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One of the frustrating aspects that paleontologists face when studying dinosaur fossils is the odd lack of sexual dimorphism in the ancient creatures — being able to tell the difference between male and female individuals based on their physical features. However, one method of telling whether an individual specimen is a female or not has been uncovered, with the confirmation of a Tyrannosaurus rex fossil that came from a pregnant female.

"This analysis allows us to determine the gender of this fossil, and gives us a window into the evolution of egg laying in modern birds," says the study’s lead researcher, North Carolina State University evolutionary biologist Mary Schweitzer.
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A recent study of the bone structure in the fossilized skulls of Flores Man has confirmed that the hominid, nicknamed "Hobbits" due to their diminutive 3’6" stature, are not an ancestor of modern humans, but quite probably a cousin of ours, sharing a common ancestor.

First discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003, the remains of the nine individuals of Homo floresiensis that were uncovered represent a unique species that lived on the island from 94,000 to 13,000 years ago. Since their discovery, a debate has ensued regarding their place in our family tree, with one side believing that they may have been a human ancestor, and the other saying that they were an offshoot that shared a common ancestor with us.
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A recent study has made a controversial analysis of a fossilized femur, originally excavated from Southwest China’s Maludong (‘Red Deer Cave’) in 1989. The study says that the small leg bone in question originally belonged to an early hominid, such as Homo habilis or Homo erectus, and is only estimated to be 14,000 years old, along with other remains retrieved from the site. However, this find presents a problem for paleontologists: hominids such as this are thought to have gone extinct roughly 1.5 million years ago.
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Researcher Andrew Collins has recently published an article outlining the discovery of the link between carvings that appear on a small bone plaque, and the megaliths at the Göbekli Tepe archaeological site where the plaque was found. These carvings may have provided us with a clue that implies that the researchers that have been studying the site may be seeing the site’s orientation entirely backward.
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