Modern North American porcupines are at least twice the size of their southern cousins and have stronger jaws. But how long have they looked that way?
Academic rigour, journalistic flair
Articles on Evolution
Displaying 1 - 20 of 1025 articles
It’s not easy to tell when a dynamic system, filled with life, might reach a point of no return.
A new Australian coelacanth find has revealed a surprising force behind the slow evolution of these ‘living fossils’.
Even OpenAI is worried about people developing intimate relationships with the new human-like version of its language model-cum-chatbot. But it should have known the risks.
And why it’s harder than you might think to evolve knees.
Baleen whales include the blue whale, the largest animal ever known.
Until a few years ago, it was impossible to create new lager beer.
Research has shown cats become distressed and want more attention when a fellow pet dies.
New research reveals that the human heart has evolved distinct structural and functional traits that set it apart from our closest great ape relatives.
The organism from which all modern life is descended is called the last universal common ancestor - and scientists are still trying to figure out what it was like.
Organoids of mammary glands can help researchers more efficiently study lactation, with findings that could apply to fields ranging from agriculture to medicine.
Reduced to its essence, the process of natural selection would look a lot like play.
‘Road ecology’ is the focus of Crossings, a powerful new book by environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb.
Reconstructing the demise of New Zealand’s extinct moa can help conserve the country’s remaining flightless birds, which are retreating to the same final places - cold, isolated mountaintops.
Brains evolve with body size according to a simple rule. Exceptions to that rule include our own species with enormous brains.
Vast amounts of space rocks litter our Solar System, and sometimes land on Earth’s surface. There are many things we can learn from them.
The experience of subjective awareness may have evolved to enable the communication of privately experienced ideas and feelings.
Some of the most caring animal fathers are insects.
Animals have these kinds of brain hemisphere biases too.
Over millions of years, a stable climate helped create this biodiversity hotspot. Climate change now threatens it.
Top contributors
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Strategic Professor in Palaeontology, Flinders University
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Scientia Professor of Evolution, UNSW Sydney
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Honorary Associate Professor, UNSW Sydney
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Professor in Evolutionary Biology (jointly appointed with South Australian Museum), Flinders University
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Senior Lecturer in Paleontology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences at the University of Bath, University of Bath
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Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology at the Milner Centre for Evolution, University of Bath
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Associate Professor, Department of Physiology, Monash University
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Adjunct Research Associate, Monash University
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Jenny Graves is a Friend of The Conversation.
Distinguished Professor of Genetics and Vice Chancellor's Fellow, La Trobe University
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Associate professor in Vertebrate Palaeontology, University of the Witwatersrand
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Principal Lecturer in Wildlife Conservation, Nottingham Trent University
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Research Associate in the College of Science and Engineering, Flinders University
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Mark Elgar is a Friend of The Conversation.
Professor of Evolutionary Biology, The University of Melbourne
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Professor of Natural Sciences, UCL
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Group leader, Estación Biológica de Doñana (EBD-CSIC)
