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The formation of Pangaea Ultima some 250 million years from now would be bad news for mammalian life. But whether it would mean the end for mammals—or whether the supercontinent will form at all—is far from certain
As Homo erectus expanded its territory from Africa into Eurasia, a species of hunting dog migrated westward into the area. These two predators offer important lessons about sociality and survival.
How many Tyrannosaurus rexes roamed North America during the Cretaceous period? That's a question Charles Marshall pestered his paleontologist colleagues with for years until he finally teamed up with his students to find an answer. What the team found, published this month in the journal Science, is that about 20,000 adult T. rexes probably lived at any one time, give or take a factor of 10, which is in the ballpark of what most of his colleagues guessed. What few paleontologists had fully grasped, he said, including himself, is that this means that some 2.5 billion lived and died over the a...
The Thorny Problem of Tallying Every T. rex to Ever Live The Thorny Problem of Tallying Every T. rex to Ever Live Here’s why it’s really, really hard to count how many of the apex predators once stalked Earth’s surface. The Thorny Problem of Tallying Every T. rex to Ever Live Copy Link How many of you were there? Dimitri Carol/Alamy Stock Photo In This Story Today, South Dakota is home to prairie and pasture, bisected by bands of asphalt and the sprawling squiggle of the Missouri River. In terms of human residents, the state is one of the emptiest in America, but millions of cattle graz...
About 20,000 adult Tyrannosaurus rexes probably lived at any one time, give or take a factor of 10, a new study suggests. The number is in the ballpark of what most researchers guessed, but what’s few paleontologists had fully grasped, says Charles Marshall, is what that means: some 2.5 billion lived and died over the approximately 2 1/2 million years the dinosaur walked the Earth. Until now, no one has been able to compute population numbers for long-extinct animals, and George Gaylord Simpson, one of the most influential paleontologists of the last century, felt that it couldn’t be don...