The arrangement of bones in our specimen’s fins are the same as those of ‘fingers’ in tetrapods. The only difference is the digits are locked within the fin, and not free moving.
Capuchin monkeys in Brazil use big stones to crush the shells of nuts they want to eat. An experiment in the field investigated how these monkeys prepare to use new, unfamiliar tools.
Quentin Wheeler, State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry; Antonio G. Valdecasas, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) et Cristina Cánovas, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
If you go by editorial cartoons and T-shirts, you might have the impression that evolution proceeds as an orderly march toward a preordained finish line. But that’s not right at all.
Hidden forces are always at work in the world, and people always want to control them, a cognitive anthropologist explains. Enter the human universal of shamanism.
An evolutionary biologist visits the remote jungle mountaintop where a little-known naturalist wrote his insightful paper about the mechanisms of evolution that spurred on a rivalrous Charles Darwin.
Rivers are natural boundaries for evolving populations. But scientists don’t agree whether they create new species or just help maintain them. Research using birds’ molecular clocks provides some answers.
What drives the emergence and disappearance of species? By modeling the fundamental processes of evolution and ecology on geographical scales, new research spotlights topography and climatic shifts.