the Field Museum’s preparators worked on the pigeon-sized Chicago Archaeopteryx, they realized that the fossil included more soft tissues and delicate skeletal details than any other known Archaeopteryx specimen. From previous fossils, they already knew the dinosaur had asymmetric feathers, which are vital to creating thrust in modern, flying birds. But the hard slab of limestone around this specimen had also preserved a key layer of feathers called tertials that had never been documented before in Archaeopteryx. “It’s important that this is the first time these feathers have been seen,” John Nudds, a paleontologist at the University of Manchester in England who didn’t participate in the study, tells the Guardian’s Hannah Devlin. “These new feathers seen in this beautifully preserved specimen—as well as the asymmetric feathers—confirms it could fly.” An illustration shows an Archaeopteryx with tertial feathers that might have helped it to fly. Michael Rothman In modern birds, tertial feathers are crucial to flight, because they cover the space between the bird’s body and its wings. Without them, wings can’t generate lift. In fact, flightless feathered dinosaurs closely related to birds, but not quite birds themselves, didn’t have tertial feathers, according to the statement. Their wing feathers ended at their elbows. While paleontologists don’t know exactly when feathered, landbound dinosaurs gained the ability to fly, most scholars agree that Archaeopteryx is the earliest known bird. “People hypothesized thatprobably had tertials,” O’Connor tells Science News’ Carolyn Gramling. Not only does the Chicago Archaeopteryx finally confirm this hypothesis, but it also indicates that tertials could have played an important evolutionary role in the development of feathered flight, she adds. “Archaeopteryx isn’t the first dinosaur to have feathers, or the first dinosaur to have ‘wings.’ But we think it’s the earliest known dinosaur that was able to use its feathers to fly,” O’Connor says in the statement. That’s despite the fact that “by modern standards, it was a very poor flyer,” she adds to Science News. The Chicago Archaeopteryx is housed at the Field Museum. Delaney Drummond / Field Museum Other notable features the researchers documented include bones in the roof of the animal’s mouth, which provide insight into its skull; scales on the bottom of its toes, which suggest it still spent a lot of time on the ground; and soft tissue on its hands. This last feature indicates that “the third digit could move independently, supporting long abandoned claims from the ’90s that Archaeopteryx could use its hands to climb,” O’Connor explains to Gizmodo’s Isaac Schultz. The team was able to reveal so many telling details thanks to their meticulous fossil preparation, which they conducted with the help of CT scanning and ultraviolet light to make sure they didn’t mistake any part of the fossil for rock and accidentally remove it. A fossil collector discovered the Chicago Archaeopteryx sometime before 1990 in limestone deposits near Solnhofen, Germany, where all known Archaeopteryx fossils originate. It was privately owned until the Field Museum’s purchase. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday. #famous #feathered #dinosaur #archaeopteryx #could

The Pokémon Company has confirmed the Pokémon Fossil Museum is coming to North America in May 2026.If you're wondering what on earth the Pokémon Fossil Museum is, it's… well, it's exactly what it says on the tin. After its debut in Japan, this special exhibition, which compares fabricated Pokémon "fossils" with "ancient lifeforms found in real-world fossils," is coming to Chicago's Field Museum on May 22, 2026. It'll be the first time the exhibition travels beyond Japan."During your visit, you’ll see vibrant Pokémon models side by side with extinct lifeforms from the Field Museum’s collection — including scientific casts of Field Museum dinosaurs like SUE the T. rex and the Chicago Archaeopteryx next to Fossil Pokémon like Tyrantrum and Archeops," explained the museum. "How many differenceswill you spot, Trainers?"Pokémon Fossil Museum Virtual TourIf you're still too far away from both Japan and Chicago to visit, don't forget that The Pokémon Company and Toyohashi Museum of Natural History have made it possible to see the Pokémon Fossil Museum from the comfort of your own home. Pokémon fans can now take a virtual tour around the exhibit to see the collection of real and Pokémon fossils, from a tyrannosaurus to a Tyrantrum.In related Pokémon news, earlier today we reported that a man in the UK had been arrested after police discovered he was harboring a cache of stolen Pokémon cards worth £250,000. The hoard was discovered after Greater Manchester Police raided a home in Hyde, Tameside, on the outskirts of Greater Manchester. A police spokesman joked: "Gotta catch 'em all."Vikki Blake is a reporter, critic, columnist, and consultant. She's also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky. #pokémon #fossil #museum #bringing #real

The Pokémon Fossil Museum, a Japanese exhibition that pairs man-made Pokémon fossils with real-world ancient life forms, will make its international debut at Chicago’s Field Museum in 2026, the museum and The Pokémon Company International announced Wednesday. Younger fans who started their adventure in Paldea and OG Kanto fans alike can view real dinosaurs and ancient life forms alongside their Pokémon equivalents. Attendees will discover how Field Museum icons like SUE the T. Rex and the Chicago Archaeopteryx compare to Pokémon such as Tyrantrum and Archeops, while exploring how fossils are uncovered and studied in both the Pokémon universe and the real world. The exhibition features Pokémon “Professors,” the ever-adorable Excavator Pikachu complete with a cowboy hat, and Field scientists exploring fossils from both worlds. “Aligned with the Field Museum’s mission to connect us to the natural