We do it every day but barely give it a thought: chewing our food. But the "simple" process of masticating food may have played a crucial role in the evolution of our jaws, facial muscles and teeth.
Evolution
Aug 17, 2022
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42
Hundreds of animals eat fruit, from toucans to fruit bats to maned wolves to humans. But most fruit-bearing plants evolved relatively recently in Earth's history, showing up for the first time in the Cretaceous, the final ...
Ecology
Aug 16, 2022
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263
In humans, a fertilized egg is no guarantee of reproductive success. Most embryos stop developing and perish within days of fertilization, usually because they have an abnormal number of chromosomes. Now, researchers at Columbia ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jul 19, 2022
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47
For the first time, researchers successfully sequenced the genome of ancient human fossils from the Late Pleistocene in southern China. The data, published July 14 in the journal Current Biology, suggests that the mysterious ...
Archaeology
Jul 14, 2022
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1003
According to long-standing canon in evolutionary biology, natural selection is cruelly selfish, favoring traits that help promote reproductive success. This usually means that the so-called "force" of selection is well equipped ...
Evolution
Jul 7, 2022
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553
From ocean depths to mountain peaks, humans have littered the planet with tiny shards of plastic. We have even absorbed these microplastics into our bodies—with uncertain implications.
Environment
Jul 3, 2022
2
145
Scientists are starting to understand the precise workings of a type of gene that, unlike other genes, does not code for proteins—the building blocks of life.
Biotechnology
Jun 16, 2022
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298
A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in Israel and one in Canada has found evidence of fire use by early hominins (during the Lower Paleolithic) at an ancient camp site in Israel. In their paper published ...
Humans are the only species to live in every environmental niche in the world—from the icesheets to the deserts, rainforests to savannahs. As individuals we are rather puny, but when we are socially connected, we are the ...
Archaeology
Jun 10, 2022
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41
Archaeologists have found that a tool, dubbed the "stone Swiss Army knife" of prehistory, was made to look the same in enormous numbers across great distances and multiple biomes in southern Africa. This indicates early humans ...
Archaeology
Jun 9, 2022
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382
