University of Florida News

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — “The Sopranos” have some competition — brown-headed cowbirds.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A new study provides evidence that the last inhabitants of Christopher Columbus’ first settlement desperately tried to extract silver from lead ore, originally brought from Spain for other uses, just before abandoning the failed mining operation in 1498. It is the first known European extraction of silver in the New World.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The largest climate change in central North America since the age of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, a temperature drop of nearly 15 degrees Fahrenheit, is documented within the fossilized teeth of horses and other plant-eating mammals, a new study reveals.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A University of Florida-led study has determined that Titanis walleri, a prehistoric 7-foot-tall flightless “terror bird,” arrived in North America from South America long before a land bridge connected the two continents.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A new study led by a University of Florida paleontologist reconstructs the base of our family tree and extends its roots 10 million years, a finding that sheds new light on the origin and earliest stages of primate evolution.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — If you think dinosaurs are hot today, just think back to about 110 million years ago when they really ran hot and heavy.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A trendy holiday gift within a decade may be a hand-held device that instantly identifies any species from a snippet of animal tissue, says a University of Florida researcher.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — If the ancient mountaintop city in southern Peru was the vanished Wari empire’s unique imperial showplace, the brewery was its piece de resistance.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Palmettos in Pennsylvania? Magnolias in Minnesota? The migration of subtropical plants to northern climates may not be too far-fetched if future global warming patterns mirror a monumental shift that took place in the past, new research by an international team of scientists suggests.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Prehistoric big game hunters and not the last ice age are the likely culprits in the extinction of giant ground sloths and other North American great mammals such as mammoths, mastodons and saber-toothed tigers, says a University of Florida researcher.