Three closely related species of the irregular echinoid Oligopygus succeed one another in the late Eocene deposits of Florida. This apparent lineage, where each species is similar but larger than the ...

The reign of the dinosaurs came to a catastrophic end 66 million years ago. That’s the common trope, anyway – a holdover from before we recognized that at least one feathery lineage survived and ...

It's not often you find the term "gastronomically familiar" in a Nature article, much less in its very first sentence. But there are a number of unusual aspects to a paper on the origins of flatfish ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about biodiversity and the hidden quirks of the natural world. The ancient oceans of the Eocene epoch teemed with ...

A new genus of Theaceae, Andrewsiocarpon, from the Middle Eocene of southeastern North America, is described based on fruit and seed remains. Andrewsiocarpon is a loculicidally dehiscent five-valved ...

Our current rate of warming will quickly lead us back to a climate that predates the evolution of modern humans, according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That ...

The stark, barren landscape of Banks Island in Canada has yielded an unexpected find more than 8,000 shark teeth that date back millions of years, and have now been described in a study. In the summer ...

Why is Christian Science in our name? Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and we’ve always been transparent about that. The church publishes the ...

Scientists have discovered how a spike in carbon dioxide over 50 million years ago may have caused global temperatures to soar to their highest levels in 66 million years—something they have dubbed a ...