‘Evolution will punish you if you’re selfish and mean': NSF sponsored study
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Two Michigan State University evolutionary biologists offer new evidence that evolution doesn’t favor the selfish, disproving a theory popularized in 2012. “We found evolution...
View ArticleGalaxies had ‘mature’ shapes 11.5 billion years ago
Newswise — AMHERST, Mass. – Studying the evolution and anatomy of galaxies using the Hubble Space Telescope, an international team of astronomers led by doctoral candidate BoMee Lee and her advisor...
View ArticleEvolution: Not the end of the world: why Earth’s greatest mass extinction was...
The ancient closest relatives of mammals – the cynodont therapsids – not only survived the greatest mass extinction of all time, 252 million years ago, but thrived in the aftermath, according to new...
View ArticleEvolution and medicine, an accessible introduction
Evolution and Medicine provides an accessible introduction to the new field of evolutionary medicine. Evolutionary concepts help explain why we remain vulnerable to disease, how pathogens and cancer...
View ArticleOrigins of life assumptions questioned
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Before there was life on Earth, there were molecules. A primordial soup. At some point a few specialized molecules began replicating. This self-replication, scientists agree,...
View ArticleLife on Earth may have come from out of this world: international team of...
A group of international scientists including a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researcher have confirmed that life really could have come from out of this world. The team shock compressed an...
View ArticleNew form of light-saber-like matter discovered by Harvard, MIT group
Working with colleagues at the Harvard-MIT Center for Ultracold Atoms, a group led by Harvard Professor of Physics Mikhail Lukin and MIT Professor of Physics Vladan Vuletic have managed to coax...
View ArticleClay may have been birthplace of life on earth
Newswise — ITHACA, N.Y. – Clay, a seemingly infertile blend of minerals, might have been the birthplace of life on Earth. Or at least of the complex biochemicals that make life possible, Cornell...
View ArticleA new species of horse, 4.4 million years old
CLEVELAND—Two teams of researchers, including a scientist from Case Western Reserve University, have announced the discovery of a new species of fossil horse from 4.4 million-year-old fossil-rich...
View ArticleDiscovery of 1.4 million-year-old fossil human hand bone closes human...
COLUMBIA, Mo. – Humans have a distinctive hand anatomy that allows them to make and use tools. Apes and other nonhuman primates do not have these distinctive anatomical features in their hands, and...
View ArticleTheory on origin of animals challenged: Animals needs only extremely little...
One of science’s strongest dogmas is that complex life on Earth could only evolve when oxygen levels in the atmosphere rose to close to modern levels. But now studies of a small sea sponge fished out...
View ArticleHummingbird evolution soared after they invaded South America 22,000,000...
A newly constructed family tree of the hummingbirds, published today in the journal Current Biology, tells a story of a unique group of birds that originated in Europe, passed through Asia and North...
View ArticleDiabetes drugs’ long-term effectiveness: a new study
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are seeking volunteers for a study that compares the long-term benefits and risks of four widely used diabetes drugs. The drugs...
View ArticleMetabolism may have existed before people actually did
In a study funded by the Wellcome Trust and the European Research Council researchers at the University of Cambridge reconstructed the chemical make-up of the Earth’s earliest ocean in the laboratory....
View ArticleThe 13 billion-year evolution of the universe, crammed into a four-minute video
The 13 billion-year evolution of the universe,crammed into a four-minute video A massive computer simulation has produced a model of the universe’s evolution with new accuracy in some important...
View ArticleMiddle-class social traits of thrift, docility, nonviolence have been...
Drawing on startling new evidence from the mapping of the genome, an explosive new account of the genetic basis of race and its role in the human story Fewer ideas have been more toxic or harmful than...
View ArticleScientists may be wrong about new ‘Nobel level’ Big Bang theory
It was just weeks ago that astronomers announced a major, double-barreled discovery: using a super-sensitive microwave telescope known as BICEP2, they had seen evidence of gravity waves that roiled...
View ArticleStill many unanswered questions about the origin of our universe and the...
Neutrinos are tiny, neutral elementary particles that, contrary to the standard model of physics, have been proven to have mass. One possible explanation for this mass could be that neutrinos are...
View ArticleWhat a 66-million-year-old forest fire reveals about the last days of the...
As far back as the time of the dinosaurs, 66 million years ago, forests recovered from fires in the same manner they do today, according to a team of researchers from McGill University and the Royal...
View ArticleBirds may not have evolved from dinosaurs
The re-examination of a sparrow-sized fossil from China challenges the commonly held belief that birds evolved from ground-dwelling theropod dinosaurs that gained the ability to fly. The birdlike...
View ArticleThere is 4,000,000,000-year-old chemistry in cells today
Genesis Revisited: Is Modern Science Catching Up With Ancient Knowledge?Parts of the primordial soup in which life arose have been maintained in our cells today according to scientists at the...
View ArticleInsects evolved ultrasonic hearing abilities over millennia
A grant of £250,000 from The Leverhulme Trust has been awarded to a team of scientists led by the University of Lincoln, UK, to study how a group of insects evolved incredible ultrasonic hearing...
View ArticleSorry, the statute of limitations on assault is 219 million years
Tooth serves as evidence of 220 million-year-old attack A tooth challenges beliefs about how ancient reptiles lived At the beginning of the age of dinosaurs, gigantic reptiles—distant relatives of...
View ArticleThe pleasure of learning new words
In a study published in the journal Current Biology, researchers from the University of Barcelona (UB), the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) and the Otto von Guericke University...
View ArticleMassive tectonic event a half-billion years ago may have triggered explosive...
AUSTIN, Texas— A new analysis of geologic history may help solve the riddle of the “Cambrian explosion,” the rapid diversification of animal life in the fossil record 530 million years ago that has...
