To reach the Mariana Islands in the Western Pacific, humans crossed more than 2,000 kilometres of open ocean, and around 2,000 years earlier than any other sea travel over an equally long distance. They settled in the Marianas around 3,500 years ago, slightly earlier than the initial settlement of Polynesia.
A prehistoric croc measuring more than five metres long - dubbed the 'swamp king' - ruled south eastern Queensland waterways only a few million years ago.
Adalatherium is an important piece in a very large puzzle on early mammalian evolution in the southern hemisphere, one in which most of the other pieces are still missing
This past year, researchers at the California Academy of Sciences added 213 plant and animal species to the tree of life, providing deeper insight into the rich biodiversity of our planet and helping to inform global conservation strategies.
Charles Darwin's landmark opus, On the Origin of the Species, ends with a beautiful summary of his theory of evolution, "There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
A new study at the University of Chicago has shown that elaborate protein structures accumulate over deep time even when they serve no purpose, because a universal biochemical property and the genetic code force natural selection to preserve them.
UC San Diego researchers discovered that most people no longer produce the Siglec-12 protein, but some of those who do are at twice the risk for advanced cancer.
Ancient deep sea creatures called radiodonts had incredible vision that likely drove an evolutionary arms race according to new research published today.
Study suggests that a difference in culture and beliefs between science instructors and students may inadvertently lead to low acceptance of evolution among minority students — particularly Black students — in biology.
Two original pages from the handwritten draft of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, along with rare letters, and never-before-seen reading notes have been added to Darwin Online. This scholarly portal dedicated to naturalist Charles Darwin was founded by Dr John van Wyhe from the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) Department of Biological Sciences, and Tembusu College.
In a new study, researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have identified a handful of variations in an amino acid sequence critical for retaining the ancestral function of a gene over the course of 600 million years of evolution.
Darwin’s theory of evolution should be expanded to include consideration of a DNA stability “energy code” – so-called “molecular Darwinism” – to further account for the long-term survival of species’ characteristics on Earth, according to Rutgers scientists. The iconic genetic code can be viewed as an “energy code” that evolved by following the laws of thermodynamics (flow of energy), causing its evolution to culminate in a nearly singular code for all living species, according to the Rutgers co-authored study in the journal Quarterly Reviews of Biophysics.
When and how did the first animals appear? Science has long sought an answer.
Males of the extinct human species Paranthropus robustus were thought to be substantially larger than females — much like the size differences seen in modern-day primates such as gorillas, orangutans and baboons. But a new fossil discovery in South Africa instead suggests that P. robustus evolved rapidly during a turbulent period of local climate change about 2 million years ago, resulting in anatomical changes that previously were attributed to sex.
The fossil remains of several small mammals discovered in tightly packed clusters in western Montana provide the earliest evidence of social behavior in mammals, according to a new study co-authored by a Yale scientist.
North America's beloved Monarch butterflies are known for their annual, multi-generation migrations in which individual insects can fly for thousands of miles. But Monarchs have also settled in some locations where their favorite food plants grow year round, so they no longer need to migrate.
A new study indicates that the earliest evidence of mammal social behavior goes back to the Age of Dinosaurs. A multituberculate that lived about 75.5 million years ago, Filikomys primaevus engaged in multi-generational, group-nesting and burrowing behavior, and possibly lived in colonies.
Fossils recovered from Antarctica in the 1980s represent the oldest giant members of an extinct group of birds that patrolled the southern oceans with wingspans of up to 21 feet that would dwarf the 11½-foot wingspan of today's largest bird, the wandering albatross.
A new study, ‘150 million years of sustained increase in pterosaur flight efficiency’, published in the journal Nature has shown that pterosaurs – a group of creatures that became Earth’s first flying vertebrates – evolved to improve their flight performance over their 150 million-year existence, before going extinct at the same time as dinosaurs 66 million years ago.
RSS
Medicine keyboard_arrow_right
Sciencekeyboard_arrow_right
Life keyboard_arrow_right
Business keyboard_arrow_right
Journal News keyboard_arrow_right
By Location keyboard_arrow_right
Meetings, Grants, and Events keyboard_arrow_right