Molecular clock dates for the first animals to walk the Earth don't match the fossil record. Comparing the disparate DNA of two different species and extrapolating how long it would take for them to mutate from a common ancestor ...
Humans and our closest relatives, living apes, display a remarkable diversity of types of locomotion—from walking upright on two legs to climbing in trees and walking using all four limbs.
Evolution
Jan 29, 2024
0
667
Giants once roamed the karst plains of southern China, three-meter tall apes weighing in at 250 kilograms. These very distant primate relatives—Gigantopithcus blacki—went extinct before humans arrived in the region, with ...
Paleontology & Fossils
Jan 10, 2024
5
375
Fossils of a new group of animal predators have been located in the Early Cambrian Sirius Passet fossil locality in North Greenland. These large worms may be some of the earliest carnivorous animals to have colonized the ...
Paleontology & Fossils
Jan 3, 2024
2
3604
A case study led by Southern Illinois University, Illinois, has described the earliest discovery of an ovarian teratoma, a type of tumor that contains well-differentiated tissues developed from three germ cell layers (ectoderm, ...
Asian colobines, also known as leaf-eating monkeys, have been on the planet for about 10 million years. Their ancestors crossed land bridges, dispersed across continents, survived the expansion and contraction of ice sheets ...
Evolution
Jun 1, 2023
0
69
Three hundred miles off the southeastern coast of Africa, Madagascar is a land of mystery. There is such a rich diversity of vertebrates found only on the island that is so unlike anything seen elsewhere in the world that ...
Long obscured in the shadows of history, the world's first nomadic empire—the Xiongnu—is at last coming into view thanks to painstaking archaeological excavations and new ancient DNA evidence. Arising on the Mongolian ...
Archaeology
Apr 14, 2023
0
1402
Reduced predictability of seasonal rainfall might have played a significant role in the disintegration of Classic Maya societies about 1,100 years ago. "Decline in seasonal predictability potentially destabilized Classic ...
Archaeology
Apr 7, 2023
0
145
When the Kinks' Ray Davies penned the tune "Last of the Steam-Powered Trains," the vanishing locomotives stood as nostalgic symbols of a simpler English life. But for a paleontologist at the University of Kansas, the replacement ...
Evolution
Mar 28, 2023
2
511
