Skip to Content Skip to Navigation

Ocean Portal by The Smithsonian Institution

Fossils

FEATURES


ARTICLE Shark Teeth Tell Great White Shark Evolution Story For the last 150 years, paleontologists have debated the origins of the great white shark. Many believe that they descended from the 50-foot megalodon, also known as the megatooth shark (Car...MORE STORIES


	IMAGE GALLERY MORE GALLERIES A Squalodontid Success On a beach in Piña, Panama the tide is rolling out. Faint outlines of skeletal r...
	PHOTO MORE PHOTOS Fossils Get a CT Scan When paleontologists, like the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History's...
	PHOTO MORE PHOTOS Ancient Sea Cow Vertebra A fossil vertebra that a Smithsonian researcher's mother found while prospecting...

EDUCATOR RESOURCES

LATEST TODAY'S CATCH


					Fossil Jellyfish Apr 12, 2013 - 11:29AMHow long have jellyfish lived in the ocean? This jellyfish fossil is from the Cambrian period, more than 500 million years ago. It was found buried in Utah—an area that used to be underwater, covered by the ocean. Fossil...

Teeth and Jaw of an Ancient Shark

Mar 21, 2013 - 9:20AM

This well-preserved fossil is the only intact partial skull ever found of a...

Megalodon Teeth

Feb 26, 2013 - 10:35AM

Two fossilized teeth from a megalodon (Carcharodon megalodon) dating back...

SPOTLIGHT


Ediacaran Fossils: One Species at a Time When the cod fishery collapsed in Newfoundland in the early 1990s, the hopes of the local fish harvesters collapsed with it...

Foraminifera on the Seafloor Mar 26 2010 - 12:01pm Dr. Karen Bice studies the foraminifera in ocean sediment to better understand climate change.	At STRI, No Whales Yet, But There Are Fossil Sea Cows... Jun 18 2011 - 10:19am Jorge and I arrived in Panama City around 3 pm this afternoon, and took a taxi to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI)'s headquarters in the Gorgas neighborhood of downtown Panama City. The temperature's about like it would be in D.C. on a hot day, but, much to our amazement, there...
New Archaeocetes from Peru Are the Oldest Fossil Whales from South America Sep 12 2011 - 4:40pm The evolution of whales represents one of the great stories in macroevolution. It's a narrative that has mostly benefitted from an extraordinary series of fossils recovered from rocks around the world, including challenging field areas in Egypt, Pakistan, and India.	Illustration of a New Fossil Whale, Bohaskaia monodontoides Mar 8 2012 - 3:49pm A reconstruction of a new fossil beluga relative, Bohaskaia monodontoides, described by Smithsonian scientists, is in the foreground. Its living relatives, the beluga and narwhal, are illustrated left to right in the background. The coloration of the extinct whale is speculative.
Eocene Whales and Penguins Off the Coast of Peru Sep 12 2011 - 11:43am Offshore Peru, during the Eocene (~56-34 million years ago), showing three archaeocetes (ancient whales), along with a previously described fossil penguin.	Digging a Trench Jun 22 2011 - 2:48pm Paeleobiologist Dr. Nicholas Pyenson, Curator of Fossil Marine Mammals for the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), set out with Jorge Velez-Juarbe, NMNH Research Student and Ph. D. Candidate at Howard University and Aaron O'Dea from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute...
Dispatches from the Field: Treacherous stream crossings and a new fossil find May 11 2012 - 9:58am Editor's note: Read Nick's first blog post about "toothed" baleen whales to see what their team is excavating on Vancouver Island.	Dugong Feeding Feb 3 2012 - 11:16am Dugongs, along with manatees, make up a group of marine mammals called sirenians or seacows. In the modern world, only one species of seacow is found in any one place in the world. However, the fossil record of seacows, which dates back 50 million years, tells a different story.
Foraminifera Mar 25 2010 - 4:23pm Microscopic, single-celled organisms called foraminifera have a fossil record that extends from today to more than 500 million years ago. Although each foram is just a single cell, they build complex shells around themselves from minerals in the seawater. These shells have accumulated in layers of...	Teeth and Jaw of an Ancient Shark Mar 21 2013 - 9:20am This well-preserved fossil is the only intact partial skull ever found of a white shark that lived about 6.5 million years ago called Carcharodon hubbelli. The fossil jaw contains 222 teeth, some in rows up to six teeth deep, and may provide evidence that modern day great white sharks evolved from...
A Squalodontid Success Jun 22 2011 - 5:47pm On a beach in Piña, Panama the tide is rolling out. Faint outlines of skeletal remains rise above the sand. Smithsonian scientists Nicholas Pyenson and Aaron O'Dea along with a team of students descend upon the beach. Their mission: to excavate the remains of a whale from the extinct group...	Excavating an Extinct Toothed Whale Jun 23 2011 - 11:20am A time-lapse video shows researchers from the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and Smithsonian's Tropical Research Institute racing to excavate the fossil of an extinct toothed whale on a beach in Piña, Panama. The fossil is from the Squalodontidae group, commonly known as "shark-...
Smithsonian Paleobiologist Brian Huber Mar 26 2010 - 1:09pm Brian Huber studies fossil organisms known as “forams” to learn about climate change in this video snippet from the Smithsonian Marine Collections video.	Searching for Fossil Whales in Peru Sep 12 2011 - 2:08pm George Mason University professor Mark D. Uhen and Dr. Matthew Lewin of the University of California, San Francisco, survey rocks of the Paracas Formation, in the southern part of Peru's Pisco Basin. The two were part of a team that discovered South America's oldest fossil whales, to date.
Expedition to Excavate a Fossil Whale Jun 17 2011 - 11:03am My graduate student Jorge and I are departing today for Panama, to excavate a fossil whale that was discovered by an undergraduate student working with Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute researcher Aaron O'Dea.	Ediacaran Community, Proterozoic Eon (2,500 - 542 Million Years Ago) Sep 20 2011 - 3:42pm Earth’s first animals had soft bodies. This illustration shows a community of soft-bodied Ediacaran (edi-A-karan) animals. Some species resemble living ocean creatures. Others are unlike any known organisms and cannot be classified. Scientists have found fossils of these fauna in sedimentary rocks...