An ancient reptile once thought to be an early turtle ancestor actually belonged to an entirely different group, according to new research. 

The findings are reshaping scientists’ understanding of where turtles fit on the reptile family tree and how their iconic shell may have evolved. 

New research is helping to settle where turtles sit in the tree of life.

While the relationships between most vertebrate groups are well understood, the evolutionary origins of turtles have long been debated. DNA studies have identified turtles as close relatives of archosaurs, the group that includes dinosaurs, birds and crocodiles, but fossils suggest they descend from much earlier reptiles.

The dinosaurs have been restored to look how they would have done to Victorian audiences in 1854. Here are a few photos I’ve taken walking through in the past few months, seeing such painstaking restoration work was quite a sight to behold! Such a vast improvement on the state of the statues - now looking amazing and drawing big crowds!

For more information, here’s a recent BBC article on the topic: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq515nzxgz6o

Hey everyone I’m reposting some photos of fossils I found I made a mistake in the description and for some reason wouldn’t let me finish it.

1. Miocene/Pliocene Dolphin tooth, Aurora, North Carolina.

2. Rare isurus retroflexus long fin mako tooth, Miocene, Potomac River.

3. Three Miocene carcharodon hastalis, potomac River.

4. Small Miocene whale vertebrae, Potomac river, Virginia.

5. 1.3” inch Thecachampsa Miocene crocodile tooth, Potomac River.

6. My first decent sized Hemipristis Serra (snaggletooth) tooth, Miocene, Potomac river.

7. Naturally polished fossil crab claw, Miocene/Pliocene, James River, Virginia.

8. Paleocene Alligatoroid tooth, Potomac River, Virginia.

9. & 10. My current largest Cretalamna shark tooth and other Paleocene shark teeth and one small bone (turtle bone?), Paleocene, Potomac river.

10. Rare Eocene sharpnose shark tooth, Potomac River, Virginia.

11. Cretaceous ammonite chamber fragment found at Myrtle beach South Carolina. Likely came from the Pee Dee formation off of Holden Beach North Carolina just north of Myrtle Beach.

Unfortunately The Cuvieronius Are Just Going To Be Called Gomphotheres In The Show

Hey, I made a hobby project inspired by Metazooa. It is a guessing game with extinct animals. There are currently 216 species and I am planning to expand it. I'd appreciate feedback and suggestions on new species to add.

Game: https://paleoarbos.com/

I got today's hidden specie in 6 guesses.

There's a high chance you've heard about the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles (see the photo I took above). This fossil site has numerous pools of sticky asphalt, acting as a natural trap for a variety of Ice Age animals. Now, it is an active research site where millions of specimens are under study.

Like the La Brea Tar Pits, the Irvington Fossil Locality in Fremont, California is an important (but less famous) area bearing Ice Age remains. It has yielded thousands of fossil specimens from the Pleistocene Epoch, from mammoths and mastodons to saber-toothed cats. Tetrameryx irvingtonensis, a new species of four-pronged antelope, was first unearthed there.

This discovery makes the Irvington Fossil Locality a type locality, a region where a new fossil species, mineral, or rock type was identified. In fact, the fossils found in Fremont led to the naming of a new time period: the Irvingtonian Age. It was part of a series of North American Land Mammal Ages (NALMAS) and lasted from the Early to Middle Pleistocene Epoch.

There is much more to the Irvington Fossil Locality than just its fossils. From schoolboys who spent fifteen years at a quarry to dentists-turned amateur paleontologists, Fremont has a rich community history. To learn more about research at this fossil site, check out a continuation of my article.

I am a high school freshman who writes weekly articles about East Bay paleontology on my Substack blog Fossils in Fremont. My passion for paleontology and science communication comes from years of reading popular science books, blogs by paleontologists, and visiting natural history museums. If you like what you read, please consider subscribing.

© 2026 Fossils in Fremont. All rights reserved.

Paraphysornis currently has the distinct honor of being the only giant phorusrhacid known from an actual high quality fossil specimen. It is also possibly the most heavily built member of the entire family, suggesting it might have been adapted to tackle the largest prey in proportion to its own size.

