Forget blurry pictures and casts of big foot-prints. A Texas veterinarian, Dr Melba Ketchum, and her collaborators have published an article, in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, proving the existence…
Placental mammals like elephants, bats and humans evolved from small, insect-eating mammals, a study led by Stony Brook University…
The new study suggests extinction driven by climate instability may be just as important as evolution as a driver of plant biodiversity.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ecologyweb
Sunanda Creagh, The Conversation y Jan Wisniewski, The Conversation
Ice Ages caused a mass extinction of plants in south-eastern Australia around a million years ago, according to a new study that presents a fresh take on how extinction shapes biodiversity. Scientists…
In a sort-of Ice Age version of Jurassic Park, Harvard University’s Professor George Church has suggested – to much media coverage – that, one day soon, scientists somewhere will place a very unusual personal…
Sponges and hydra, which are made of colonies of cells with a small number of cell types, have some similarities with cancer.
Biodiversity Heritage Library
Life originated on Earth about four billion years ago. Death, sex and multicellularity came along about a billion years later. According to our new atavistic model, cancer came with multicellularity. About…
In order to drag themselves onto land, fish-like creatures needed limbs.
Thierrry
In the late Devonian period, roughly 365 million years ago, fish-like creatures started venturing from shallow waters onto land. Among the various adaptations associated with the switch to land life was…
We recognise extreme emotions, but may need more than facial expressions to decode them.
How Hwee young/EPA
As social creatures, non-verbal communication through facial expression is important in portraying emotions – and because of this, it’s interpreted rapidly and accurately. Regardless of culture, defined…
The ears on Copiphora gorgonensis, a neotropical katydid from the National Natural Park Gorgona Island, Colombia, work in a similar way to human ears.
Image courtesy of Daniel Robert & Fernando Montealegre-Z
The ears on a South American rainforest katydid’s legs work nearly the same way human ears do, a new study has found, showing that animal groups as apparently unrelated as mammals and insects have evolved…
The plumage of male fairy-wrens is certainly impressive, but why is it so blue?
Ralph Green
Why are some animals blue and others red? Explaining the diversity of colours in nature is a central issue in evolutionary biology. And part of the answer may lie in the most obvious place: the eye. In…
Ants might be a pain … but they play a vital role in maintaining the variety of plant life we see around us.
mraandrews
You’d be hard pressed to find many people who hold ants in high regard. That might be due to their destructive behaviour towards lawns, their ability to infest your house in no time at all, or a willingness…
The eye is perhaps one of the best examples of Darwinian evolution. Incremental steps driven by natural selection have led to the evolution of this complex organ from its origin as a simple light-sensitive…
Gibbons and humans have more in common than might immediately seem apparent. Among many behavioural traits shared by our two species is singing. Not just that – the songs of gibbons have the potential…
It might be cute, but when it grows up it might also like to eat you.
Steve Hillebrand/Wikimedia Commons
In recent advertisements for Meat and Livestock Australia, actor Sam Neill told us, in David Attenborough-inflected tones, that: “when our early ancestors started to eat red meat, our brains began to grow…