Scientists have long debated whether dinosaurs were in decline before an asteroid smacked the Earth 66 million years ago, causing mass extinction.

Missouri’s most common fossil is an invertebrate, the crinoid, also known as “sea lilies”. Despite the name, they’re more closely related to other echinoderms, like starfish. Only around 700 living species of the “feather stars” still exist, but pieces of now-extinct variants can be commonly found in limestone.

Parasites have roamed the Earth for a long time. They were here before the dinosaurs: The oldest fossils are more than 500 million years old. Today on the show, Regina G. Barber speaks with paleontologists Karma Nanglu and Danielle de Carle about a mysterious fossil called the “Riddler,

New dating has revealed that New Mexico's last dinosaurs were healthy, diverse and thriving at the end of the Cretaceous period, suggesting non-avian dinosaurs weren't in decline before being snuffed out by the asteroid strike.

Most of our knowledge of New Zealand's prehistoric bird diversity comes from long-lost species with bones large enough to be studied by eye. But many bird bones are so tiny we can barely see their features without a microscope.

Australia’s First Peoples may or may not have hunted the continent’s megafauna to extinction, but they definitely collected fossils.