New Fossil Bovids from Kromdraai
University of the Witwatersrand, JohannesburgNew Fossil Bovids from Kromdraai shed light on South Africa's ancient ecosystems.
New Fossil Bovids from Kromdraai shed light on South Africa's ancient ecosystems.
Using cutting-edge computational methods and supercomputing infrastructure at UC San Diego, researchers have built the largest and most detailed bird family tree to date—an intricate chart delineating 93 million years of evolutionary relationships between 363 bird species, representing 92% of all bird families.
A study of more than 60,000 specimens of snakes and lizards worldwide reveals that snakes stand out alone in the evolution of reptiles. The team of scientists discovered that snakes evolved incredibly fast, as their ancestors shed limbs and adapted on multiple levels to live and spread out into thousands of species of snakes over 66 million years, up to today.
Neanderthals created stone tools held together by a multi-component adhesive, a team of scientists has discovered.
Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University crafted replica stone age tools and used them for a range of tasks to see how different activities create traces on the edge.
A 280-million-year-old fossil that has baffled researchers for decades has been shown to be, in part, a forgery following new examination of the remnants.
Our planet’s lithosphere is broken into several tectonic plates. Their configuration is ever-shifting, as supercontinents are assembled and broken up, and oceans form, grow, and then start to close in what is known as the Wilson cycle.
For millions of years, a variety of large herbivores, or megafauna, influenced terrestrial ecosystems.
Charles Darwin – arguably the most influential man of science in history, accumulated a vast personal library throughout his working life. Until now, 85 per cent of its contents were unknown or unpublished.
A study led by researchers at the Nagoya University Museum in Japan may change how we understand the cultural evolution of Homo sapiens at the time of their dispersal across Eurasia about 50,000 to 40,000 years ago.
A new species of pterosaur from specimens found on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, has been announced by scientists from the Natural History Museum, University of Bristol, University of Leicester, and University of Liverpool.
An international research team reports the discovery of Homo sapiens fossils from the cave site Ilsenhöhle in Ranis, Germany. Directly dated to approximately 45,000 years ago, these fossils are associated with elongated stone points partly shaped on both sides (known as partial bifacial blade points), which are characteristic of the Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician (LRJ).
The inner ear of a 6-million-year-old fossil ape reveals clues about the evolution of human movement.
Small omnivorous and insectivorous dinosaurs may have flapped small, feathered primitive wings to scare prey out of hiding places, according to a study published in Scientific Reports.
An international team of researchers from McMaster University, University of Alaska Fairbanks and the University of Ottawa has tracked and documented the movements and genetic connections of a female woolly mammoth that roamed the earth more than 14,000 years ago.
Scientists study developing lamprey embryos to clarify the origin of vertebrate head, paving the way to a better understanding of ancestral vertebrates.
Researchers at the University of Liège (ULiège) have identified microstructures in fossil cells that are 1.75 billion years old. These structures, called thylakoid membranes, are the oldest ever discovered.
Significant evolutionary changes happen gradually as opposed to in dramatic ‘monster’ steps, biologists have discovered, answering the long-debated question as to how game-changing innovations like flight, vision, and the bearing of live offspring came to be.
The egg did come first. Egg-laying arose deep in evolutionary time, long before animals even made their way onto land.
A groundbreaking study has found that evolution is not as unpredictable as previously thought, which could allow scientists to explore which genes could be useful to tackle real-world issues such as antibiotic resistance, disease and climate change.
Primates – and this includes humans – are thought of as highly social animals.
Central features of human evolution may stop our species from resolving global environmental problems like climate change, says a new study led by the University of Maine.
In general, frogs’ teeth aren’t anything to write home about—they look like pointy little pinpricks lining the upper jaw.
Natural selection acts on phenotypes constructed over development, which raises the question of how development affects evolution.
Horses have developed long faces simply ‘because they can,’ a team of evolutionary biologists say.
تقوم أجسامنا كل يوم ببعض الأمور الغريبة وغير المعتادة. فيما يلي بعض الأسئلة والأجوبة التي تقدم التفسير العلمي وراء حدوث ذلك.