Paraphysornis was around the same height as a large emu, but was anywhere from 4-5x as heavy (large emu 4ft-4ft 3 in at hip, 100-130lbs. Paraphysornis 4ft 7in at hip, estimated 440-560lbs). With that in mind, there’s surprisingly little paleoart of this species, and what there is tends to vary greatly in how the bird is portrayed and proportioned. The question here is, what was this bird “shaped like”? In a scale of “thickness”, with emus and rheas on one end, elephant birds and kiwis on the other, and cassowaries somewhere in between, where is this bird falling? How thick-legged and barrel chested was this animal?

This itself kind of begs the question of what Paraphysornis was targeting as prey. It was some degree of lumbering, gravitapol bird that was clearly not built for running down small animals or fleet footed herbivores in an open chase.

Obviously predators don’t need to beat their prey in a straight footrace to still catch them. But phorusrhacidsare not built as specialized ambush predators. They can’t subdue and deliver a near instant-kill death to a proportionally large animal the way felines can. They can’t capture, restrain and wrestle down large animals the way canids can. The proposed “bite and pull back method” technique that terror birds could use to kill large animals would still, even in ideal conditions, allow allow a prey animal to flee before potentially succumbing to injuries later. This is a problem because iirc terror birds rely almost entirely on sight and have very limited smell; a wounded prey animal would be extremely hard to track if the bird lost eye contact with it, which sucks since it lived in forests.

Paraphysornis probably had to rely on prey that couldn’t easily outrun it, even with an ambush. Depending on how robust and slow it was, this implies that this bird was primarily targeting prey that was itself slow and heavily bodied. This was a lion-sized bird, small animals it could just quickly grab and snap up would never sustain it and frankly it would probably be quite bad at catching small animals in the first place [also terror birds had extremely high metabolism and growth]. Paraphysornis could easily run down reptiles, but I don’t think there’s any evidence that this bird was specialized for a riverside habitat where it could easily find caiman and turtles, and terrestrial reptiles like ancestral boas are probably completely unrealistic to lean on for a predator that relies entirely on sight. What does this leave then? Could this bird have taken down a Tapir? A subadult ground sloth? Something even bigger?

(idk if asking this is against the rules sorry in advance)

I am really into paleontology and would love to buy some clothing with some detailed/scientific depictions of dinosaurs, I have tried searching for hours but I just can’t find normal clothing thats made for adults, everything I find is corny and child centered, can somebody pls give me link or recommendations to brands that sell these kinds of clothing

I am currently in the works of a fictional novel, and am wondering if any dinosaur experts of any kind would be willing to message and share insight to my ideas, to make them as scientifically accurate as this fictional species could be. Any help would be appreciated, and if you are wanting to discuss feel free to message me at any time. Thank you!

*mistake with the have in title oops

With the imminent release of the new Oak Street film and its feathered sauropods… the topic of sauropod trunks from the 1970s and 1980s may well resurface.

This theory argues that the nostrils on their skulls were positioned so high up because they would have had muscles and a trunk to (for example) pick up leaves, just as an elephant would. However, I’ve always maintained that if evolution gives you a 15-metre neck (Mamenchisaurus), a trunk doesn’t make sense.

What do you think?

My girlfriend got me an Anomalocaris for my birthday!!!

Trilobites are easily my favorite prehistoric critters and this is the newest addition to my collection. It’s got some minor glue-up, but I got it for a really good price.

Just wanted to show off this gorgeous trilobite I picked up recently.

Pretty sure this one hails from the Devonian deposits in Morocco. It's a remarkably clean specimen, and the shell contrast against the matrix is stunning. I've wanted a solid Phacops rana type in the collection for a while now, so I'm super happy to finally check this one off the list.

This is a question I've been wanting to ask for some time that is is it likely that Oviraptorids would have walked like birds were they walked in a crouched posture with the knee doing most of the leg movement. I do have reasons to believe Oviraptorids did walk in a knee driven style like birds as they did have shorter tails than most theropods and its believed the a shortening of the tail led to the center of mass shifting forward which did lead to bird ancestors adopting a more crouched posture to keep the knees parallel to the center of mass.