The tiniest bones in the human body – the bones of the middle ear – could provide huge clues about our evolution and the development of modern-day humans, according to a study by a team of researchers that include a Texas A&M University anthropologist.
According to some experts, despite billions of dollars and everyone’s best intentions, education isn’t working well in America. Recently, scientists brought together by The Evolution Institute, explored new solutions from an unusual source: Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Opposing thumbs, expressive faces, complex social systems: it’s hard to miss the similarities between apes and humans. Now a new study with a troop of zoo baboons and lots of peanuts shows that a less obvious trait—the ability to understand numbers—also is shared by man and his primate cousins.
For the first time fossil jaw measurements confirm that land animals developed legs millions of years before their feeding systems changed enough to let them eat a land-based diet. The pattern had been hypothesized previously, but not really tested.
Researchers propose a new investigative roadmap for the field of evolutionary developmental biology to better understand how innovation at the genetic level can lead to ecological adaptations over time. It should help to close a major gap in understanding what drives evolutionary change.
Ancient DNA recovered from a series of skeletons in central Germany up to 7500 years old has been used to reconstruct the first detailed genetic history of modern Europe.
International researchers led by Chris Amemiya, PhD, Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason, has published “The African coelacanth genome provides insights into tetrapod evolution” as the cover article in the April 18 issue of Nature.
Students and scholars are taking a renewed interest in an "underdog" method of philosophy that is also uniquely American.
Close examination of the lower jawbone, teeth and skeleton of the hominid species Australopithecus sediba proves conclusively that it is uniquely different from a closely related species, Australopithecus africanus.
According to a new study, our Australopithecus ancestors may have used different approaches to getting around on two feet. The new findings appear in the latest issue of the journal Science and represent the culmination of more than four years of research into the anatomy of Australopithecus sediba (Au. sediba). The two-million-year-old fossils, discovered in Malapa cave in South Africa in 2008, are some of the most complete early human ancestral remains ever found.
A structural biologist at the Florida State University College of Medicine has made discoveries that could lead scientists a step closer to understanding how life first emerged on Earth billions of years ago.
A team of scientists has added markedly to the job description of prions as agents of change, identifying a prion capable of triggering a transition in yeast from its conventional single-celled form to a cooperative, multicellular structure. This change, which appears to improve yeast’s chances for survival in the face of hostile environmental conditions, is an epigenetic phenomenon—a heritable alteration brought about without any change to the organism’s underlying genome.
A new University of Florida study of nearly 5,000 Haiti bird fossils shows contrary to a commonly held theory, human arrival 6,000 years ago didn’t cause the island’s birds to die simultaneously.
The stomach and intestines of certain trout double to quadruple in size during month-long eating binges in Alaska each August. The rest of the year, the fish live off their reserves and their digestive tracks shrink. It's the first time researchers have documented fish gut flexibility in the wild.
An international team of scientists led by Dr Kate Sanders from the University of Adelaide, and including Dr Mike Lee from the South Australian Museum, has uncovered how some sea snakes have developed ‘shrunken heads’ – or smaller physical features than their related species.
New research from an international team of scientists suggests evolution, or basic survival techniques adapted by early humans, influences the decisions gamblers make when placing bets. The findings may help to explain why some treatment options for problem gamblers often don’t work, the researchers say.
A University of Florida researcher has described a new genus and species of extinct saber-toothed cat from Polk County, Fla., based on additional fossil acquisitions of the animal over the last 25 years.
Christopher Cameron of the University of Montreal’s Department of Biological Sciences and his colleagues have unearthed a major scientific discovery - a strange phallus-shaped creature they found in Canada’s Burgess Shale fossil beds, located in Yoho National Park. The fossils were found in an area of shale beds that are 505 million years old.
Butterflies are among the most vibrant insects, with colorations sometimes designed to deflect predators. New University of Florida research shows some of these defenses may be driven by enemies one-tenth their size.
Cryptic comments seem to have an ambiguous, obscure or hidden meaning. In biology, cryptic species are outwardly indistinguishable groups whose differences are hidden inside their genes.
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