Messel boa: Live birth in a 47-million-year-old snake

An Argentine-German team of scientists, including Senckenberg's Krister Smith, has discovered the world's first fossil evidence of live birth in snakes. The fossil they examined came from the Hessian UNESCO World Heritage ...

'Living fossil' genome decoded

A group of scientists from Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST), Nagoya University, and the University of Tokyo decoded the first lingulid brachiopod genome, from Lingula anatina collected ...

Tooth loss in birds occurred about 116 million years ago

The absence of teeth or "edentulism" has evolved on multiple occasions within vertebrates including birds, turtles, and a few groups of mammals such as anteaters, baleen whales and pangolins. Where early birds are concerned, ...

Ancient reptile birth preserved in fossil

Ichthyosaur fossil may show the earliest live birth from an ancient Mesozoic marine reptile, according to a study published February 12, 2014 in PLOS ONE by Ryosuke Motani from the University of California, Davis, and colleagues.

Living fossils? Actually, sturgeon are evolutionary speedsters

Efforts to restore sturgeon in the Great Lakes region have received a lot of attention in recent years, and many of the news stories note that the prehistoric-looking fish are "living fossils" virtually unchanged for millions ...

Deep-sea vent animals not as isolated as they seem

(Phys.org) —Miles below the ocean surface, diverse ecosystems flourish at hydrothermal vents. Without sunlight, animals live off of bacteria that thrive on chemicals billowing out of the Earth's crust. These strange communities ...

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