Wild birds as offerings to the Egyptian gods

Millions of ibis and birds of prey mummies, sacrificed to the Egyptian gods Horus, Ra or Thoth, have been discovered in the necropolises of the Nile Valley. Such a quantity of mummified birds raises the question of their ...

A social bacterium with versatile habits

Related individuals of a soil bacterial species live in cooperative groups and exhibit astonishing genetic and behavioural diversity. ETH researchers recently published these findings in Science .

Grazers and pollinators shape plant evolution

It has long been known that the characteristics of many plants with wide ranges can vary geographically, depending on differences in climate. But changes in grazing pressure and pollination can also affect the genetic composition ...

Fisheries-induced evolution adds a bonus to good management

A new study published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) is the first to determine whether genetic changes resulting from fishing pressure have any significant economic effects for the case ...

Artificial comet contains building blocks of life

The first molecules of life form naturally in comets, reveals a French-German study led by Uwe Meierhenrich and Cornelia Meinert at the Institut de Chimie de Nice and by Louis Le Sergeant d'Hendecourt at the Institut d'Astrophysique ...

Meteorites: Tool kits for creating life on Earth

Meteorites hold a record of the chemicals that existed in the early Solar System and that may have been a crucial source of the organic compounds that gave rise to life on Earth. Since the 1960s, scientists have been trying ...

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