Scientists have discovered that one of the most unusual creatures in the animal kingdom is far more diverse and evolutionarily complex than previously known. An international team led by the University of Göttingen has reconstructed ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 7, 2026
0
15
With their slender bodies and long front legs, Miracinonyx trumani—often nicknamed the "American cheetah"—was long thought to be a North American analog of the African big cat. But in a new study published in the journal ...
Evolution
Sep 6, 2026
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158
A new study led by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has overturned decades of assumptions about Miracinonyx trumani, the extinct predator popularly known as the American cheetah. By analyzing nuclear ...
Evolution
Sep 4, 2026
0
264
Two tiny ant fossils recovered in southern Saskatchewan are helping scientists better understand the evolutionary history of modern ants. Ant fossils dating from 72–56 million years ago are rare. What happened to insects ...
Evolution
Sep 3, 2026
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52
On the windswept coasts of Oregon and California lives an unassuming little plant that can withstand salty blasts that kill its inland counterparts. It's called the yellow monkeyflower. Now, researchers are beginning to understand ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 3, 2026
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32
About 200 million years ago, furry, little egg-laying creatures evolved the ability to feed their offspring with a secretion from special glands: milk. Their evolutionary journey continued, and by about 160 million years ...
Evolution
Sep 3, 2026
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37
The pigments that give beets their red color may have helped a major group of flowering plants repeatedly adapt to dry environments, setting the stage for the evolution of traits that allowed plants to adapt to some of the ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 3, 2026
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10
The enzymes found in modern organisms are complex proteins, often with multiple folded substructures and specialized catalytic sites. Proteins are encoded by genes. Tracing the history of enzymes across all living organisms ...
Evolution
Sep 3, 2026
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7
We often think of microbes as organisms that live around us, like the Salmonella bacteria and flu viruses that cause illness. But some of our most intimate relationships are with the microbes living inside us.
Evolution
Sep 2, 2026
0
33
Why do some groups of organisms contain thousands of species while others have only a handful? Evolutionary biologists have spent decades trying to answer this question using mathematical models that estimate how biological ...
Evolution
Sep 2, 2026
0
39
