The oceans of the Cretaceous usually bring to mind apex predatory vertebrates such as Mosasaurus, plesiosaurs, giant fishes, and large sharks. These animals held an advantage in predation and competition through immense body size, powerful locomotion, sharp sensory abilities, and advanced cognition. In contrast, invertebrates across this long interval have often been regarded as smaller prey animals, with many groups gradually developing hard external shells as protection aga

Archaeopteryx was an early-diverging member of Avialae, known from fossils preserved in the Solnhofen Limestone of southern Germany. It lived roughly 150 million years ago, during the Tithonian stage of the Late Jurassic, in a warm, predominantly dry archipelago that was seasonally wet. Its habitat was probably a semi-arid landscape of bushy conifers, cycads, ferns, and low vegetation. For Archaeopteryx, flight, climbing, terrestrial locomotion, and feeding behavior all have

Prior to the Carboniferous, insects were terrestrial arthropods lacking both flight muscles and articulated wing joints. With the onset of the Carboniferous, winged insects began to appear, and the earliest known fossil representative is Delitzschala bitterfeldensis, a member of the extinct order Palaeodictyoptera from the Serpukhovian stage, approximately 325 million years ago. Reconstruction of the hypothetical ancestral winged insect（Courtesy of A.G. Ponomarenko） Fossil of

Haolong dongi is an iguanodontian dinosaur discovered in the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation of western Liaoning, China. The generic name means "spiny dragon," while the species name honors Dong Zhiming, a pioneering figure in Chinese dinosaur research. The holotype specimen, AGM 16793, is housed in the Anhui Geological Museum. The skeleton measures approximately 2.45 meters in length. The absence of fusion between the vertebral centra and neural arches, along with incomple

Tyrannosauroidea is a carnivorous clade of theropod dinosaurs that ranged from the Middle Jurassic to the end of the Cretaceous. Its members varied greatly in body size, from animals only about 2 meters long to giants approaching 12 meters, and included Tyrannosaurus rex and its closest relatives. Tyrannosauroids are often recognized by their massive skulls, powerful bodies, and shortened forelimbs, yet their teeth preserve an equally rich record of their biology. Since the m

The transition from the Devonian to the Carboniferous marks a period of profound upheaval in vertebrate history. During this interval, sarcopterygians underwent major environmental disruptions and ecological reorganization, accompanied by far-reaching morphological changes that ultimately set the stage for the emergence of vertebrates on land. Sarcopterygians include modern coelacanths and lungfishes, as well as all tetrapods, and their evolutionary history extends back to th

Misidentifications and subsequent corrections are not rare in paleontology; they are, in fact, a fundamental part of how the field advances. A fossil discovered in 2025 from the Romualdo Formation of Brazil and named Bakiribu waridza provides a striking example. This specimen was initially described as a pterosaur and even interpreted as the regurgitated remains of prey expelled by a predator. However, with more detailed comparative and anatomical analyses, this conclusion w

It has long been assumed that more primitive stem tetrapods declined rapidly and vanished following the environmental upheavals at the end of the Carboniferous, with two major lineages—temnospondyl amphibians and amniotes—rising to replace them. However, a fossil from the early Permian of Brazil, assigned to the species Tanyka amnicola, represents a Gondwanan stem tetrapod belonging to a lineage previously thought to have disappeared much earlier. Its persistence into a later

The red floodplain deposits around Salas de los Infantes, in the Province of Burgos, Spain, date to the late Barremian to early Aptian of the Lower Cretaceous. During this time, the Iberian Peninsula lay within the final stages of rift-related geological activity, where fluvial systems and floodplains intertwined to produce a highly variable depositional environment. These conditions contributed to a rich and diverse record of continental vertebrate fossils. Within this geolo

A fossil from the Mazon Creek Lagerstätte in Illinois, USA—Pohlsepia mazonensis—was once regarded as the oldest known octopus, and even pushed the origin of the entire octopod lineage back by more than 150 million years. However, with the advancement of analytical techniques, this conclusion has gradually come into question. Specimen of Pohlsepia mazonensis PE51727, part and counterpart（Image source：Clements T et al. (2026)， CC BY 4.0 ） This fossil was discovered within a sid