Polar bears are a familiar sight to many through the media as we see evocative images of singular bears floating on isolated ice rafts as they face the harsh realities of climate change shrinking sea ice in the Arctic. Their ...
An analysis of ancient DNA from a 100,000-year-old polar bear has revealed that extensive hybridization between polar bears and brown bears occurred during the last warm interglacial period in the Pleistocene, leaving a surprising ...
Plants & Animals
Jun 16, 2022
2
1072
The oldest unequivocal evidence of upright walking in the human lineage are footprints discovered at Laetoli, Tanzania in 1978, by paleontologist Mary Leakey and her team. The bipedal trackways date to 3.7 million years ago. ...
Evolution
Dec 1, 2021
0
2196
Plump and ponderous, tardigrades earned the nickname "water bears" when scientists first observed the 0.02-inch-long animals' distinctive lumbering gaits in the 18th century. Their dumpy plod, however, raises the question ...
General Physics
Aug 27, 2021
3
1406
Today, the rocks of the Hanna Formation in south-central Wyoming are hundreds of miles away from the nearest ocean. But around 58 million years ago, Wyoming was oceanfront property, with large hippo-like mammals traipsing ...
Paleontology & Fossils
May 13, 2021
0
238
A study published in Science Advances on April 1 reveals a new hypothesis that may explain why European cave bears went extinct during past climate change periods. The research was motivated by controversy in the scientific ...
Evolution
Apr 1, 2020
2
310
If you could travel back in time 3.5 billion years, what would Mars look like? The picture is evolving among scientists working with NASA's Curiosity rover.
Space Exploration
Oct 7, 2019
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5676
Scientists from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Vanderbilt University and Clark University have shed new light on the genomic foundation of the polar bear's ecological adaption by pinpointing rapid changes in the ...
Plants & Animals
Jun 17, 2019
0
107
The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet. One consequence of that trend is the thawing of permafrost, a layer of earth that has remained frozen for thousands of years in some areas. This frozen soil and ...
Environment
Feb 11, 2019
0
138
An international team of researchers has found evidence of extinct cave bear DNA in modern bears. In their paper published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, the group describes their genetic analysis of modern brown ...
