Exceptionally well-preserved fossils from the Cambrian period have helped fill a gap in our understanding of the origin and evolution of major animal groups alive today.
Evolution
May 12, 2023
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351
A team of researchers compared the genomes of woolly mammoths with modern day elephants to find out what made woolly mammoths unique, both as individuals and as a species. The investigators report April 7 in the journal Current ...
Evolution
Apr 7, 2023
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223
Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land on the next tree. Many groups of mammals seem to have taken this evolutionary advice to heart. According to our newly published paper in Science Advances, unrelated animals ...
Evolution
Mar 27, 2023
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44
With its powerful digging shovels, the European mole can burrow through the soil with ease. The same applies to the Australian marsupial mole. Although the two animal species live far apart, they have developed similar organs ...
Evolution
Jan 5, 2023
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105
Humans appear to be one of the only animals capable of speech, which requires a range of skills and mental abilities. Among them, vocal learning—the ability to learn to produce new sounds—is critical for developing language. ...
Plants & Animals
Dec 9, 2022
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5
New research shows that the closest bat virus relatives of the human Middle-East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus efficiently bind to bat ACE2 receptors as an entry point into these cells. These receptors have some ...
Cell & Microbiology
Dec 7, 2022
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28
Clams and other invertebrates often live in habitats with dense bacterial populations, despite lacking adaptive, lymphocyte-based immune systems. How clams resist bacterial pathogens in the environment is unclear.
Plants & Animals
Nov 29, 2022
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43
Their nomadic lifestyle and ravenous raiding have taken army ants (Dorylinae) to most continents on Earth, but a rare fossil discovery is now offering first evidence that the infamous predators once swarmed a land they are ...
Plants & Animals
Nov 22, 2022
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582
In a new study in PNAS, a research team at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, shows that both catnip and pea aphids produce the substance nepetalactone, even though the plant and the insect evolved ...
Evolution
Oct 13, 2022
0
202
New UMBC-led research in Frontiers in Microbiology suggests that viruses are using information from their environment to "decide" when to sit tight inside their hosts and when to multiply and burst out, killing the host cell. ...
Cell & Microbiology
Sep 23, 2022
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