Selected press releases in English

Staatssammlung für Paläoanatomie, Munich, 31st January 2025 The rise of pastoralist peoples in the Eurasian steppes and their westward spread some 5,000 years ago may have been fuelled by sheep herding and exploiting their milkBy 8,000 years ago the team found evidence that farmers were deliberately selecting their flocks – for example, for the genes […]

Munich, January 15, 2025 Bayerische Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und Geologie SNSB and LMU Paleontologists identify a new species of predatory dinosaur from the Cretaceous period in North Africa, around 95 million years old. What makes this discovery so special is that the original fossil from Egypt was completely destroyed 80 years ago, during World War […]

Munich, 2024-12-11, Bayerische Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und Geologie They were the first actively flying vertebrates: The pterosaurs or flying reptiles. SNSB scientists have now identified a new species that shows that the origin of the most important subgroup of pterosaurs happened up to fifteen million years earlier than previously thought About 230 million years ago, […]

Bayerische Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und Geologie Munich, 2024-11-05A team of researchers led by SNSB paleontologist Gertrud Rößner has discovered a new prehistoric dolphin species. Analyses of its inner ear confirm that this dolphin had excellent hearing abilities in the high-frequency range, which is very similar to modern dolphins. The animal lived around 22 million years […]

Munich, 2024-10-08, Staatssammlung für Paläoanatomie München SNSB researchers present an AI-based method to determine the sex of sheep with high accuracy, using only linear measurements of their talus bones. The team of archaeozoologists and computer scientists recently presented and published their results at the 20th IEEE In-ternational Conference on e-Science in Osaka, Japan. The new […]

Botanische Staatssammlung München & Genomics Core Facility Munich, 2024-09-06New genome analyses show: A crust-like miniature dot lichen recently discovered in Bavaria shows lots of ability to protect itself from the sun and herbivores. An international team of SNSB researchers found certain genes in the sequenced lichen genome that are responsible for the production of melanins. […]

Bayerische Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und Geologie & Naturkundemuseum Bamberg Munich, 2024-08-21Paleontologists find Kyrgyzstan’s first theropod dinosaur. A Kyrgyz-German expedition team including SNSB researcher Oliver Rauhut has excavated the fossil remains of two specimens of a new species of predatory dinosaur during fieldwork near Tashkumyr in southwestern Kyrgyzstan. The find is one of the most significant […]

Staatssammlung für Paläoanatomie München: Mitogenetic diversity of sheep did not decline in the Anatolian distribution area of wild sheep when sheep husbandry developed in the early Neolithic c. 10,000 years ago, as previously assumed. SNSB and LMU zooarchaeologist Prof. Joris Peters and collaborators could show that matrilineal diversity remained high during the first 1,000 years […]

New research findings reveal: some children in early medieval Bavaria were breastfed for much longer periods than today. Also, many early Bavarians buried around 500 AD originate from other geographical regions where feeding practices apparently differed. A team of researchers led by the SNSB anthropologists Michaela Harbeck and Maren Velte analyzed human teeth from various […]

Staatssammlung für Paläoanatomie München Birds were an important source of food for hunter-gatherer communities in Upper Mesopotamia at the beginning of the Neolithic period, around 9,000 years BCE. This is shown in a new study by SNSB and LMU archaeozoologists Dr. Nadja Pöllath and Prof. Dr. Joris Peters. The two scientists analysed bird remains from […]