News

An international team of scientists, along with Belgian palaeontologists, has described a new dinosaur that could swim. It is the first time this adaptation has been found so clearly in a dinosaur. The 75 million year old and exceptionally well-preserved Halszkaraptor fossil from Mongolia was poached and circulated in private collections.

DNA found at archaeological sites reveals that the origins of our domestic cat are in the Near East and ancient Egypt. Cats were domesticated by the first farmers some 10,000 years ago. They later spread across Europe and other parts of the world via trade hub Egypt. The DNA analysis also revealed that most of these ancient cats had stripes: spotted cats were uncommon until the Middle Ages.

Our palaeontologists have found the oldest fossil of the extant bat genus Myotis (mouse-eared bat). This proves that the widespread genus has existed at least 7 million years earlier than previously assumed.

Modern whales’ ancestors probably hunted and chased down prey, but somehow, those fish-eating hunters evolved into filter-feeding leviathans. An analysis of a 36.4-million-year-old whale fossil suggests that before baleen whales lost their teeth, they were suction feeders that most likely dove down and sucked prey into their large mouths. The study published on May 11 in Current Biology also shows that whales most likely lost the hind limbs that stuck out from their bodies more recently than previously estimated.

Researchers of our Institute have described the oldest mammalian predator of Europe. Vassacyon prieuri from Northern France is 57 million years old and is considered the earliest ancestor of modern-day cats and dogs. “The fossil exemplifies the early flourishing of carnivoran mammals on our continent after the dinosaurs became extinct”, says RBINS palaeontologist Floréal Solé, who collaborated with Romanian and French colleagues.