Scientists have unearthed the remains of a Neanderthal whose life came to a brutal end 75,000 years ago when a sharpened wooden spear plunged into the individual’s chest in one of the earliest known examples of a possible homicide.

A neat, circular hole in the hominin’s shoulder blade suggested the weapon penetrated the chest, traveling through the lung and major arteries before punching the hole in the bone. It likely killed the Neanderthal instantly or shortly after, according to a study in the journal Scientific Reports published on Thursday.

But the archaeologists who excavated the new skeletal fragments from Shanidar Cave in Iraq say the fossils weave a complex tale of Neanderthal life and death, beyond what appeared to be deliberate violence.

During separate excavations in 2019 and 2022, the team found the Neanderthal’s scapula — a flat, triangular bone — preserved in 24 feet (7.5 meters) of rock and earth, along with a mostly complete right hand, two left ribs, a right rib fragment and seven teeth.

The Neanderthal, known as Shanidar A, was thought to have been about age 45 at the time of death, but archaeologists could not determine the individual’s sex.

The fatal wound was not the only injury the hominin sustained. One tooth found at the site was split, suggesting blunt-force trauma to the face.

However, the build-up of dental calculus over the tooth’s root canal suggested that the injury likely occurred earlier in life and the individual may have received care from other members of the group, such as the preparation of soft, mashed food that would have been easier to eat.

Previous research from the same site suggests that Neanderthals may have soaked and cooked meals of plants and legumes together.

“Surviving a blow that splits a tooth in this fashion, then continuing to live and eat for a period of at least a year and maybe more, would have required care and support from other Neanderthals,” said the study’s lead author Emma Pomeroy, an associate professor in the evolution of health, diet and disease at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology, in a news release.

“The remains of Shanidar A reflect the dual nature of so much of what we recognise as human. On the one hand, we have evidence of a terribly violent end.

On the other, this was clearly an individual who was cared for during their lifetime,” Pomeroy added in the press release.

The findings add to growing evidence of social support and care among Neanderthals. For example, a 2017 study on a fossil found in the same cave revealed a male Neanderthal who had been deaf, paralyzed in the arm and likely partially blinded from head trauma, yet he lived far into adulthood — about 50 to 60 years old — suggesting others may have cared for him.

A fossilized ear bone found at a site in Spain offered evidence in 2024 that Neanderthals may have cared for a child with Down syndrome, while another discovery in Siberia published in May suggested the extinct humans practiced a crude form of dentistry, potentially on each other.

See also: The study as it was published in the journal Palaeontology.

link to the notice:https://www.millon.com/actualites/un-dinosaure-aux-encheres

image by Narimane Chatar

so 3d volumetrics and gdi,in combination,are widely considered the best and most accurate method to estimate the body mass of animals.

ive seen plenty done for theropod dinosaurs. but ive not seen any done for a saber cat except for maybe randomdinos smilodon.

its not like its impossible to do it for sabertooth cats. Homotherium,smilodon,megantereon, and im sure more sabrecats have complete specimens known.

arguably sabertooth cats out of all animals could especially use volumetrics because almost every method to estimate their body mass is unreliable. even long bone regressions (considered the best) are hampered by the fact the dataset only includes modern day cats,which are very different in morphology than sabretooth cats. which probably makes regressions based off modern day cats questionable for sabertooth cats(look at other cases of failed proxies in regression making)

so why havent 3d volumetrics and gdi been done for sabertooth cats? it doesnt make much sense to me

“Terror of the South” ( acrocanthosaurus atokensis). NCNS, Raleigh NC

hi :) my boyfriends birthday is in a month, and i wanted to get him a spinosaurus tooth or two for his birthday, since it's his favourite dinosaur and i've read that their teeth are fairly common so they're within my budget. i'm just having some trouble finding reputable sites since i'm not really knowledgeable about this stuff.

they don't need to be particularly big or intact or have the root, since those are more expensive. i'd just like to be sure they're authentic. also i'm in the eu so preferably within the eu.

thanks!