world, the Pokémon Fossil Museum will inspire visitors to make new discoveries about some of their favorite Pokémon while offering a pathway to science,” said Jaap Hoogstraten, head of exhibitions at the Field Museum, in a news release, “especially budding paleontologists.” You can see a Japanese-language tour of the Pokémon Fossil Museum exhibition in the video below for a sneak peek at what to expect. Created by Japan’s National Museum of Nature and Science and The Pokémon Company, Pokémon Fossil Museum is a traveling exhibition usually scheduled in museums throughout Japan. This year, Pokémon Fossil Museum is currently located at Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum until May 25. It will then move to Nagasaki City’s Dinosaur Museum from June 7 until Sept. 21. Its last stop will be the Tokushima Prefectural Museum in October. Pokémon Fossil Museum will open at the Field Museum on May 22, 2026. We asked the Field Museum when tickets will go on sale, and a representative told Polygon, “We have not yet announced when tickets will be available. Anyone interested in being the first to buy tickets can sign up for email updates on our website.” If interest in the Pokémon Fossil Museum is anything like the fervor associated with the Pokémon exhibition at Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum, which prompted some very bad behavior when scalpers realized they could sell museum-exclusive merchandise to hardcore Pokémon fans, you’ll want to make a plan to visit sooner rather than later. Let’s hope the Field Museum and The Pokémon Company have learned a few lessons since then, because the Japanese versions of the exhibit have some extremely cool merch. #pokémon #fossil #museum #coming #youre

Australia and South America weren’t always so separate. At one time, many millions of years ago, these two continents were connected, along with others, in the southern supercontinent of Gondwana. Gondwana was a warm, forested place — a perfect home for tree frogs. In fact, the supercontinent fostered the common ancestor of the Australian pelodryadid frogs and the South American phyllomedusid frogs that are still seen, stuck to leaves and branches, today. But when did this common tree frog ancestor appear, and when did it diverge into these two separate frog families?A new study published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology provides some answers. Identifying a new species of Australian tree frog from the Early Eocene around 55 million years ago, the study suggests that the Australian and South American tree frog lineages split apart at around that time, too, or even earlier than that. All in all, the study rethinks the timeline of tree frog evolution and suggests that these lineages are a lot older than traditionally thought.The Australian-South American Frog SeparationTo be sure, the new study isn’t the first to investigate the divergence of the Australian and South American tree frogs. By following the genetic transformations of these two families over time, prior molecular studies have shown, for instance, that the pelodryadids and the phyllomedusids split apart approximately 33 million years ago.The fossil record has supported that timing in the past, with the earliest Australian tree frog fossils previously appearing in Australia after 33 million years ago, in the Late Oligocene and the Early Miocene epochs about 26 and 23 million years ago. But the new species undermines this timeline, suggesting that the separation of Australian and South American tree frogs actually occurred around 55 million years ago at a minimum, or at least around 22 million years earlier than previously thought. The new species, named Litoria tylerantiqua, is now the earliest identified species of Australian tree frog there is. Represented by fossilized pelvic bones from the Murgon fossil site in Queensland, Australia, the pelodryadid species is approximately 55 million years old, or about 30 million years older than any other Australian tree frog found in the fossil record. “While molecular studies are important for understanding the evolutionary relationships of different groups of animals, these studies should be calibrated using knowledge from the fossil record,” said Roy Farman, the lead study author and a lecturer at the University of New South Wales, according to a press release. “In this case, the fossil record provides a more accurate time for separation of the southern world’s tree frogs.”Tree Frogs, Fossilized and PickledThree fossilized iliarepresent a new species of Australian tree frog, Litoria tylerantiqua.To confirm the species’ identification as a pelodryadid, the study authors compared the pelvises of the new species with the pelvises of pickled frogs, including Australian and South American tree frogs, from museums in Australia. “We were able to determine from the shape of the fossil ilia — one of three bones that make up each side of the pelvis — that this new Murgon species of frog is more closely related to the Australian tree frogsthan the South American tree frogs,” Farman said in the release. Though the structure of the pelvic bones from the new species was relatively simple to study, the structure of the bones from the pickled species was not. “We had a real problem at the start of this study,” Farman added in the release, because the bones of the pickled specimens were “invisible,” being obscured by the specimens’ soft tissues. “Museums understandably want to ensure these often unique or rare pickled specimens remain intact for molecular studies because DNA can be obtained from their soft tissues,” Farman said in the release. “This meant that instead ofthese specimens, we needed instead to make CT scans of them, enabling us to create 3D models of their otherwise invisible skeletons.”The new species is named after the Australian herpetologist Michael Tyler, who was famous for studying the fossil record of Australian frogs and toads. “It is only fitting to name Australia’s earliest tree frog inof a man who was a giant in Australian frog research,” Farman said in the release. Article SourcesOur writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:Sam Walters is a journalist covering archaeology, paleontology, ecology, and evolution for Discover, along with an assortment of other topics. Before joining the Discover team as an assistant editor in 2022, Sam studied journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. #fossils #show #that #these #ancient

