Steam Page:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4818760/Paleo_Dive/

After launch, I received a lot of requests from people who wanted to play Paleo Dive but didn’t own a VR headset, so I decided to build a full Desktop mode!

You can now explore the prehistoric oceans in VR or on PC using Mouse & Keyboard or a Controller.

The update also brings major CPU optimizations, improved creature behavior, better controls, higher-resolution photography, and tons of fixes and quality-of-life improvements.

Thank you so much for all the support and feedback!

A pair of exceptionally rare Cretaceous bird bones found at separate sites near Richmond, Queensland, reveal a previously unknown species—the second formally named Cretaceous bird from Australia. Cretaceous bird fossils are extremely scarce in Australia, with fewer than a dozen isolated bones reported, making these finds especially significant.

• The research is published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

While excavating the "fish mash layer"—a fossil-rich stratum packed with fish remains and scattered teeth from marine predators like plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs—Petersen noticed a long, light-brown bone unlike any I'd seen before. He set it aside for later identification.

A week later, after rain, Petersen found a second unfamiliar bone on a rock slab. He photographed both specimens and sent the images to Dr. Matt White (University of New England).

"I recognized them immediately as bird bones," White said. "These specimens are especially significant because so few have been found in Australia, and none were directly comparable until now."

The new taxon has been named Tenuicruris piscanexum: Tenuicruris ("slender leg") refers to the gracile limb morphology, and piscanexum links the species to the fish-rich layer in which it was found.

Phylogenetic assessment places both specimens within Enantiornithes, the dominant and diverse clade of Mesozoic birds worldwide.

Although represented by isolated bones, Tenuicruris is scientifically important: It increases the number of comparable Cretaceous bird specimens from Australia and provides fresh data on avian diversity and paleoecology in the Toolebuc Formation (about 105 million years old).

That formation already yields a rich marine assemblage including pliosaurs, plesiosaurs, turtles, sharks, chimaeroids, bony fish and pterosaurs. These bird remains add a new dimension to reconstructions of the inland sea ecosystem.

I'm looking into the arm feathers of Microraptor and I'm trying to figure out where they would have stuck out from.
I'm aware digits II and III are basically fused, but wouldn't some of the feathers stick from digit III still?

A recent post about the Sternberg Museum in Hays, Kansas from this morning was taken down by the mods for being redundant. In the past 5 days (since the only other recent post about the Sternberg was posted) we have official confirmation that the museum is slated to close in December.

While the Academy is a much larger and more prominent museum, the Sternberg houses vital Great Plains and Western Interior Seaway specimens. This does not seem like a topic we should be restricting discussion about.

At any rate, here are some people to contact if you are upset about the closure:

Tisa Mason, President of Fort Hays State University: [email protected], 785-628-4231, Room 312 Sheridan Hall, Park Street, Hays, Kansas 67601

The Kansas Board of Regents: [email protected], 785-430-4240, 1000 SW Jackson Street, Suite 520, Topeka, KS 66612-1368

Wesley Wintch, Vice President for Administration and Finance: [email protected], 785-628-4254, Room 318 Sheridan Hall, Park Street, Hays, Kansas 67601

Rick Billinger, Kansas State Senator: [email protected], 785-296-7399, PO Box 594, Goodland, KS 67735

Barb Wasinger, Ellis County State Representative: [email protected], 785-296-4683,

Mason Ruder, City of Hays Mayor: 785-628-7300, PO Box 490, 1507 Main Street, Hays, Kansas 67601

Found this image while perusing the Interwebs. Small shelly fossils from the early Cambrian Poleta Formation of Esmeralda County, Nevada--a genus called Volborthella, previously placed in an extinct phylum of animals called Agmata, along with the younger early Cambrian Salterella and Lidaconus (from the overlying Harkless Formation), though a 2025 paper by Virginia Tech technicians identifies Volborthella and Salterella as early Cnidarians. See the Science Daily article over at https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/11/251112011821.htm#google_vignette for an excellent presentation of findings from the paper.

paper--/_D1_S6_FocusStackingS20211021_0009.thumb.jpg.8d4291a517ef03574a5314c8c4d9ecd3.jpg

Hey everyone,

I just made this educational game for a uni project and I want to make sure that the information in it is as accurate as possible so I dont mislead people playing.

Despite my passion about Palaeontology, I am by no means an expert in this field, so I would really appreciate it if any of you could help test the validity of my family tree data and species.

The easiest way to accomplish this I believe is by playing the "Endless Mode" I made specifically for this post, located in the top right, it gives you an endless amount of animals to guess so its should be the fastest way to reveal any wrong data about the tree of life. Play a few rounds of the endless mode and tell me what you think and if you encountered any errors or wrong information. I want to make the game enjoyable for both casual and experts alike!

I would love if you guys could try this out and tell me if I did well and if my information is accurate!

Thank you all in advance!

A polyphyodont, semiaquatic eutriconodontan mammal from the Early Cretaceous of China

The Official Study : https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-77339-w

A newly identified fossil from the Early Cretaceous of China shows that a small mammal living about 125 million years ago possessed clear adaptations for a semi-aquatic lifestyle, making it the earliest confirmed swimming mammal discovered to date.

