Feature Channels: Evolution and Darwin

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The world's animal distribution map will need to be redrawn and textbooks updated, after researchers discovered the existence of 'Australian' species on Christmas Island.

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High-resolution micro-CT scanning of the skull of the fossil specimen known as "Little Foot" has revealed some aspects of how this Australopithecus species used to live more than 3 million years ago.

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Rutgers researchers have discovered the origins of the protein structures responsible for metabolism: simple molecules that powered early life on Earth and serve as chemical signals that NASA could use to search for life on other planets. Their study, which predicts what the earliest proteins looked like 3.5 billion to 2.5 billion years ago, is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Rutgers student Julia Van Etten, whose @Couch_Microscopy Instagram page garnered more than 25,000 followers by showcasing microorganisms as art, is now working with NASA on research into how red algae can help explain the origins of life on Earth.

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Faced with a gritty landscape of metal fences, concrete walls and asphalt pavement, city lizards in Puerto Rico rapidly and repeatedly evolved better tolerance for heat than their forest counterparts, according to new research from Washington University in St. Louis and the University of California, Los Angeles.Studies that delve into how animals adapt in urban environments are still relatively rare.

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After reconstructing the ancient forms of two cellular proteins, scientists discovered the earliest known instance of a complex form of protein regulation.

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A stiff mid-foot is essential for withstanding excessive force when pushing off on the ground for walking and running

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A Team around Anthropologist Ron Pinhasi from the University of Vienna – together with researchers from the University of Florence and Harvard University – found out that prehistoric migration from Africa, Asia and Europe to the Mediterranean islands took place long before the era of the Mediterranean seafaring civilizations.

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The study documented the earliest known interbreeding event between ancient human populations— a group known as the “super-archaics” in Eurasia interbred with a Neanderthal-Denisovan ancestor about 700,000 years ago. The event was between two populations more distantly related than any other recorded.

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Animal remains at the Takarkori rock shelter suggest human occupants shifted to a more mammal-heavy diet over time, as aridity of the region increased

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The microbiome of our ancestors might have been more important for human evolution than previously thought, according to a new study published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

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There must be some huge evolutionary benefit that renders women’s lives so valuable post-reproduction that they actually live six to eight years longer than men everywhere around the world.

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The first articulated Neanderthal skeleton to come out of the ground for over 20 years has been unearthed at one of the most important sites of mid-20th century archaeology: Shanidar Cave, in the foothills of Iraqi Kurdistan.

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The fossilized tail of a young dinosaur that lived on a prairie in southern Alberta, Canada, is home to the remains of a 60-million-year-old tumor.

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Elk have antlers. Rams have horns. In the animal kingdom, males develop specialized weapons for competition when winning a fight is critical. Humans do too, according to new research from the University of Utah. Males’ upper bodies are built for more powerful punches than females’, says the study, published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, suggesting that fighting may have long been a part of our evolutionary history.

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Several groups of reptiles persisted in Jurassic Africa even as volcanism ruined their habitat

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One wasp species has evolved the ability to recognize individual faces among their peers – something that most other insects cannot do – signaling an evolution in how they have learned to work together.

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Reporters are invited to attend The Allied Genetics Conference (TAGC), to be held April 22-26, 2020 in National Harbor, Maryland, just 30 minutes from downtown Washington DC. TAGC 2020 will feature the latest discoveries from researchers at the leading edge of what is possible in the biological and biomedical sciences.

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An international team led by Harvard Medical School scientists has produced the first genome-wide ancient human DNA sequences from west and central Africa.

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A new project is set to transform understanding of the impact of mining on Australian subterranean species.

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A comprehensive analysis of 10,575 genomes as part of a multi-national study led by researchers at UC San Diego has revealed close evolutionary proximity between the microbial domains at the base of the tree of life, the branching pattern of evolution described by Charles Darwin more than 160 years ago in his book, On the Origin of Species.

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Neandertals collected clam shells and volcanic rock from the beach and coastal waters of Italy during the Middle Paleolithic, according to a study published January 15, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Paola Villa of the University of Colorado and colleagues.

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A database of 10,000 bird species shows how measurements of wings, beaks and tails can predict a species' role in an ecosystem.