This new species, named Yuezhuornis yangyuanensis, lived during the Late Jurassic period, 150–148 million years ago. It is represented by an almost complete specimen.

Discovered in the recently recognized Zhenghe Fauna of southeastern China by researchers from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Fujian Institute of Geological Sciences, the crow-sized fossil represents the earliest known example of flight loss in the evolutionary history of birds.

Yuezhuornis possessed a chimeric mix of older, more primitive and advanced anatomical features. It had closely packed, serrated teeth, which are typically found in deinonychosaurs but not birds. Most notably, Yuezhuornis possessed a hyperextensible second toe with a sickle-shaped claw, a characteristic feature of deinonychosaurs, including dromaeosaurids and troodontids.

As for its more advanced features, Yuezhuornis displays advanced birdlike pelvic and hindlimb structures. Comprehensive phylogenetic analysis consistently placed Yuezhuornis firmly within Avialae (the group containing modern birds and their closest extinct relatives), just crownward of Archaeopteryx and as a sister taxon to Zhengheornis.

Interestingly, the limb proportions of Yuezhuornis were similar to those of living terrestrial birds and some non-avialan paravians, suggesting a terrestrial, flightless lifestyle.

The discovery of a flightless, ground-dwelling bird from the Late Jurassic challenges the notion that aerodynamic selection was the dominant force shaping early avialan evolution. Instead, it suggests that some early birds followed evolutionary paths that did not favor flight, highlighting the remarkable ecological and morphological diversity that emerged during the early evolution of birds.

Art credit: King wang

Article link:https://phys.org/news/2026-10-early-birds-evolved-flight-jurassic.html

So I was reading the Wikipedia article on Pendraig, and I noticed the link to Syntarsus was “Syntarsus”. And the article for it is titled Coelophysis? kayentakatae. And apparently, “Syntarsus” is an invalid genus because it’s a junior synonym for a bug?

Here’s where I’m confused. I thought the whole point of junior synonyms is that they were given to already named animals, and because of the “first come first serve” rule, they’re invalid. Wouldn’t that mean that they can be reused for proper genera? So “Coelophysis? kayentakatae” should be Syntarsus kayentakatae? Or are junior synonyms locked out of being ever properly used, all because the original assigners were too stupid to check the availability?

I’ve noticed that almost all the Triceratops fossils in museums seem to be Triceratops sp., despite there being 2 known species. Is there a reason for this? Why is a Triceratops so difficult to identity species with?

Hi! I am from Oregon, I am very new to finding fossils, I have some great specimens of metasequoia and some maple seed/leaf fossils as well. I want to take my GF to Brian Booth Stare Park and was wondering what types of fossils I could find (obviously I wouldnt be taking any home since its a state park) but I know shark teeth and fossilized wood are common for the Oregon coast, just wondering if theres any fellow Oregon nerds who would be willing to help me out, thanks!!!

You may have seen the posts about the new Mega raptorin that was discovered in Britain. You were all perplexed as I was to find that there was no actual scientific paper attached just news reports and some supplementary material for some reason

Tom holtz on his Facebook confirmed that this was an embargo leak by the journalists. Essentially some journalists violated embargo and leaked the news.

This animal, which the team named Megacauda sungei and have described in the journal Nature, was a prize discovery. The remains were so intact that it was possible to determine that it was likely capable of chewing food and then swallowing it, and also suckling — traits that are shared by mammals.

