Apes vs snakes: Who would win?
How did ancient primates evolve resistance to cobra venom? We ask an expert.
Who's afraid of cobras? Not gorillas and chimps!Recent research has shown that an ancient ancestor of chimps, gor...
evolution
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Did life arise on hydrogen energy?
New theory on the origins of life is a gas.
It’s one of life’s most profound and puzzling mysteries: how on earth did life get started from simple, inanimate mat...
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Where did the honey bee come from?
Understanding the origins of the planet’s most prolific pollinator.
It has, apparently, been a long-standing and hotly contested debate in science: from where did our beloved honey bee ...
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Why do we have a chin?
The chin serves no obvious purpose.
Big, small and sometimes dimpled, everyone has a chin – and we’d look pretty odd without one. But why is it there? Th...
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Snakes dined out after dinosaurs died out
The emergence of a diverse diet propelled snake evolution.
Around 66 million years ago, the dinosaurs died out. But it wasn’t a sad day for everyone, with mammal and bird evolu...
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Fossil found in Brazilian police raid is best preserved of its kind
Illegal trade bust reveals a remarkable specimen of a ground-dwelling pterosaur.
An extraordinarily well-preserved pterosaur fossil, fondly referred to as one of the “crown jewels of the Museum of G...
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More to learn about evolution from Galápagos finches
An invasive parasite is demonstrating natural selection in action.
Finches on the Galápagos Islands have become famous because of the subtle variations in species between islands. Thes...
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What is gain of function research in genetics?
Speculation about viral leaks in Wuhan brings research techniques into the spotlight.
It’s the rumour that won’t go away – that SARS-CoV-2 was accidentally leaked from a high biosecurity lab in Wuhan, Ch...
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Sonic deception: stealth moths
If you evolve to live in the dark, it’s handy if you develop some predator-evasion attributes.
Forget stealth military jets. Moths were there first. But rather than dodging enemy radar, they’re playing a differen...
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You may have missed...
Stray science stories from last week to cheer up your Monday.
The domestic history of goatsHow and where were goats domesticated? 10,000-year-old DNA might be able to tell us....
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How seals adapted to move through water
Collaboration of zoologists and engineers solves seal “evolutionary riddle”.
Have you ever wondered how seals learned to perform their skilled underwater acrobatics?Zoologist David Hocking, ...
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How mammals evolved big brains
Brain proportions were driven by body size and cataclysmic events.
Scientists have now pieced together a 150-million-year timeline to determine how mammals evolved big brains.An in...