The Earth is rapidly warming, and similar climate upheavals over 300 million years ago once triggered massive fluctuations in marine life.

65 miles southwest of Chicago, a small hill that looks like a prop from an Indiana Jones contains many of the world’s best-preserved, most diverse fossils.

Amniotes are thought to have diverged from amphibians at the dawn of the Carboniferous period, about 355 million years ago. Mammals would diverge from reptiles and birds only 30 million years later.

Fossil footprints from the ancient Carboniferous Period have caused a stir among paleontologists worldwide. These tracks suggest reptiles roamed Earth far earlier than anyone suspected. Researchers ...

Our new discovery, published today in Nature, details ancient fossil footprints found in Australia that upend the early evolution timeline of all tetrapods. It also suggests major parts of the story ...

The latest findings suggest that amniotes also existed in the early Carboniferous period, around 355 million years ago.

This model replicates the mature human amnion for the first time, closely mimicking the structural and functional traits of the human amniotic sac with high reproducibility.

How ancient reptile footprints are rewriting the history of when animals evolved to live on land Scientists in Australia have identified the oldest known fossil footprints of a reptile-like animal ...

The discovery indicates that amniotes existed 35 to 40 million years earlier than previously thought, during the turn of the Devonian and Carboniferous periods, the study said.

The creature could lay eggs on land, unlike amphibians. It was part of a large group known as “amniotes,” which would evolve into dinosaurs, birds, and mammals.

Tracks found in early Carboniferous-period rocks in southeast Australia appear to be from an amniote, most likely a reptile. If so, these beat the previous oldest evidence for amniotes by more than 30 ...