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Hummingbirds are some of the most brightly-colored things in the entire world.

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A 550 million-year-old fossilized digestive tract found in the Nevada desert could be a key find in understanding the early history of animals on Earth.

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Most people associate the idea of creatures trapped in amber with insects or spiders, which are preserved lifelike in fossil tree resin.

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Early Stone Age populations living between 1.8 - 1.2 million years ago engineered their stone tools in complex ways to make optimised cutting tools, according to a new study by University of Kent and UCL.

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A team of researchers have found that dogs and wolves are equally good at cooperating with partners to obtain a reward. When tested in same-species pairs, dogs and wolves proved equally successful and efficient at solving a given problem.

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Life as we know it requires phosphorus, which is scarce. How did the early Earth supply this key ingredient? A University of Washington study, published Dec. 30 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds answers in certain types of carbonate-rich lakes.

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Teach a chimpanzee to fish for insects to eat, and you feed her for a lifetime. Teach her a better way to use tools in gathering prey, and you may change the course of evolution.For most wild chimpanzees, tool use is an important part of life — but learning these skills is no simple feat. Wild chimpanzees transfer tools to each other, and this behavior has previously been shown to serve as a form of teaching.

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Scientists are racing to determine which genealogy most accurately represents the evolutionary history of sea turtles — a challenging proposition.

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Every day in the spring and fall since 1978, scientists and volunteers at Chicago's Field Museum have gotten up as early as 3:30 in the morning to collect fallen birds that have crashed into nearby buildings' windows.

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Small populations, inbreeding, and random demographic fluctuations could have been enough to cause Neanderthal extinction, according to a study published November 27, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Krist Vaesen from Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands, and colleagues.

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Computational fluid dynamics can be used to study how extinct animals used to swim. Scientists studied 65 million-year-old cephalopod fossils to gain deeper understanding of modern-day cephalopod ecosystems.

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Plants get stressed too. Environmental factors such as drought or a high concentration of salt in the soil disrupt their physiology.

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100-million-year old legged snake fossil provides critical insight into how the heads of modern snakes evolved

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Researchers from McMaster University have discovered striking variation in the underlying genetic machinery that orchestrates sexual differentiation in frogs, demonstrating that evolution of this crucial biological system has moved at a dramatic pace.

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University of Wisconsin–Madison researchers have cultivated lifelike chemical reactions while pioneering a new strategy for studying the origin of life.

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Natural genetic engineering allowed plants to move from water to land, according to a new study by an international group of scientists from Canada, China, France, Germany, and Russia.

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In terms of their body plan, Old World monkeys--a group that includes primates like baboons and macaques--are generally considered more similar to ancestral species than apes are. But a new study that analyzes the first well-preserved femur of Aegyptopithecus zeuxis

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Biology encodes information in DNA and RNA, which are complex molecules finely tuned to their functions.

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Red deer living on the Isle of Rum, on the west coast of Scotland, have been giving birth earlier and earlier since the 1980s, at a rate of about three days per decade.

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A marine geobiologist falls for the ‘brains’ and beauty of an ancient single-celled creature that can change its shell into a variety of geometric shapes.

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Ever since scientists discovered that certain microbes can get their energy from electrical charges, researchers have wondered how they do it. Bacteria don’t have mouths, so they need another way to bring their fuel into their bodies. New research from Washington University in St. Louis reveals how one such bacteria pulls in electrons straight from an electrode source.

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By creating protocells in hot, alkaline seawater, a UCL-led research team has added to evidence that the origin of life could have been in deep-sea hydrothermal vents rather than shallow pools.

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The study, published recently in Molecular Biology and Evolution, describes the discovery that human saliva is much more watery than the saliva of chimpanzees and gorillas.

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Vampire bats could be said to be sort of like people – not because of their blood-sucking ways, but because they help their neighbors in need even if it’s of no obvious benefit to them.

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A landmark study led by Sydney researchers pinpoints the birthplace of modern humans in southern Africa and suggests how climate change may have driven the first migrations.

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Tricking fungi into thinking they're starving could be the key to slowing down our evolutionary arms race with fungal pathogens, as hungry fungi don't want to have sex.

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International consortium of researchers generates gene sequences from more than 1100 plant species