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ARTICLE Shark Teeth Tell Great White Shark Evolution Story For the last 150 years, paleontologists have debated the origins of the great white shark. Many believe that they descended from the 50-foot megalodon, also known as the megatooth shark (Car...MORE STORIES


	IMAGE GALLERY MORE GALLERIES A Squalodontid Success On a beach in Piña, Panama the tide is rolling out. Faint outlines of skeletal r...
	PHOTO MORE PHOTOS Fossils Get a CT Scan When paleontologists, like the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History's...
	PHOTO MORE PHOTOS Ancient Sea Cow Vertebra A fossil vertebra that a Smithsonian researcher's mother found while prospecting...

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					Fossil Jellyfish Apr 12, 2013 - 11:29AMHow long have jellyfish lived in the ocean? This jellyfish fossil is from the Cambrian period, more than 500 million years ago. It was found buried in Utah—an area that used to be underwater, covered by the ocean. Fossil...

Teeth and Jaw of an Ancient Shark

Mar 21, 2013 - 9:20AM

This well-preserved fossil is the only intact partial skull ever found of a...

Megalodon Teeth

Feb 26, 2013 - 10:35AM

Two fossilized teeth from a megalodon (Carcharodon megalodon) dating back...

SPOTLIGHT


Ediacaran Fossils: One Species at a Time When the cod fishery collapsed in Newfoundland in the early 1990s, the hopes of the local fish harvesters collapsed with it...

The Discovery of Multispecies Communities of Seacows Jan 26 2012 - 11:26am Sirenians, or seacows, are a group of marine mammals that include manatees and dugongs. In the modern ocean, only one species of seacow is found in each world region, however, the fossil record tells a different story. According to the fossil record of these marine mammals, which dates back 50...	Eocene Whales and Penguins Off the Coast of Peru Sep 12 2011 - 11:43am Offshore Peru, during the Eocene (~56-34 million years ago), showing three archaeocetes (ancient whales), along with a previously described fossil penguin.
Excavating a "toothed" baleen whale from Vancouver Island May 7 2012 - 3:34pm The whales that we see in today's world can broadly be split into two groups: those with teeth (odontocetes), and those that have baleen (mysticetes) instead of teeth. These two groups share a common ancestor in the Eocene, which had teeth (They looked a lot like the ancient whale skeletons in the...	Smithsonian Scientists Describe a New Fossil Whale Mar 8 2012 - 12:30pm Monodontids, the group of whales that includes living belugas and narwhals, are emblematic symbols of the Arctic. However, the fossil record shows that these animals had a much larger range than the northern pole.
Dispatches from the Field: Treacherous stream crossings and a new fossil find May 11 2012 - 9:58am Editor's note: Read Nick's first blog post about "toothed" baleen whales to see what their team is excavating on Vancouver Island.	Fossil Jellyfish Apr 12 2013 - 11:29am How long have jellyfish lived in the ocean? This jellyfish fossil is from the Cambrian period, more than 500 million years ago. It was found buried in Utah—an area that used to be underwater, covered by the ocean. Fossil jellyfish are rare because they have no bones or other hard parts to turn into...
Panama Expedition Success Jun 22 2011 - 5:44pm Paeleobiologist Dr. Nicholas Pyenson, Curator of Fossil Marine Mammals for the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), set out with Jorge Velez-Juarbe, NMNH Research Student and Ph. D. Candidate at Howard University and Aaron O'Dea from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute...	Illustration of a New Fossil Whale, Bohaskaia monodontoides Mar 8 2012 - 3:49pm A reconstruction of a new fossil beluga relative, Bohaskaia monodontoides, described by Smithsonian scientists, is in the foreground. Its living relatives, the beluga and narwhal, are illustrated left to right in the background. The coloration of the extinct whale is speculative.
Excavating an Extinct Toothed Whale Jun 23 2011 - 11:20am A time-lapse video shows researchers from the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and Smithsonian's Tropical Research Institute racing to excavate the fossil of an extinct toothed whale on a beach in Piña, Panama. The fossil is from the Squalodontidae group, commonly known as "shark-...	Arm Bone Fossil of an Ancient Toothed Whale May 11 2012 - 11:46am Nick Pyenson, curator of fossil marine mammals at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, holds an arm bone from a "toothed" mysticete from Vancouver Island. This is the second specimen found at this locality on the remote western side of Vancouver Island. Nick used a rock saw to...
Ediacaran Community, Proterozoic Eon (2,500 - 542 Million Years Ago) Sep 20 2011 - 3:42pm Earth’s first animals had soft bodies. This illustration shows a community of soft-bodied Ediacaran (edi-A-karan) animals. Some species resemble living ocean creatures. Others are unlike any known organisms and cannot be classified. Scientists have found fossils of these fauna in sedimentary rocks...	Expedition to Excavate a Fossil Whale Jun 17 2011 - 11:03am My graduate student Jorge and I are departing today for Panama, to excavate a fossil whale that was discovered by an undergraduate student working with Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute researcher Aaron O'Dea.
Bones and Teeth of South America's Oldest Fossil Whales Sep 12 2011 - 2:55pm These are fossil remains of archaeocetes, ancient whales, from the Paracas Formation of Peru's Pisco Basin. Smithsonian paleobiologist Nicholas D.	Fossil Whale Found, Excavated, Jacketed, and Returned to STRI! Jun 23 2011 - 11:28am Jorge and I packed up the night we arrived in Panama with Aaron O'Dea and his team from STRI. The road we took in two field vehicles mostly followed the Panama Canal heading northwards; we had to stop at a tanker ship crossing, where the locks separated the roadway. Quite an engineering marvel.
Ediacaran Fossils: One Species at a Time Oct 27 2011 - 3:37pm When the cod fishery collapsed in Newfoundland in the early 1990s, the hopes of the local fish harvesters collapsed with it. Hundreds of Newfoundlanders moved away and businesses that depended on the cod fishery closed. But retired schoolteacher Kit Ward of Portugal Cove South wasn’t content to...	Ancient Sea Cow Vertebra Jun 18 2011 - 10:06am A fossil vertebra that a Smithsonian researcher's mother found while prospecting in the Gatun Formation. It's not just any vertebra, it belongs to a fossil sea cow! According to Jorge Valez-Juarbe, a graduate student at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and expert on fossil sea...