Depending upon how you do the counting, there are around 9 million species on Earth, from the simplest single-celled organisms to humans.
Evolution
Sep 6, 2023
4
528
Every modern mammal, from a platypus to a blue whale, is descended from a common ancestor that lived about 180 million years ago. We don't know a great deal about this animal, but the organization of its genome has now been ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 27, 2022
7
4935
Australian researchers have located what is believed to be the largest plant on Earth—and they estimate it's at least 4,500 years old.
Plants & Animals
Jun 1, 2022
2
3867
Geneticists have unearthed a major event in the ancient history of sturgeons and paddlefish that has significant implications for the way we understand evolution. They have pinpointed a previously hidden "whole genome duplication" ...
Evolution
May 31, 2023
0
288
As the 20th-century novelist Joseph Conrad famously wrote, "It's only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose," and Nature is very busy, so she makes lots of them. But as a genius, she can use them to advantage. ...
Evolution
Nov 16, 2015
0
38
They grow up to 12–15 feet tall and are causing havoc in the wetlands of North America. Known as Phragmites australis, the non-native common reed is one of the most important and most studied plants in the world.
Ecology
Mar 4, 2022
3
495
Sometimes referred to as the "the Methuselah of freshwater fish," sturgeons and their close relatives are very old from an evolutionary point of view. Fossils indicate that sturgeons date back 250 million years and have changed ...
Plants & Animals
Mar 30, 2020
0
1719
(PhysOrg.com) -- Roughly 10 million years ago, a major genetic change occurred in a common ancestor of gorillas, chimpanzees, and humans. Segments of DNA in its genome began to form duplicate copies at a greater rate than ...
Feb 11, 2009
8
0
The genome of a slowly evolving fish, the spotted gar, is so much like both zebrafish and humans that it can be used as a bridge species that could open a pathway to important advancements in biomedical research focused on ...
Biotechnology
Mar 7, 2016
0
479
Scientists once thought that humans must have 2 million genes to account for all our complexity. But since sequencing the human genome, researchers have learned that humans only have about 19,000 to 25,000 genes—not many ...
Evolution
Nov 21, 2018
0
121
