A human, an octopus, and a coral could hardly look more different—yet deep inside their cells, their chromosomes still carry recognizable pieces of a genome inherited from an animal ancestor that lived more than 600 million ...
Evolution
Aug 22, 2026
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143
The most prominent difference between human male and female skeletons is the pelvis, which anthropologists often use to determine the sex of ancient remains. Scientists have long believed the human pelvis evolved mainly as ...
100 million years ago, long before human intervention, ancestors of grasses, including wheat, rice and maize, developed "bypasses" in chemical pathways used to create two critical compounds: lignin and starch. These more ...
Plants & Animals
Aug 20, 2026
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14
Why is there sex—or, more precisely, sexual reproduction? If you're an evolutionary biologist, the answer isn't obvious. Sexual reproduction is biologically costly, requiring not only competition for mates but also the creation ...
Evolution
Aug 20, 2026
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14
Nearly every cell in the human body contains essentially the same genetic information, yet different cells activate different genes. For regulatory proteins to reach these genes, DNA must be accessible. This accessibility ...
Evolution
Aug 20, 2026
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8
Scientists had previously observed that some species of shrews undergo a form of biological plasticity in which their bodies, skulls, brains and some organs shrink in the winter, then regrow in the spring. Now, a new study ...
Scientists studying one of nature's greatest reproductive innovations have discovered how some lizards evolved from laying eggs to giving birth to live young. The new research is the first to reveal the evolutionary process ...
Plants & Animals
Aug 19, 2026
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32
Biologists, zoologists and psychologists have been trying to trace the origins of human language for centuries. One well-known theory, known as the social brain hypothesis, suggests that increasingly complex social lives ...
Between 29,000 and 19,000 years ago, the planet experienced some of its coldest temperatures and drastic landscape changes at the peak of the Ice Age, during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), the period of most extensive global ...
Recent advances in our understanding of human evolution challenge the way we currently name and classify our ancestors, according to new research from Monash University. The study, published in the American Journal of Biological ...
Evolution
Aug 18, 2026
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521
