Brachiopoda

A team of researchers including scientists from the University of Oxford have made an astonishing discovery of a new species of mollusk that lived 500 million years ago. The new fossil, called Shishania aculeata, reveals that the most primitive mollusks were flat, shell-less slugs covered in a protective spiny armor. The findings have been published in the journal Science.

Researchers have shed new light on the evolution of biomineralized columnar pillars in the shells of small marine shellfish called phosphatic-shelled or linguliform brachiopods.

Excavations by a University of Kansas paleontologist working in a treasure trove of fossils called the "Spence Shale Lagerstätte" have revealed an ancient sea worm unknown to science until now. The finding has now been published in the journal Historical Biology.

Karma Nanglu says his favorite animal is whichever one he's working on. But his latest subject may hold first place status for a while: a 500-million-year-old fossil from the wonderfully weird group of marine invertebrates, the tunicates.

When the Kinks' Ray Davies penned the tune "Last of the Steam-Powered Trains," the vanishing locomotives stood as nostalgic symbols of a simpler English life. But for a paleontologist at the University of Kansas, the replacement of steam-powered trains with diesel and electric engines, as well as cars and trucks, might be a model of how some species in the fossil record died out.

An international team of scientists, including from the Universities of Bristol and Oxford, and the Natural History Museum, have discovered that a well-preserved, fossilized worm dating from 518 million years ago resembles the ancestor of three major groups of living animals.

Scientists say that this ancient, armored worm may have served as the ancestor to several creatures that still survive today.

The fossil was discovered in the U.K.

Casey Cep on the oddity, and the importance, of state symbols—such as state birds, desserts, and even fossils—in promoting regional tourism and legislative actions.

This spiny slug may have been one of the first mollusks to crawl around Earth.

Scientists aren't just arguing whether humans are causing a sixth mass extinction event now, but whether many more occurred in the past

Paleontologists have unearthed a well-preserved fossil assemblage of Cambrian trilobites in the High Atlas of Morocco.

Researchers use historic remnants like antlers, shells, teeth and pollen to learn how natural communities once worked

In times of environmental upheaval, how do communities of organisms respond? When entire species are wiped out, do surviving species move in and take over, or do new species immigrate to fill the gaps?

Discoveries at a major new fossil site in Morocco suggest giant arthropods—relatives of modern creatures including shrimps, insects and spiders—dominated the seas 470 million years ago.

The shelled worm is a tommotiid called Wufengella bengtsoni.

How long did the Ordovician period last, and what caused the Ordovician mass extinction to wipe out 85 percent of life on earth 445 million years ago?

Paleontologists have identified a new genus and species of obruchevodid petalodont (petal-toothed) shark from multiple teeth unearthed at Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky, the United States.

A study led by researchers at the American Museum of Natural History presents the oldest known example in the fossil record of an evolutionary arms race. These 517-million-year-old predator-prey interactions occurred in the ocean covering what is now South Australia between a small, shelled animal distantly related to brachiopods and an unknown marine animal capable of piercing its shell.

The mythological creatures are instead "chimeras of big cats and raptorial birds."