Official Paper:

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article/13/10/260937/483607/A-new-megaraptoran-dinosaur-from-the-Lower?__cf_chl_rt_tk=hikq.XZyD8ZJ_T4_oWaXr3tgmIzI0abOXlQFgjFkRpU-1791943520-1.0.1.1-BkQLofh0Ynr1hc..2fNH1WqkYkBa41dgbNCT3SBEqN0

https://rs.figshare.com/articles/journal_contribution/Supplementary_materials_1_from_A_new_megaraptoran_dinosaur_from_the_Lower_Cretaceous_Wessex_Formation_UK_and_its_implications_for_theropod_evolution_and_biogeography/33256052?file=67549577 ~ Edited; now you can download the paper in pdf form for free

Edit: Another source with specimen's name NHMUK PV R6775 : https://www.nhm.uio.no/english/research/events/conferences/EAVP2024/eavp-abstracts-2024-volume-complete-final-(2).pdf.pdf)

Edit III: The Official Publication Sites and Others; The Independent was amongst them first hand. They even featured the Official Illustration.

The fossil was discovered as early as 1924 on the Isle of Wight, but its significance went unrecognized for nearly a century.

Now, a new analysis shows that the bone belongs to an early Megaraptor and fills an important gap in the history of these predatory dinosaurs.

A fossil from a museum collection that had gone unnoticed for nearly 100 years has been identified as a new species of dinosaur, “Invictibellatrix amberina.” Name Meaning: Unconquered Female Warrior.

It is considered the first definitive evidence of a Megaraptor in Europe. The predatory dinosaur was probably three to four meters long, likely had feathers, and hunted smaller animals using its powerful arms and claws up to 20 centimeters long. The CT scans of the skull bone made it possible to identify the specimen.

The discovery suggests that megaraptors were more widely distributed across Eurasia during the Early Cretaceous than previously thought.

I've recently been reading Tyler Greenfield's 2026 paper, Further revisions to the catalogue of skeletal material from megatooth sharks, with a response to Sternes et al. (2024), and I've become increasingly interested in one particular piece of evidence he uses to support his proposed sister-group relationship between Otodontidae and Lamnidae: the isolated rostral cartilages recovered from the early Pliocene Yorktown Formation at Lee Creek Mine, North Carolina. I think these fossils deserve considerably more scrutiny, particularly regarding their taxonomic identification, inferred developmental stage, and supposed phylogenetic significance.

For some context, 6 isolated, mineralized rostral specimens from Yorktown were originally assigned to Lamna sp. by Purdy et al. (2001). However, Mollen and Jagt (2012) reexamined them and found that, despite their general resemblance to modern Lamna, they differed significantly in the arrangement of their lateral rostral cartilages. Whereas the lateral cartilages of Lamna abut before joining the rostral node, those of the Yorktown specimens run nearly parallel and join the node individually.

Consequently, Mollen and Jagt recommended removing Lamna from the Lee Creek faunal list pending more diagnostic evidence. They instead suggested that the fossils probably belonged to extinct lamnids or otodontids, identifying Cosmopolitodus/Carcharodon hastalis, Otodus megalodon, and Parotodus benedenii as possible candidates.

The crucial point is that none of these rostra were found associated with diagnostic teeth. Their species-level identification remains unresolved.

Paleontologist Tyler Greenfield proposed an otodontid attribution and argued that their robust, mineralized, roughly cylindrical rostral cartilages resemble those of modern Lamna. His conclusion is that this combination of characters, including the absence of fenestrae and appendices, could represent a synapomorphy linking Otodontidae and Lamnidae in a clade he calls Lamnoidea.

However, I think there are several important problems with drawing that conclusion.

First, the remarkably small reconstructed size of the Yorktown specimen raises questions about ontogeny.

In a 2021 reconstruction published on his blog, Greenfield scaled one of the rostral fossils, USNM 474998, to a shark approximately 1.46 meters long. If it belonged to O. megalodon, he suggested it would have represented a late-stage fetus. Alternatively, if it belonged to the smaller Parotodus, it might have represented a newborn.

The problem is that published megalodon birth-size estimates are considerably larger. Shimada et al. (2021) initially estimated a birth length of approximately 2 meters, only to revise it upwards to approximately 3.6–3.9 meters. Under either reconstruction, a 1.46-meter megalodon would have been prenatal.

