Newly discovered / described fossil species 2020

Hipporex said:
New study shows Deinonychus, the raptor that inspired Jurassic Park's "Velociraptors," didn't hunt in packs. However IMO it would be naive to completely rule out pack hunting in other dromaeosaurs.
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I would say it would even by naive to rule it out in this species. After all, we only have some bones.
 
Hipporex said:
New study shows Deinonychus, the raptor that inspired Jurassic Park's "Velociraptors," didn't hunt in packs. However IMO it would be naive to completely rule out pack hunting in other dromaeosaurs.
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I find this slightly silly, how can you be so sure? I’m not a big fan of pack hunting raptors, but it is like palaeontologists are going out of their way to avoid believing anything in Jurassic Park is even slightly accurate. The films weren’t masterpieces of accuracy, but neither was the Lion King! It will only lead to more misinterpreted headlines, like when they found tissue in a dinosaur bone that turned out to be contamination, leading to everybody screaming about Jurassic Park. There is more to dinosaurs than that one franchise!
 
New, unnamed elpahosaur theropod is the first of its kind from Australia.

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New study shows large-bodied theropods, like the famous T. rex, were excellent power walkers.

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New study shows extreme environmental change, not humans, was the most likely cause of extinction of megafauna in Sahul, the supercontinent formed by Australia and New Guinea.

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New study shows massive placoderm fish Titanichthys was likely a suspension-feeder.

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New study finds Australopithecus sediba used their hands for both climbing and human-like manipulation.

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A team of archaeologists has unearthed a nearly complete skeleton of a Palaeoloxodon antiquus from Lower Saxony, Germany.

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birdsandbats said:
I wonder if this is true for other regions as well, like North America.
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I saw a recent documentary that concluded that climate changes brought North American megafauna at the brink of extinction with human hunting giving the final blow.

However, the extinction of the American megafauna remains enigmatic to me. There have been many climatic changes during the Cenozoic and groups like horses and ground sloths always could cope with in, but went completely extinct from Alaska to Patagonia after the Pleistocene.
 
I think this one wasn't mentioned yet:

Name: Ucayalipithecus perdita
What: Parapithecid primate
When: ~ 35 - 32,000,000 ya (earliest Oligocene)
Where: Santa Rosa, Amazonia, Peru

The oldest known South American primates are known from Santa Rosa, just like the oldest caviomorphs. Perupithecus was described in 2015 and it's the most basal New World monkey with close affinities with some monkeys from the Eocene of North Africa. However, it's still a New World monkey. Ucayalipithecus on the other hand belongs to a extinct family of mainly North African monkeys. This means two types of monkey rafted across the Atlantic and the New World monkeys outcompeted the parapithecids in the end. Both species were quite small, marmoset to tamarin-sized.
 
Romanian cave bears (Ursus spelaeus) were exclusively herbivorous.
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New species of jeholornithiform avialan has been named (Kompsornis longicaudus). It lived approximately 120 million years ago (Early Cretaceous) in what is now China.
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The space rock that killed the non-avian dinosaurs, the Chicxulub asteroid, struck at an angle of about 60 degrees.
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Allosaurus was quite possibly a cannibal.
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Study finds late Devonian mass extinction was caused by erosion of the ozone layer.
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Article: End-Devonian Mass Extinction Caused by Erosion of Ozone Layer, New Study Finds | Geoscience, Paleontology | Sci-News.com
Study: Study: Women with Neanderthal Progesterone Gene Have Higher Fertility | Genetics, Paleoanthropology | Sci-News.com

Study finds women with neanderthal progesterone gene have higher fertility.
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New species of millipede-like animal is the oldest known "bug" (Kampecaris obanensis). It lived 425 million years ago in what is now Scotland.
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Intriguing but ultimately speculative study suggests diplodocid tails were as long as they were to help coordinate herding.
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New study into the metabolic functions of Triassic dinosaurs Coelphysis and Plateosaurus. This analysis found support for 'elevated "ratite-like" metabolic rates and intermediate "monotreme-like" core temperature ranges in these species of early saurischian dinosaur.'
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June 3, 2020: Fossilized stomach contents from an exceptionally preserved specimen of Borealopelta markmitchelli shows this nodosaurid dined on ferns before it died.
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June 4, 2020: An international team of researchers has sequenced and analyzed the genomes of 93 ancient Caribbean islanders and found evidence of at least three separate population dispersals into the region: two early dispersals into the Western Caribbean, one of which seems connected to earlier population dispersals in North America; and a third, more recent wave from South America.
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June 5, 2020: Two new species of ceratopsian dinosaur (Navajoceratops sullivani and Terminocavus sealeyi). They lived roughly 75 million years ago in what is now New Mexico.
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June 4, 2020: A study on T. rex ontogeny examines 44 specimens of this tyrannosaurid in order to produce a hypothesis on its growth. Among other things, the study finds between 13 and 15 years old the transition between shallow and deep skull shape occurred, that between 15 and 18 years is when T. rex exceeded the size of its close relatives, and that Nanotyrannus is invalid.
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June 9, 2020: A study on the neuroanatomy of the spinosaurid dinosaur Irritator finds that it "had the ability for fast and well-controlled pitch-down head movements. These neuroanatomical features are consistent with fast, downward snatching movements in the act of predation, such as are needed for piscivory."
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June 10, 2020: First recorded evidence of pterosaurs from Columbia.
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June 11, 2020: Trackways discovered in South Korea suggests at least one species of crocodylomorph evolved bipedalism.
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June 11, 2020: New species bristle worm from the early Cambrian of China (Dannychaeta tucolus).
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June 12, 2020: Study finds the first direct evidence that massive volcanic eruptions contributed to the Great Dying (the Permian–Triassic extinction event).
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June 12, 2020: Fossilized footprints suggest carnivorous theropod dinosaurs as big as T. rex once roamed Queensland, Australia.
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June 17, 2020: Study of the fossilized eggs of two different non-avian dinosaurs, Protoceratops and Mussaurus, finds they laid soft-shelled eggs.
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June 22, 2020: Redescription of Tanyrhinichthys mcallisteri, a long-rostrumed Pennsylvanian ray-finned fish.
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June 25, 2020: New genus and species of giant wombat-like marsupial (Mukupirna nambensis). It lived 25 million years ago (Chattian stage of the Oligocene epoch) in what is now the Namba Formation (Australia).
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June 26, 2020: Thylacosmilus atrox, an extinct marsupial that roamed what is now South America between 9 and 3 million years ago (Neogene period), was not the ecological analogue of saber-tooth cats, and likely did not use its impressive canines to dispatch its prey, according to new research led by University of Bristol scientists.
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June 29, 2020: Paleontologists have discovered striking similarities between the fossilized bones of giant penguins that lived 62 million years ago (Danian stage of the Paleocene epoch) in what is now New Zealand and those of the plotopterids, a group of flightless seabirds that lived in what is now North America and Japan between 37 and 25 million years ago (Paleogene to Neogene period).
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June 29, 2020: New study confirms a massive asteroid, not volcanism, as some theorized, caused the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event that wiped out all non-avian dinosaurs.
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July 06, 2020: New genus and species of tiny ornithodiran archosaur (Kongonaphon kely). It lived 237 million years ago (Triassic period) in what is now Madagascar. (Ornithodirans are a group of reptiles including dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and their close kin.)
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July 08, 2020: Saurornitholestine dromaeosaurid theropods lived 70 million years ago (Maastrichtian stage of the Late Cretaceous epoch) in what is now northern Alaska (Prince Creek Formation). The specimen being described belonged to a juvenile.
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