A bizarre fossil called Prototaxites, which was the largest life-form on land 400 million years ago, may have been a completely unknown form of multicellular life, according to a new study.

Hundreds of millions of years before dinosaurs, the tallest things on land were not trees or animals but towering, trunk-like organisms that looked like something from science fiction. Around 400 ...

New research has transformed scientists' understanding of how spectacular fossils with delicate soft tissues form. New research at the University of Leicester has transformed scientists' understanding ...

New research at the University of Leicester has transformed scientists' understanding of how spectacular fossils with delicate soft tissues form. While most fossils are permineralized "hard" tissues, ...

Spiders are not well represented in the fossil record. Their soft external skeletons don't typically preserve well -- except at a few exceptional sites around the world. There is one remarkable spot ...

How did soft-bodied organisms remain intact for millions of years?

Colombian researcher María Camila Vallejo-Pareja with a frog from Wyoming seen in the field looking for microvertebrate fossils. Colombian researcher María Camila Vallejo-Pareja is using fossil frogs ...

Iron-rich rocks at McGraths Flat preserve Miocene rainforest life in remarkable detail, reshaping ideas about how and where ...

Over 150 years ago, a fossilized organism known as Prototaxites emerged as an enigma regarding what early land life may have been like. As an organism that appeared to grow up through Earth’s crust in ...

One hypothesis suggests the fossils may have been traded for use in ritual or medicinal practices, researchers said. Photo by Jens Lehmann. During an excavation on Morocco’s Mogador Island, ...