When we are confronted with the remarkable diversity and complexity of forms among living things—the lightweight and leathery wings of a bat, the dense networks of genes that work together to produce a functional cell—it ...
Evolution
Feb 15, 2017
0
186
Africa is a tough place. It always has been. Especially if you have to fend off gigantic predators like sabre-toothed carnivores in order to survive. And, when you're a small, dog-sized pre-mammalian reptile, sometimes the ...
Archaeology
Feb 13, 2017
1
141
A new study has revealed that gills originated much deeper in evolutionary history than previously believed. The findings support the idea that gills evolved before the last common ancestor of all vertebrates, helping facilitate ...
Archaeology
Feb 9, 2017
0
234
Researchers at Yale University have isolated the brain circuitry that coordinates predatory hunting, according to a study in the January 12 issue of Cell. One set of neurons in the amygdala, the brain's center of emotion ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jan 12, 2017
2
2880
Within the salty lakes of the Bahama's San Salvador Island is an amazing diversity of fishes that may rival Charles Darwin's finches in the Galapagos.
Evolution
Dec 27, 2016
0
156
Move over, hyenas and saber-toothed cats; there's a mammal with an even stronger bite. A new study by Burke Museum and University of Washington paleontologists describes an early marsupial relative called Didelphodon vorax ...
Archaeology
Dec 8, 2016
1
646
Where did our jaws come from? The question is more complicated than it seems, because not all jaws are the same. In a new article, published in Science, palaeontologists from China and Sweden trace our jaws back to the extinct ...
Archaeology
Oct 20, 2016
2
1097
Remember dropping your milk teeth? After a lot of wiggling the tooth finally dropped out. But in your hand was only the enamel-covered crown: the entire root of the tooth had somehow disappeared. In a paper published in Nature, ...
Archaeology
Oct 17, 2016
0
358
An international team of scientists has described a rare fossil site that is believed to be among the earliest evidence of different fish species using a common nursery—much like ones utilized by some fish today.
Archaeology
Sep 6, 2016
0
16
In 2014, scientists discovered a bizarre fossil—a crocodile-sized sea-dwelling reptile that lived 242 million years ago in what today is southern China. Its head was poorly preserved, but it seemed to have a flamingo-like ...
Archaeology
May 6, 2016
1
773
