'Flipperbot': Sea turtles inspire beach-walking robot (w/ video)

(Phys.org) —For sea turtle hatchlings struggling to reach the ocean, success may depend on having flexible wrists that allow them to move without disturbing too much sand. A similar wrist also helps a robot known as "FlipperBot" ...

Earliest animals lived in a lake environment, research shows

Evidence for life on Earth stretches back billions of years, with simple single-celled organisms like bacteria dominating the record. When multi-celled animal life appeared on the planet after 3 billion years of single cell ...

'Water bear' genomes reveal the secrets of extreme survival

Tardigrades may be nature's ultimate survivors. While these tiny, nearly translucent animals are easily overlooked, they represent a diverse group that has successfully colonized freshwater, marine, and terrestrial environments ...

Resurrecting a 'lost' coral species

With about one-third of the world's corals currently under threat of extinction due to climate change, Curtin researchers have made the encouraging discovery of a "lost" species of coral that had been hidden for more than ...

Walking fish reveal how our ancestors evolved onto land

About 400 million years ago a group of fish began exploring land and evolved into tetrapods – today's amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. But just how these ancient fish used their fishy bodies and fins in a terrestrial ...

The evolution of fins to limbs in the land invasion race

Why did animals with limbs win the race to invade land over those with fins? A new study comparing the forces acting on fins of mudskipper fish and on the forelimbs of tiger salamanders can now be used to analyze early fossils ...

Streamlining a common survival strategy in marine microbes

(Phys.org) —Despite advances made in the fields of DNA sequencing and analysis, researchers have barely begun to scratch the tip of the iceberg in cataloging the planet's microbial diversity, mainly because only a minute ...

page 1 from 4