That raises an interesting developmental question: would a fetal megalodon of that size already have possessed such robust, extensively mineralized rostral cartilage?

Studies of elasmobranch skeletal development generally document increasing mineralization during ontogeny. For example, Seidel et al. (2016) found that mineralized tesserae grow larger and become more developed as round stingrays mature. Prenatal rostral mineralization certainly exists in sharks, as demonstrated in embryonic bonnetheads by Byrum et al. (2024), but that doesn't establish the timing or extent of mineralization in fetal otodontids.

I don't think the fetal-megalodon interpretation is anatomically impossible. My point is that it seems to require independent evidence that this degree of mineralization could develop at such an early stage. The 1.46-meter figure is also a reconstruction, not a direct measurement of a complete fossil animal. Its accuracy depends on the body proportions used to scale the isolated rostrum.

Second, why should we favor fetal megalodon over a newborn Parotodus benedenii or Carcharodon hastalis?

Both alternative species are documented from the Yorktown Formation through teeth, and the actual rostral anatomy of neither is securely known.

Parotodus was considerably smaller than megalodon, making a newborn around 1.5 meters biologically plausible. Meanwhile, C. hastalis is widely interpreted as part of the evolutionary lineage leading to modern great whites, with C. hubbelli representing a transitional form. Modern great whites are generally around 1.2–1.5 meters long at birth, so a comparably sized newborn hastalis is also conceivable.

Of course, neither proposed neonatal length is directly established for these extinct species.

What interests me particularly is that C. hastalis might have possessed rostral anatomy unlike that of modern great whites, because even in extant genera, rostral anatomy does differ. Mollen et al. (2012) documented a gradient in overall rostral calcification: Lamna > Isurus > Carcharodon. They also identified significant differences in the shape of the rostral node, cartilage arrangement, and cross-sectional morphology. Given that C. hastalis is generally considered ancestral or closely related to the lineage leading to C. carcharias, couldn't it have retained more extensive rostral mineralization that was subsequently reduced or modified in modern great whites?

Third, even if the Yorktown rostra genuinely belonged to an otodontid, I'm not convinced that their resemblance to Lamna necessarily establishes an exclusive sister-group relationship.

To me, there seems to be 3 evolutionary interpretations: the character combination could represent a synapomorphy of Otodontidae and Lamnidae, a more ancient lamniform condition retained by both lineages, or convergent evolution.

Greenfield makes a legitimate anatomical argument that the heavily mineralized rostral structures of Alopias superciliosus differ from the proposed otodontid–lamnid condition. He specifically points to differences in the lateral cartilages, cross-sectional shape, appendices, and distribution of mineralization. HOWEVER, I don't think establishing that Alopias possesses a different configuration tells us whether the condition in Lamna is ancestral or derived.

Suppose an early lamniform ancestor had robust, cylindrical rostral cartilages, and subsequent lineages independently modified, flattened, or reduced those structures. If it was this scenario, the morphology of modern Alopias vulpinus, Isurus, and Carcharodon could reflect derived modifications, while Lamna and an otodontid retained aspects of the older condition.

Alternatively, the resemblance could be convergent.

Importantly, Lamna occupying an early-branching position relative to Isurus and Carcharodon does not automatically mean that its anatomical condition is ancestral, and I think considering it's extraordinary specialization towards subpolar waters hints at that. Living early-branching lineage can possess its own specializations. Within Lamnidae, the robust rostrum of Lamna could either represent an ancestral condition subsequently reduced in the Isurus–Carcharodon lineage or a derived increase in robusticity along the Lamna lineage.

Without sufficiently informative outgroups, how do we distinguish those possibilities?

Fourth, the developmental stage of the Yorktown specimen potentially complicates the phylogenetic argument further.

We know from comparative work on living lamnids that rostral morphology can change during growth. In Lamna nasus, for example, the arrangement and curvature of the lateral rostral cartilages change with ontogeny.

