ICP News
A new tool improves the phylogenetic placement of fossils in evolutionary trees
22 Sep 2025
51 times
The open-access tool PlaceMyFossils helps researchers evaluate the evolutionary position of extinct species — even when only fragmentary morphological data is available. It integrates multiple analytical approaches, allowing researchers to test, visualize, and interpret alternative phylogenetic placements with greater confidence. The tool is the result of an international collaboration and…
Fossil ape tails tell their tale: A new fossil informs about hominoid locomotor evolution
04 Sep 2025
35 times
A research article published in the American Journal of Biological Anthropology by an international team led by researchers from the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont (ICP-CERCA) describes a new fossil ape talus from Abocador de Can Mata that offers valuable insight into the locomotor adaptations of Miocene hominoids.
A study led by researchers from the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont (ICP-CERCA) and the Museu de la Conca Dellà (MCD) reveals a high diversity of carnivorous dinosaurs of various sizes in the present-day Pyrenees at the end of the Cretaceous, shortly before their global extinction. The research, focused…
A team of researchers from the Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social (IPHES-CERCA), the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), and the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont (ICP-CERCA) has described Vulcanoscaptor ninoti (“the Camp dels Ninots volcano digger”), a previously unknown genus and species of a Pliocene mole.…
Never before, a Pleurosaurus juvenile, a Jurassic marine reptile that lived about 150 million years ago and is a distant relative of today’s tuatara, has been definitively identified. Discovered in the Mörnsheim Formation in Bavaria, this unique fossil offers an unprecedented glimpse into the growth and development of an extinct…
An international team with the participation of ICP-CERCA has announced the description of the most complete crocodyliform discovered to date from the Late Cretaceous of Europe. The fossil, recovered more than 30 years ago from the Fontllonga site (Lleida, Catalonia), is the focus of a new study published in the…
Marta Pina, researcher at the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont (ICP-CERCA), has been awarded the prestigious 2025 L'Oréal-UNESCO "For Women in Science" Prize. This award, worth €15,000, was presented at a ceremony held at the Teatro Real in Madrid, attended by the CEO of L'Oréal Spain and Portugal, Juan…
Ancient Proteins Reveal Biological Sex and Genetic Variation in 2-Million-Year-Old Paranthropus robustus from South Africa
29 May 2025
247 times
The Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE, CSIC-UPF) and the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont (ICP) have collaborated on research that successfully recovered protein remains approximately 2 million years old from four fossil teeth found in the Swartkrans cave (South Africa). The fossil remains belong to Paranthropus robustus, an extinct…
The ICP signs an agreement with the CSUC and the CERCA Institution to promote the openness and preservation of research data
27 May 2025
97 times
On May 20, the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont (ICP) formalized an agreement with the Consorci de Serveis Universitaris de Catalunya (CSUC) and the Institució CERCA to actively participate in the Research Data Repository (RDR) managed by the CSUC. With this alliance, the ICP incorporates into its open science…
The recent description of tetraconodont pig remains from the Late Miocene of Sant Quirze confirms the distinctiveness of a species described more than a hundred years ago, which had remained unnoticed until recently. The study shows the uncertain kinship relationships with other species of tetraconodontine suids from the Miocene of…
