Why do some species exhibit patterns of reversed gender roles? That question was addressed in a Nature Communications paper published yesterday. Typically in animals, females tend to invest more in caring…
Ancient camels up to 29% larger than their modern-day cousins may have roamed the High Arctic of Canada around 3.5 million years ago, according to a new study of a fossil found in the region. The study…
Sex without seed. Seed without sex. It’s been said that the greatest gift of science to humankind would be achieving those two goals. Effective contraceptives such as the pill have pretty much nailed the…
All forms of science are reliant on facts, hard evidence and statistics to maintain relevance and credibility. But what of the legitimacy of the so-called “pseudosciences”? A warning: I’m going to pick…
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…
Sunanda Creagh, The Conversation et 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…
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 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…
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 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…
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…
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…