A year in the life of a giant sloth
A fossillised tooth reveals the secrets of a single animal.
A massive fossilised tooth from central America has opened a window into life for a giant ground sloth that lived 27,...
Evolution
-
-
Crocodiles have evolved more than we think
Research pinpoints three shifts from terrestrial to aquatic.
If you’ve ever looked at a crocodile and felt like you were looking at a window to the Jurassic Period, you aren’t al...
-
Weird worms challenge complexity argument
New classification sheds light on evolution of simplification.
Looking like a character from a gothic fantasy, a chaetognath. Credit: Creative Commons Japanese scientists have ...
-
History
Lynn Margulis, contrarian to the end
Scientist revolutionised evolutionary theory.
Evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis has variously been regarded as a revolutionary and an eccentric. The web encyclo...
-
Vertebrate evolution kicked off in lagoons
First animals with backbones traced to shallow “hot-spots”.
Scientists have discovered that shallow, lagoon-like environments were the cradle for vertebrate evolution, giving ri...
-
How Nemo got his stripes
Clownfish variation reflects evolutionary pressures.
Coral reef fish display all sorts of patterns and colours. One of the most recognisable is that of the clownfish – a ...
-
The evolution of the mammal brain
Structure evolved from network found in marsupials.
Ancient neural connections found in the brains of marsupials and monotremes provide clues to the evolution of the hum...
-
Ultra-violet confirms “Darwin’s moths”
Experiment proves first observed natural selection.
New research published in the journal Communications Biology has provided the final piece of evidence needed to confi...
-
All-female salamander species steals sperm
Unisex amphibians beat the evolutionary odds.
Sex is expensive: it eats time, energy and resources. But the genetic diversity it produces is key to long-term evolu...
-
Bat DNA hosts stolen Ebola genes
Bats adopt parts of the DNA of the deadly virus.
Filoviruses like Marburg and Ebola produce terrifying and often fatal haemorrhagic fevers. New research, however, sho...
-
Conversation
Rethinking the origins of Homo sapiens
A profound shift underway in the science of human origins.
You might say it’s the ultimate prize of science, to discover when, where and why humans evolved. For a long time, th...
-
The secret of the green-blooded lizards
Green blood evolved independently four times.
There are several lizard species in New Guinea with green blood, instead of the usual red. The lime green colour is d...