Feature Channels: Evolution and Darwin

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A cave containing thousands of endangered Pacific Sheath-tailed bats has been discovered on Vanua Balavu, an island on the remote Lau archipelago in Fiji.

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A group of researchers have redescribed a unique fossil animal from rocks nearly 520 million years old that fills in a gap in our understanding of the evolution of animals known as arthropods.

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New research from Michigan State University suggests that natural selection, famous for rewarding advantageous differences in organisms, can also preserve similarities.

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A new study led by Archaeologist Michelle Bebber, Ph.D., an assistant professor in Kent State University’s Department of Anthropology, has demonstrated that the atlatl (i.e. spear thrower) functions as an “equalizer”, a finding which supports women’s potential active role as prehistoric hunters.

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The discovery that birds evolved from small carnivorous dinosaurs of the Late Jurassic was made possible by recently discovered fossils of theropods such as Tyrannosaurus rex and the smaller velociraptors. In a way, you could say that dinosaurs are still with us and seen tweeting from your own backyard! Below are the latest research headlines in the Birds channel on Newswise.

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Scientists in South America and Australia have discovered that environmental stresses, such as large variations in rainfall and floods in the rivers, tend to change the mating rituals of these semi-aquatic Neotropical spiders which live in riparian habitats in Uruguay and Brazil.

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The apex predators that roamed the earth 230 million years ago had a much weaker bite than previously thought, and likely couldn’t crunch through bone to consume the entirety of their kills.

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In a new study, scientists Stewart Edie of the Smithsonian, Shan Huang of the University of Birmingham and colleagues drastically expanded the list of bivalve species, such as clams, oysters, mussels, scallops and their relatives, that humans are known to harvest and identified the traits that make these species prime targets for harvesting.

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Researchers led by a team at UT Southwestern Medical Center have identified cellular and molecular features of the brain that set modern humans apart from their closest primate relatives and ancient human ancestors. The findings, published in Nature, offer new insights into human brain evolution.

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New research shows that the hormone testosterone — which naturally triggers male electric fish to elongate the electric pulses they send out during the breeding season — also alters a system in the fish’s brain that enables the fish to ignore its own electric signals.

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An analysis of the hierarchy of tipping points suggests that during the last 66 million years two events set the scene for further climate tipping and for the evolution of the climate system in particular.

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The Persian Gold Tarantula (Chaetopelma persianum) is a newly described species recently discovered in northwestern Iran. In fact, the “woolly, golden hairs” the scientists observed and examined on a single specimen, were one of the features so unique that it was not necessary for additional individuals to be collected and physically studied.

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A remarkable new fossil from China reveals for the first time that a group of reptiles were already using whale-like filter feeding 250 million years ago.

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A new study by Tel Aviv University reveals that the presence of parasites in nature is not necessarily negative, and sometimes even helps animals survive.

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Scientists have worked out how one unusual species of trilobite — an ancient, sea-dwelling relative of spiders and lobsters — was able to defend itself against predators and survive a bumpy ride as Earth’s oxygen levels fluctuated.