A diario, el cuerpo hace algunas cosas bastante extrañas e inusuales. A continuación, se incluyen algunas preguntas y respuestas que ofrecen la explicación científica de por qué suceden.
Todos os dias, nossos organismos reagem de formas peculiares e incomuns. Aqui estão algumas perguntas e respostas que explicam a base científica desses eventos.
Paleontologists are getting a glimpse at life over a billion years in the past based on chemical traces in ancient rocks and the genetics of living animals.
A new study of paper wasps suggests social interactions may make animals smarter. The research offers behavioral evidence of an evolutionary link between the ability to recognize individuals and social cooperation.
One of the most enduring questions of life is: How does it happen? One line of scientific inquiry lies in understanding gastrulation — the stage at which embryo cells develop from a single layer to a multidimensional structure. New research suggests that the same physical principles behind multicellular self-organization may have evolved across vertebrate species.
The research team, led by scientists at the University of York, mapped the family tree of the ferocious ambush-predators and their extinct relatives known as Pseudosuchia.
A new bacterial species discovered at the deep-sea hydrothermal vent site ‘Crab Spa’ provides a deeper understanding of bacterial evolution.
Researchers have provided new insights into how ancestral elephants developed their dextrous trunks.
In a study published in the journal “Scientific Reports,” researchers from the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment (SHEP) at the University of Tübingen show that early humans of the Middle Paleolithic had a more varied diet than previously assumed.
On the 164th anniversary of Charles Darwin's Origin of species, the Darwin Online project at the National University of Singapore (NUS) will launch all the surviving draft pages of one of the most influential scientific books in history.
McGill biology researchers found that there are patterns regarding the importance of temperature in determining where species live, shedding light on their sensitivity to climate change
Armed with its own eyes, antennae, and swimming bristles, the posterior body part detaches for spawning. UTokyo scientists revealed its developmental mechanism for the first time.
Striped skunks are less likely to evolve with their famous and white markings where the threat of predation from mammals is low, scientists from the University of Bristol, Montana and Long Beach, California have discovered.
Seasonal rain and termite dispersal flights make protein-rich termites vulnerable to fishing chimpanzees
For over 20 years, a research team at Lund University in Sweden has studied the common bluetail damselfly. Females occur in three different colour forms – one with a male-like appearance, something that protects them from mating harassment. In a new study, an international research team found that this genetic colour variation that is shared between several species arose through changes in a specific genomic region at least five million years ago.
A new study published this week in Science challenges the notion that only humans are capable of forming strong and strategic cooperative relationships and sharing resources across non-family groups.
The world’s total population is expected to reach 9.9 billion by 2050. This rapid increase in population is boosting the demand for agriculture to cater for the increased demand. Below are some of the latest research and features on agriculture and farming in the Agriculture channel on Newswise.
Scientists know very little about conditions in the ocean when life first evolved, but new research published in Nature Geoscience has revealed how geological processes controlled which nutrients were available to fuel their development.
Rather than a slow, gradual process as Darwin envisioned, biologists can now see how evolutionary changes unfold on accelerated timescales. Using an arms race between bacteria and viruses, researchers are documenting complex evolutionary processes in simple laboratory flasks in only three weeks.
Researchers used fossil evidence to engineer a soft robotic replica of an extinct marine organism to understand how locomotion has changed in animals over time.
Researchers in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, in collaboration with paleontologists from Spain and Poland, used fossil evidence to engineer a soft robotic replica of pleurocystitid, a marine organism that existed nearly 450 million years ago and is believed to be one of the first echinoderms capable of movement using a muscular stem.
Chimpanzees use high ground to conduct reconnaissance on rival groups, often before making forays into enemy territory at times when there is reduced risk of confrontation, a new study suggests.
The development of sex-specific characteristics is frequently seen in mammals. These characteristics stem from the activation of corresponding genetic programmes that until now have been largely undescribed by the scientific community.