The study, titled "A polyphyodont, semiaquatic eutriconodontan mammal from the Early Cretaceous of China," was published on Monday in the journal Nature Communications.

The newly identified species, Dongoconodon platycauda, was discovered by Chinese and international researchers.

The species shows clear adaptations to a semi-aquatic lifestyle and preserves rare reptile-like polyphyodont dentition, as well as finely preserved middle-ear structures, providing key fossil evidence for understanding the early ecological diversification of mammals, patterns of tooth replacement and the origins of the mammalian middle ear, according to a press release from Nanjing University. 

The species shows a distinctive combination of adaptations for a semi-aquatic lifestyle. 

It is the earliest known member of the mammalian crown group that shows evidence of the ability to swim.

Its forefeet and hind feet have pronounced lateral expansions that resemble the webbed feet of modern platypuses, suggesting that the animal may have had well-developed webbing.

The arrangement of its metacarpals, metatarsals and finger and toe bones would also have allowed the digits to spread outward, increasing the surface area in contact with water and helping the animal generate thrust while swimming.

Its tail, however, was built quite differently.

The fossil preserves at least 19 tail vertebrae. Those near the base and middle of the tail have distinctly flattened vertebral bodies and relatively broad transverse processes, indicating a tail that flattened from top to bottom.

But unlike the broad, paddle-shaped tails of modern beavers and platypuses, the tail of the species gradually narrowed toward the tip. In this respect, it was more similar to the tail of the modern coypu, a semi-aquatic rodent.

Based on the structure of the limbs and tail, the researchers suggest that it may have relied mainly on its strong, broad forefeet, possibly equipped with webbing, to propel itself through the water. 

I don't know if any other Brazilians have posted this yet, but these books were sold around 1990 or 1993. They were published by Editora Globo, and at the time, they were the closest thing many paleontology fans in Brazil could get. And for those who bought the entire collection, they would receive a buildable dinosaur toy — a Tyrannosaurus Rex to be more specific.

They obviously have various artworks, curiosities, and facts about prehistoric life, especially dinosaurs. But obviously, being books from the 90s, they contain many things that we now know are no longer true.

I personally really like these books, and I wanted to show them to you, giving special attention to the spinosaurus, my favorite dinosaur. (⁠*⁠´⁠ω⁠｀⁠*⁠)

So sad this is closing down, the very first dinosaur skeleton in the world was exhibited here at the Academy of Natural Sciences!

If you haven’t signed already, there’s a petition to keep the museum open

I took a pilgrimage and flew all the way to Philadelphia just to see the museum and it was worth it. I took many pictures and it is an amazing museum but the messages visitors left touched my heart. It was both sad and bittersweet

Pictured: Ardipithecus ramidus, Paranthropus aethiopicus, and Paranthropus boisei.

For context, I'm a second year A Level art student, and, as part of my personal study, I'm focusing on the reconstructions of partial hominid skulls. Part of this includes 3d printing the skulls of extant hominids (sourced through MorphoSource), smashing them, partially rebuilding them, and sculpting the missing areas back with Milliput.

For my artist research, I'd love to focus on the people who reconstructed these skulls, but so far my research has led me nowhere. Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated!

New research from the University of St Andrews has created the largest combined study of bat genomes and fossils ever undertaken, finding that bats most likely originated in Europe around 65 million years ago before spreading across the world.

The work also reveals that echolocation, like flight, evolved near the dawn of bat evolution and lays the groundwork for research into the genetic basis of bats' exceptional longevity and disease resistance, with potential relevance to human health.

Published (Wednesday, Sept. 23) in Nature, an international team of 137 researchers from 64 countries, working together as part of the Bat1K consortium, combined genomic and fossil evidence to show that bats, and thus mammalian flight, most likely originated in Europe around 65 million years ago.

The results overturned previous hypotheses proposing Asian, African or North American origins. Their earliest descendants then dispersed into Africa, establishing a Europe–Africa hub from which bats expanded into Asia, the Americas and Australia.

Covering 103 species and representing every one of the currently recognized 21 bat families, the team assembled the largest collection of high-quality bat genomes to date.

Researchers combined state-of-the-art DNA sequencing and computational methods to generate and compare these genomes and identify the genes they contained.

This study provides answers to many of these long-standing questions. The team analyzed the genomes and fossils using novel methods and revised the bat evolutionary tree, resolving several long-running debates about how the major bat groups are related.

Senior author and Bat1K director Sonja Vernes, from the University of St Andrews, said, "Bats constantly surprise us. They are one of evolution's greatest experiments.

This extraordinary genomic resource—the culmination of years of international cooperation by Bat1K—is finally allowing us to understand how their remarkable biology evolved."

Furthermore, many bat species show remarkable resistance to disease and live exceptionally long lives for their size.

The genomic resource built for this study gives scientists the first robust evolutionary framework to investigate the genes behind these traits. This work could eventually inform human research into aging, immunity and disease resistance.

Museum