View ArticleWhy men have better navigational skills
SALT LAKE CITY, Nov. 13, 2014 – A University of Utah study of two African tribes found evidence that men evolved better navigation ability than women because men with better spatial skills – the...
View ArticlePrehistoric conflict hastened human brain’s capacity for collaboration, study...
KNOXVILLE – Warfare not only hastened human technological progress and vast social and political changes, but may have greatly contributed to the evolutionary emergence of humans’ high intelligence...
View ArticleFirst evidence of milk consumption in ancient dental plaque
Led by a University of Oklahoma professor, an international team of researchers has discovered the first evidence of milk consumption in the ancient dental calculus–a mineralized dental plaque–of...
View ArticleEarliest primates lived in trees
Newswise — GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Say “primate” and most people wouldn’t think of a tree-dwelling, squirrel-like creature that weighs no more than a deck of playing cards, but a new study suggests that...
View ArticleFirst stars in universe were born 100 million years later than previously...
The very first stars in the universe need to reset their birthday clocks: These ancient objects burst into existence more than 100 million years later than scientists previously thought, according to...
View ArticleBig Bang Theory of the Universe May Be Incorrect
WASHINGTON (CBS DC) — Big Bang? What Big Bang? In a new theory, researchers suggest that the start of the universe may have involved no bang at all. “Our theory suggests that the age of the universe...
View ArticleEarliest known fossil of the genus Homo dates to 2.8 to 2.75 million years...
The earliest known record of the genus Homo — the human genus — represented by a lower jaw with teeth, recently found in the Afar region of Ethiopia, dates to between 2.8 and 2.75 million years ago,...
View ArticleEarliest humans had diverse range of body types, just as we do today:...
One of the dominant theories of our evolution is that our genus, Homo, evolved from small-bodied early humans to become the taller, heavier and longer legged Homo erectus that was able to migrate...
View ArticleCommon back problems may be caused by evolution of human locomotion
A common spinal disease could be the result of some people’s vertebrae, the bones that make up the spine, sharing similarities in shape to a non-human primate. The research, published in the open...
View ArticleWhy do we fall apart just as we reach what should be the prime of life?
We would look a lot different if evolution had designed the human body to work well for a century or more Bulging disks, fragile bones, fractured hips, torn ligaments, varicose veins, cataracts,...
View ArticleFrom Living in Trees to Understanding the Cosmos: The Human Journey
A few million years ago, our ancestors came down from the trees and began to stand upright, freeing our hands to create tools and our minds to grapple with the world around us. Leonard Mlodinow takes...
View ArticleHistorian: The World Needs A New Origins Story Based On Science
Over at The Edge, John Brockman features British historian David Christian on the need to come up with a new origin story that can serve the global community. Christian, the author of This Fleeting...
View ArticleMammals are toast. P.S. If you’re reading this, you are a mammal.
Accelerated modern human–induced species losses: Entering the sixth mass extinction Gerardo Ceballos1,*, Paul R. Ehrlich2, Anthony D. Barnosky3, Andrés García4, Robert M. Pringle5 and Todd M. Palmer6...
View ArticleOops, the universe may have ten to 100 times fewer galaxies than we thought
There may be far fewer galaxies further out in the universe then might be expected, according to a new study led by Michigan State University. Over the years, the Hubble Space Telescope has allowed...
View ArticleCats drove the extinction of many species of ancient dogs
Competition played a more important role in the evolution of the dog family (wolves, foxes, and their relatives) than climate change, shows a new international study published in PNAS. An...
View ArticleHumankind: How Biology and Geography Shape Human Diversity
An innovative and illuminating look at how the evolution of the human species has been shaped by the world around us, from anatomy and physiology, to cultural diversity and population density. Where...
View ArticleHow Dinosaurs Shrank and Became Birds
Modern birds descended from a group of two-legged dinosaurs known as theropods, whose members include the towering Tyrannosaurus rex and the smaller velociraptors. The theropods most closely related...
View ArticleSA fossil is the long-awaited link to the evolution of turtles: University of...
A 260-million-year-old fossil species found in South Africa’s Karoo Basin continues to provide information into the murky origins of turtles whose evolution fascinates scientists. The fossil of an...
View ArticleHome Naledi, New Species of Human Relative, Discovered
Newswise — An international research team, which includes NYU anthropologists Scott Williams and Myra Laird, has discovered a new species of a human relative. Homo naledi, uncovered in a cave outside...
View ArticleWhat scientists thought they knew about the solar system may be quite wrong
The European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft detected molecules of oxygen surrounding the comet known as 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, reports a study published Thursday in the journal Nature. Although...
View ArticleThe common ancestor of all apes may have been a little guy
Did apes shrink or grow throughout evolution? Scientists have long thought that small-bodied apes shrunk as they diverged from the great apes, a group that includes humans. But the common ancestor of...
View ArticleBiologists induce flatworms to grow heads and brains of other species
MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. (November 24, 2015)–Biologists at Tufts University have succeeded in inducing one species of flatworm to grow heads and brains characteristic of another species of flatworm...
View ArticleWho is Lucy the Australopithecus: Why do we call her ‘Lucy’?
When Lucy the Australopithecus was unearthed in Ethiopia in 1974, she seemed to fill a gap in the human family tree. The 3.2-million-year-old hominid had both ape and human characteristics. Lucy, of...
View ArticleAlien life, if it exists, could be as simple as bacteria
Physicist Enrico Fermi famously asked the question “Where are they?” to express his surprise over the absence of any signs for the existence of other intelligent civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy....
View ArticleNeanderthals and modern H. sapiens crossbred over 100,000 years ago
A multidisciplinary team which included participants from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) has discovered that Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens crossbred over 100,000 years ago. This...
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