Trilobites are famous not just because they were so beautifully functional, or because they happened to preserve so well. They’re known the world over because they were everywhere!

During the Cretaceous Period, dinosaurs were more diverse, more fierce, and more strange than ever. But something else was happening under the feet of the terrible lizards: for the first time in history, there were flowers.

There are animals in the fossil record that challenge some of our most basic ideas about what animals are supposed to look like. If there ever was a monster on this planet that was worthy of the name, it might have been the Tully Monster.

If you take it as a given that extinct dinosaurs were all weird and wonderful, then you gotta at least consider that Stegosaurus was one of the weirdest and wonderfulest.

We know a lot about dinosaurs but there’s one question that has plagued paleontologists for decades: what color were they?

Smilodon was a fearsome Ice Age cat, the size of a modern-day tiger, that had a pair of fangs nearly 18 centimeters long. But it was only the last and largest of the great sabertooths: ridiculously long canines had already been a trend for millions of years by the time Smilodon was prowling around. And you know what? Those giant teeth just might make a comeback.