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The remains of glyptodonts, a group of extinct giant armadillos, indicate that humans spread to South America earlier than previously assumed. Found in northwestern Venezuela, the fractured skulls could represent evidence of hunting by humans, says UZH paleontologist Marcelo Sánchez. Skilled human hunters are also likely to have contributed to pushing the large, heavily armored animals over the brink.

Possible look of the newly discovered predatory fish species Birgeria americana with the fossil oft he skull shown at bottom right (Artwork: Nadine Bösch) The most catastrophic mass extinction on Earth took place about 252 million years ago - at the boundary between the Permian and Triassic geological periods.

In today's turtles the shell has a key protective function. The animals can withdraw into it and protect themselves against predators. No other group of vertebrates has modified its physique to such an extent to develop an impenetrable protective structure. "For a long time, paleontologists and developmental biologists puzzled over the origin of the tortoise shell," explains Torsten Scheyer, a paleontologist at the University of Zurich.

Media Releases Research Using Synchrotron Light New analyses of tiny fossil mammals from South Wales are shedding light on the function and diets of our earliest ancestors, a team led by researchers from the Universities of Bristol and Leicester report . The team used CT scanning with synchrotron X-rays at PSI's Swiss Light Source to reveal in unprecedented detail the internal anatomy of the mammals' tiny jaws.

Reorganisation of the brain and sense organs could be the key to the evolutionary success of vertebrates, one of the great puzzles in evolutionary biology, according to a paper by an international team of researchers, published today in Nature.