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This article reports that hummingbirds originated from Europe. A few fossils of what appeared to be primitive hummingbirds have turned up in the primitive times, but as far as anyone knew, their modern descendents never set wing in Eurasia. Gerald Mayr, a scholar, describes the discovery in the May 7 issue of the journal "Science." The new fossil called Eurotrochilus demonstrates that in the primitive times, hummingbird ancestors had evolved the main features of living hummingbirds, such as a long, slender beak adapted for feeding on nectar, by 30 million years ago.

The article reports on the discovery of a dinosaur fossil. There's no shortage of anatomical evidence that birds evolved from dinosaurs. But paleontologists have still had to contend with a slightly embarrassing gap in the fossil record. The oldest known bird fossil, Archaeopteryx, is much older than fossils of its closest dinosaurian relatives. Archaeopteryx is known from several 150-million-year old specimens found in Upper Jurassic limestone in Germany. One of those older dinosaur relatives, a contemporary of Archaeopteryx, was described at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. Collected in 2000 from Upper Jurassic rock layers in eastern Wyoming, the fossil's bones were so delicate that William Wahl, of the Wyoming Dinosaur Center in Thermopolis, needed several years to prepare them.

The article presents information about Tyrannosaurus rex (T. rex). For the first time, paleontologists have identified a T. rex as female by discovering a type of bone tissue that appears to be related to egg-laying. In a few cases, paleontologists have discovered eggs inside a skeleton allowing them to know for sure they found a female. To compare the Tyrannosaurus fossil with living birds that were at least somewhat comparable in size to the dinosaur, the team cut up the legs of a pregnant ostrich and an emu that had died before laying all its eggs.

The article reports a study in which exquisite microfossils were brought to light by dissolving 850 million-year-old rocks. The research could represent the most ancient fungi ever discovered. The discoverer also argues that more enigmatic fossils, dating to around 1400 million years ago, are the same fungi, but other experts would like more evidence for that claim. The new examples were found by paleontologist Nicholas Butterfield at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. The key feature, as Butterfield describes in the February 2005 issue of Paleobiology, is that these filaments joined to form networks of loops.

The article reports that like reclusive celebrities, tyrannosaurs have risen to evolutionary stardom while keeping their origins shrouded in mystery. The fossils, so well preserved that one even shows a"protofeather" fuzz covering the body, show that tyrannosaurs began evolving the deadly design of their heads before their bodies morphed into powerhouses. The new specimens come from western Liaoning Province in China and were studied by Xing Xu and colleagues from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, along with Mark Norell of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

This article presents information about a group of fossils shows that an adult dinosaur died together with 34 hatchlings. The new specimen contains the partial skeleton of an adult Psittacosaurus, a herbivorous dinosaur with a parrotlike beak. Researcher Varricchio, Jinyuan Liu of the Dalian Natural History Museum in China, and their colleagues are more interested in what the fossils say about the Psittacosaurus's life. Paleontologists have found powerful evidence before that dinosaurs protected their nests.

The article cites that new fossils have given paleontologists a view of an ancient arms race between predator and prey. By counting the chewed-off arms on fossil crinoids, researchers have shown that these filter-feeding cousins of starfish suffered ever fiercer attacks during a period when fish and other major predators were diversifying. Just as swords inspired the invention of chain mail, the history of life hints at many arms races between predators and prey. But with the remnants of the carnage long turned to stone, it can be difficult to prove that the evolution of bigger teeth, for instance, actually did encourage the evolution of defenses such as thicker armor.