If the Yorktown material belonged to a newborn Parotodus, juvenile C. hastalis, or fetal megalodon, how confidently can we assume that its morphology represents the mature rostral condition of that species?

This strikes me as important because Greenfield is using the morphology to infer the evolutionary relationships of entire families. Ideally, we'd want to compare equivalent developmental stages, or at least establish which rostral characters remain stable throughout ontogeny.

Greenfield's proposed Lamnoidea originally drew support not only from rostral morphology but also from regional endothermy and reconstructions of early otodontids such as the Lebanese Cretalamna material. In his 2026 paper, he acknowledges that regional endothermy is probably not an exclusive synapomorphy of Lamnoidea and suggests that it may instead represent an ancestral lamniform condition. Recent oxygen-isotope studies have also produced evidence consistent with ectothermy in Late Cretaceous North American Cretalamna, contrasting with evidence for elevated body temperatures in Cretoxyrhina. Although those studies did not sample the Lebanese specimen directly, they raise interesting questions about how safely we can infer otodontid physiology or ancestry from resemblance to modern Lamna.

A streamlined, fast-swimming body plan is not itself proof of regional endothermy or a particular sister-group relationship.

Even granting an otodontid identification, it seems to me that we would still need to establish whether the relevant anatomical features were ancestral, derived, or convergent. And without resolving the taxonomic identification and developmental stage, that task becomes even more difficult.

My central question is this: what positive anatomical evidence allows us to favor an otodontid identification over an extinct lamnid such as C. hastalis, and what evidence demonstrates that the shared rostral characters are derived synapomorphies rather than retained ancestral traits?

I'd be especially interested in hearing from people familiar with lamniform cranial anatomy, ontogenetic mineralization, or the Yorktown shark assemblage. Is there research on the timing of rostral mineralization in embryonic and newborn lamnids that could help evaluate these possibilities?

Relevant literature:

• Greenfield (2026), Further revisions to the catalogue of skeletal material from megatooth sharks
• Greenfield (2021), Megatooth shark skeletal specimens — includes the original 1.46 m reconstruction
• Mollen & Jagt (2012), The taxonomic value of rostral nodes of extinct sharks
• Mollen et al. (2012), Comparative morphology of rostral cartilages in extant mackerel sharks
• Sternes et al. (2024), appendix discussing Lamnoidea
• Shimada et al. (2025), Reassessment of the possible size, form, weight, cruising speed, and growth parameters of Otodus megalodon
• Seidel et al. (2016), Ultrastructural and developmental features of the tessellated endoskeleton of elasmobranchs
• Ehret et al. (2012), Origin of the white shark Carcharodon

If you're going to hijack paleontology to sell your cars, at least do it right. Ichthyostega wasn't around 500mya, and wasn't the first creature to be "brave enough" to crawl on to land. I am aware it's ridiculous how much this erks me, but surely tiktaalik is the better mascot, I mean we aren't even descended from "ichy" here?

A new fossil discovery has extended the temporal range of a family of Blemnites by 20 million years.

Two fossilized rostra of a new species and genus, Wyoteuthis linsterorum, were discovered in the Sundance Formation, which records a shallow seaway that covered parts of the western United States.

Comparison to other contemporary Blemnites show that this new species was triple the diameter, at 6cm thick, making it one of the thickest recorded Blemnites of the region.

Analysis of the rostrum’s shape, the angle of its internal cavity, and fine grooves and striations near its tip, led to researchers classifying it as a member of the family Megateuthididae, which was previously believed to have died out 166 million years ago.

This suggests that the waters of the northeastern pacific may have acted as the final stronghold of this group of Blemnites. The scientists suggest that Wyoteuthis linsterorum may have been highly specialized, or may have lived mainly along the open-ocean shelf and only occasionally wandered into the Sundance Sea.

Art credit :Jason poole

Article link:https://www.sci.news/paleontology/wyoteuthis-linsterorum-15123.html

Reposted with correct name. Thank you for the catch on the ID, Sea-Profit3706.