For centuries, naturalists have puzzled over what might constitute the head of a sea star, commonly called a "starfish." When looking at a worm, or a fish, it's clear which end is the head and which is the tail. But with ...
Plants & Animals
Nov 1, 2023
7
2586
A team of researchers studying the Ngogo community of wild chimpanzees in western Uganda's Kibale National Park for two decades has published a report in Science showing that females in this population can experience menopause ...
Plants & Animals
Oct 26, 2023
0
162
A paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences describes "a missing law of nature," recognizing for the first time an important norm within the natural world's workings.
Evolution
Oct 16, 2023
14
4089
Charles Darwin said that evolution was constantly happening, causing animals to adapt for survival. But many of his contemporaries disagreed. If evolution is always causing things to change, they asked, then how is it that ...
Evolution
Oct 9, 2023
7
688
A study in the journal Cell sheds new light on the evolution of neurons, focusing on the placozoans, a millimeter-sized marine animal. Researchers at the Center for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona find evidence that specialized ...
Evolution
Sep 19, 2023
1
170
Mammal evolution in Africa, including that of modern human ancestors, through the late Cenozoic (Plio-Pleistocene, ~5.3 million years ago) may not have been driven by the expansion of grasslands as previously thought, new ...
The rotating shoulders and extending elbows that allow humans to reach for a high shelf or toss a ball with friends may have first evolved as a natural braking system for our primate ancestors who simply needed to get out ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 5, 2023
0
658
How a new method of inferring ancient population size revealed a severe bottleneck in the human population which almost wiped out the chance for humanity as we know it today.
Evolution
Aug 31, 2023
3
336
Researchers at Nanjing Normal University, China, have investigated the genetic underpinnings of mammalian longevity in search of new strategies to extend human lifespan.
The 1968 influenza pandemic was caused by the H3N2 flu strain and killed between 1 and 4 million people globally. For the sake of comparison, the WHO estimates that around 3 million people died of COVID-related illness in ...
