Today, fossils feel almost self-explanatory. You see a tooth, a shell, or a skeleton in a museum case and instinctively treat it as evidence of ancient life, preserved over immense spans of time. That ...

Scientists thought the fossil showed eight arms, fins, and other features typical of an octopus, pushing back the known ...

Our planet is several billion years old—a number so vast it’s almost impossible to truly comprehend. In all that time, ...

The brilliant iridescent hues found in ammolite come from tiny air gaps in the fossils’ layers, a new study finds. By Alexa Robles-Gil Millions of years ago, squid-like creatures called ammonites swam ...