AFP – A rare Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton, among the most complete specimens in the world, is to go on the auction block in Las Vegas in October, the auction house Bonhams & Butterfields has said.

AP – The partial remains of an ancient toothed whale species that roamed the ocean 5 million years ago have been discovered on a California beach. Crews removing a 1,000-pound slab of sandstone off the Santa Cruz County beach Wednesday discovered the remains and called in paleontologists.

LiveScience.com – Although past research has suggested Tyrannosaurus rex was related to chickens, now findings hint this giant predator might have acted chicken too.

Reuters – A fossil found in China of a pterosaur, the earliest known flying vertebrate, shows the creatures had unique and complex wing fibers that enabled them to fly with the precision and control of birds, researchers said on Wednesday.

AP – Looters who plundered one of Utah’s newest troves of dinosaur bones got away with ribs, vertebrae and part of an ancient legbone they had to bust apart to remove. They also stole hidden scientific clues about the life of a young diplodocus dinosaur that roamed the area some 150 million years ago.

LiveScience.com – Conventional wisdom has it that the first animals evolved in the ocean.

Now researchers studying ancient rock samples in South China have found that the first animal fossils are preserved in ancient lake deposits, not in marine sediments as commonly assumed.

These new findings not only raise questions as to where the earliest animals were living, but what factors drove animals to evolve in the first place.

For some 3 billion years, single-celled life forms such as bacteria dominated the planet. …

LiveScience.com – The world might be knee-deep in cow patties and other animal waste today were it not for dung beetles.

Tyrannosaurus rex and other predatory dinosaurs might not have been fearless hunters after all. Using new fossil evidence, researchers in Germany propose that the large carnivores hunted mainly juvenile dinosaurs instead of giant herbivorous adults.

A new analysis of the remains of a Tyrannosaurus rex (T. rex) that roamed Earth 68 million years ago has confirmed traces of protein from blood and bone, tendons, or cartilage. The findings is the latest addition to an ongoing controversy over which biochemical remnants can be detected in the dinosaur.

Paleontologists have made the most important discovery to date at the Arlington Archosaur Site, a prolific fossil site in Texas. The disassembled skull of a crocodile with two-and-a-half-inch-long teeth that lived nearly 100 million years ago has been unearthed.