It's not a coincidence that dogs are cuter than wolves, or that goats at a petting zoo have shorter horns and friendlier demeanors than their wild ancestors. Scientists call this "domestication syndrome"—the idea that breeding ...
Plants & Animals
Oct 15, 2020
9
1301
New University of Colorado Boulder-led research finds that the traits that make vertebrates distinct from invertebrates were made possible by the emergence of a new set of genes 500 million years ago, documenting an important ...
Evolution
Sep 16, 2020
0
3664
For decades, anthropologists have attempted to solve the mystery of what hominins—early ancestors of humans—ate to survive. The answer to this question can be found etched into the bones and teeth of hominins, but the ...
Archaeology
Jun 12, 2020
2
231
Approximately 10 percent of infants are born with a congenital heart defect, with one of the most common being persistent truncus arteriosus—a hole in the heart. In a healthy baby, deoxygenated blood is pumped through a ...
Cell & Microbiology
May 5, 2020
0
29
About 800,000 years ago, the giant straight-tusked elephant Palaeoloxodon migrated out of Africa and became widespread across Europe and Asia.
Archaeology
Jan 21, 2020
2
387
A new University of Barcelona study reveals the first empirical genetic evidence of human self-domestication, a hypothesis that humans have evolved to be friendlier and more cooperative by selecting their companions depending ...
Evolution
Dec 4, 2019
3
3833
Lamprey are blood-sucking vampire-like fish that attach to and eventually kill game fish, making them the bane of many a fisherman's existence. Like something out of a horror film, these parasites use radial rows of sharp ...
Plants & Animals
Nov 19, 2019
0
355
Neural crest cells—embryonic cells in vertebrates that travel throughout the body and generate many cell types—have been thought to originate in the ectoderm, the outermost of the three germ layers formed in the earliest ...
Cell & Microbiology
Oct 23, 2019
0
57
During embryonic development, the entire nervous system, the skin and the sensory organs emerge from a single sheet of cells known as the ectoderm. While there have been extensive studies of how this sheet forms all these ...
Cell & Microbiology
Oct 17, 2019
0
70
During the lifetime of a body—whether human, fish or any other type of vertebrate—cells die, making room for fresh new cells to carry on vital processes. The dead cells must be cleared away, though, and debris removal ...
Cell & Microbiology
Sep 6, 2019
0
36
