There's no single "rarest" fossil, as rarity depends on context (only one ever, unique preservation, missing link), but top contenders include Archaeopteryx (only 11 specimens found, key bird-dinosaur link), unique opalized dinosaur bones like Kakuru kujani in Australia (only toe bone known), extraordinary preservation like the Tanis site fossils (dinosaur-asteroid impact snapshot), or exceptionally preserved soft tissues in amber. The title often shifts as new, unique discoveries are made, highlighting extraordinary preservation or unique evolutionary moments.
300-Million-Year-Old Iridescent Fossil May Be One of Earth's Rarest Prehistoric Gems. A routine fossil-hunting trip turned into a groundbreaking discovery for a pair of researchers when they stumbled upon a rare ammonite fossil with brilliant mother-of-pearl iridescence, similar to Canada's prized gemstone “ammolite.”
5 Strangest Fossils Ever Found
Nigersaurus had so many teeth it has been dubbed "the mesozoic lawnmower," but while it may may have looked like "a hammerhead shark with legs," even it had a match.
The giant stegosaurus fossil, dubbed “Apex,” is 11 feet tall and 27 feet nose to tail. Billionaire Kenneth C. Griffin, who bought the fossil for $44.6 million, is loaning it to the museum for four years.
In 2007, Nicolas Cage paid $276,000 at a Beverly Hills auction for a rare Tyrannosaurus bataar skull, outbidding Leonardo DiCaprio. The skull was later found to be illegally smuggled from Mongolia, where it's protected by strict cultural heritage laws.
The Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism acquired Stan and displayed the fossil at the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi which opened since November 22, 2025.
Slug Slugs have tens of thousands of microscopic teeth on a a tongue-like ribbon, which they use to scrape food. The umbrella slug can use over 700,000 teeth in their lifetime!
But a new study, published today (Sept. 29) in the online journal Public Library of Science One, provides evidence that Sue, perhaps the most famous dinosaur in the world, was felled in more mundane fashion by a lowly parasite that still afflicts modern birds.
Oviraptor was a bizarre-looking, toothless dinosaur. Because it had no teeth, there is a lot of debate about what it ate. It lived 80 million years ago in Mongolia alongside dinosaurs like Protoceratops and Velociraptor.
Coprolites are the fossilised faeces of animals that lived millions of years ago. They are trace fossils, meaning not of the animal's actual body. A coprolite like this can give scientists clues about an animal's diet.
Our Oldest Fossil
Stromatolites still exist today on the coasts of places like Australia. Yes, after billions of years, cyanobacteria are still alive and kicking. Cyanobacteria, even though they formed these mounds, are tiny, single-celled creatures.
The Dumbest Dinosaur
Stegosaurus had a brain the size of a walnut - only 3 centimetres long and weighing 75 grams. However, comparing brain size to body size sauropodomorphs, like Plateosaurus, were probably one of the dumbest dinosaurs.
Few skeletons are found 100% complete, and many ancient animals are known only from incomplete skeletons, so it is not uncommon for a museums to share replicas of particularly good specimens.
After years of legal disputes, the dinosaur fossil, which became known as “Sue” (after Hendrickson), was auctioned at Sotheby's in New York City on October 4, 1997. In only nine minutes, it fetched a record-breaking $8.36 million, the highest price ever paid for a fossil at the time.
Can you use Rare Candy to evolve a Mysterious Fossil into an Omastar or Kabutops, or use it on a Root/Claw Fossil to evolve into Cradily/Armaldo? It can. It counts as a basic Pokémon while in play.
The double dinosaur emojis (🦖🦖) primarily represent literal dinosaurs (like the T-Rex and Sauropod), but in internet slang, they often mean someone or something is old-fashioned, outdated, or “a dinosaur” that hasn't kept up with modern times, similar to calling someone out for using old tech or having outdated ideas. It can also just mean dinosaurs in general or be used playfully to call someone big and powerful, or even represent trans identities online.
Birds have the closest DNA to dinosaurs, as they are direct descendants of theropod dinosaurs, making them living dinosaurs; chickens and ostriches, in particular, share strong genetic links with T. rex, confirmed through protein analysis and shared physical traits like scales and bone structure. While crocodilians (alligators, crocodiles) are also close relatives, birds are the most immediate living link to the dinosaur lineage.
Zara's death in Jurassic World was brutal because director Colin Trevorrow intended it as a shocking, "unearned death" to show that no one, even bystanders, was safe from the dinosaurs, fulfilling actress Katie McGrath's request for a memorable exit and subverting typical movie death tropes. Her demise, involving being snatched by pterosaurs, dropped, and finally eaten by the Mosasaurus, was deliberately over-the-top and gruesome to jolt the audience and demonstrate the chaotic danger of the park, even for someone who wasn't a villain, says an article from MSN.
Leeches are small tiny animals that have founded to have 32 brains and these animals not only have 32 brains but many more interesting facts such as having more than one pair of eyes to be specific it has 5 eye pairs and a total of 300 teeth, as well as other features of leach, include it to have 10 stomach in total ...
Surviving an encounter with a Conus bandanus (cone snail) 🐚 Tina Petway is the Associate Curator of Malacology here at HMNS, but also a survivor of multiple stabs from the very dangerous cone snail. Hear the frightening and fascinating story here.
Nigersaurus | Natural History Museum.
They turn out to be part of the largest-ever Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton ever discovered, a 65-million-year-old specimen dubbed Sue, after its discoverer. Amazingly, Sue's skeleton was over 90 percent complete, and the bones were extremely well-preserved.
Australian scientists say they have discovered the first evidence that an ancestor of the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex once roamed across Australia.
T-Rex is owned by Landry's Restaurants, which started back in 1920 in Katy, Texas. Landry's went private in 2010 when Tilman Fertitta, the CEO of Landry's and a large shareholder, made an offer to buy all shares.