Sea cows (Sirenia) descended from four legged mammals that roamed Africa when this continent was isolated. They belong to the Afrotheria, the ‘African beasts’.
Pollen is all around us, is extremely durable and can provide clues about where someone’s been. A new genetic technique will make it easier to use pollen evidence in criminal investigations.
Genetic analysis shows that marine bacteria broke down much of the oil from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill. These findings could lead to more effective cleanups after future spills.
Modern biological research relies on big data analytics. Vast reservoirs of memory and powerful computing ability mean machines find patterns and make meta-analyses and even predictions for scientists.
Genomics is increasingly hailed by many as the turning point in modern medicine. Advances in technology now mean we’re able to make out the full DNA sequence of an organism and decipher its entire hereditary…
The traditional picture of Vikings is one of boatloads of hairy men pillaging their way along the coasts of Europe. Though true to some degree, this stereotype has more recently been tempered with the…
When a human bone was found on a gravelly riverbank by a bone-carver who was searching for mammoth ivory, little did he know it would provide the oldest modern-human genome yet sequenced. The anatomically…
Walter Gilbert won the Nobel Prize in 1980 in Chemistry for his contribution to sequence DNA, or “determination of base sequences in a nucleic acid”. Mohit Kumar Jolly, researcher at Rice University and…
Mycologists – scientists who study fungi – estimate there are up to five million species of fungi on Earth. Of these, only about 2%, or 100,000 species, have been formally described. So where are the other…