Paleontology - Topics

Cope's rule: why lineages tend to get bigger over time Extinction and the missing branches of the tree of life Dollo's law and why complex traits rarely come back What transitional fossils actually show about major transitions What the Cambrian explosion was and why it happened so fast How whales evolved from land mammals How paleontologists detect color in fossil feathers How accurate are dinosaur reconstructions compared with the living animal? Why so few organisms ever become fossils What the oldest fossil evidence of life looks like What separates an adaptation from an exaptation How insects grew so large in the Carboniferous What amber-preserved insects reveal about ancient forests Why the fossil record favors animals with hard shells Index fossils: how a single species dates a whole rock sequence What the Permian extinction wiped out and how life recovered How a fossil is identified as a new species How fossil beds reveal the environment a rock layer formed in What fossil footprints reveal that bones cannot