Experts shined UV light on the Chicago Archaeopteryx to expose otherwise invisible soft tissues. Credit: Delaney Drummond / Field Museum Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Archaeopteryx represents a pivotal point in the grand evolutionary journey linking dinosaurs to their avian descendants. But paleontologists still have questions about the Jurassic era animal’s anatomy and behavior roughly 165 years after its discovery. One of the most pressing lingering mysteries is how Archaeopteryx managed to fly above its fellow feathered dinosaur relatives.  After more than two decades spent in a private collection, one of the most detailed and complete fossil sets arrived at the Chicago’s Field Museum in 2022. But before it made its public debut, experts spent a year preparing and analyzing the Chicago Archaeopteryx—and what they discovered is helping paleontologists understand what made the earliest avian dinosaur so special. The team explained their findings in a study published May 14 in the journal Nature. From the tip of its snout to the tip of its tail “When we first got our Archaeopteryx, I was like, this is very, very, very cool, and I was beyond excited,” Jingmai O’Connor, the Field Museum’s associate curator of fossil reptiles and paper lead author, said in an accompanying announcement. But despite his initial enthusiasm, O’Connor still had his doubts. “Archaeopteryx has been known for, I wasn’t sure what new things we would be able to learn,” he explained. “But our specimen is so well-preserved and so well-prepared that we’re actually learning a ton of new information, from the tip of its snout to the tip of its tail.” The examinations and preparation weren’t without challenges, however. One particular problem was differentiating between the specimen’s fossilized remains and its surrounding, nearly identically colored rock matrix. This is where CT scanning came in handy. “CT scanning was very important for our preparation process—it let us know things like, the bone is exactly 3.2 millimeters below the surface of the rock, which let us know exactly how far we could go before we would hit the bone,” said Connor, noting that this project represents the first time paleontologists have completed a CT scan on a complete Archaeopteryx. Fluorescent feathers All known Archaeopteryx remains have been excavated from a region of limestone deposits located about 100 miles east of Stuttgart in Solnhofen, Germany. Previous studies revealed the Solnhofen limestone fossils possess a unique chemical composition that causes their soft tissues to fluoresce. Knowing this, the team often also turned to UV lighting for extra help in delineating between rock and soft tissues easily missed by the human eye. These even included details as subtle as scales on the bottoms of Archaeopteryx’s toes. It’s not only its toes that provided valuable insights into the ancient dino-bird—paleontologists are particularly interested in its feet, hands, head, and wing feathers. For example, bones in the roof of its mouth aids experts in understanding the evolution of cranial kinesis, the feature found in modern birds that allows them to move their beak independently of their brain case. “That might not sound exciting, but to people who study bird evolution, it’s really important, because it’s been hypothesized that being able to evolve specialized skulls for different ecological niches might have helped birds evolve into more than 11,000 species today,” said O’Connor. Test flights The Chicago specimen also offered scientists a never-before-seen physiological detail that appears to finally answer a longstanding question: How could Archaeopteryxtake to the air? “This is actually my favorite part of the paper,” said O’Connor. “provides evidence that Archaeopteryx was using its feathered wings for flying.” The evidence comes in the form of tertials, a set of feathers located on Archaeopteryx’s very long upper arms. Without those tertials, it’s unlikely the animal could ever get airborne. “If you’re trying to fly, having a long upper arm bone can create a gap between the primary and secondary features of the wing and the rest of your body,” explained O’Connor. “If air passes through that gap, that disrupts the lift you’re generating, and you can’t fly.” Most modern birds solved this issue by evolving shorter appendages to accompany their tertial feathers. But even though Archaeopteryx possessed those long arm bones, it also had proportionately sized tertials. Many of its dinosaur relatives evolved feathers, but they stopped at the elbow and lacked the tertials necessary for flight. “That tells us that these non-avian dinosaurs couldn’t fly, but Archaeopteryx could,” said O’Connor. “Fly” is likely doing some heavy lifting there, however. Multiple studies suggest Archaeopteryx behaved less like a high-soaring falcon, and more like a chicken capable of gliding shorter distances. That said, the latest research also suggests these sizable feathers may have also served a role in “visual communication.” Regardless of Archaeopteryx’s aerial abilities, the Chicago specimen is continuing to reveal new details about present-day birds’ earliest origins. “Archaeopteryx isn’t the first dinosaur to have feathers, or the first dinosaur to have ‘wings,’” said O’Connor. “But we think it’s the earliest known dinosaur that was able to use its feathers to fly.” #feathered #fossil #shows #famed #dinosaur