A new study, ‘150 million years of sustained increase in pterosaur flight efficiency’, published in the journal Nature has shown that pterosaurs – a group of creatures that became Earth’s first flying vertebrates – evolved to improve their flight performance over their 150 million-year existence, before going extinct at the same time as dinosaurs 66 million years ago.
Living organisms aren’t the only things that evolve over time. Cultural practices change, too, and in recent years social scientists have taken a keen interest in understanding this cultural evolution. A new experiment used drum-beats to investigate the role that environment plays on cultural shifts, confirming that different environments do indeed give rise to different cultural patterns.
Language is one of the most powerful tools available to humanity, and determining why and when language evolved is central to understand what it means to be human
It's not a coincidence that dogs are cuter than wolves, or that goats at a petting zoo have shorter horns and friendlier demeanors than their wild ancestors.
Mammals and birds today are warm-blooded, and this is often taken as the reason for their great success.
Dr Adriano R. Lameira, from the Department of Psychology at the University of Warwick, has been awarded a prestigious UKRI Future Leader Fellowship, for his project: The ape and the first word: Understanding the origins and evolution of the first linguistic structures in the human clade through comparative research.
Pioneering analysis of 200 million-year-old teeth belonging to the earliest mammals suggests they functioned like their cold-blooded counterparts - reptiles, leading less active but much longer lives.
Three fossils found in a lignite mine in southeastern Yunan Province, China, are about 6.4 million years old, indicate monkeys existed in Asia at the same time as apes, and are probably the ancestors of some of the modern monkeys in the area, according to an international team of researchers.
Though some believe prehistoric humans lived in harmony with nature, a new analysis of fossils shows human arrival in the Bahamas caused some birds to be lost from the islands and other species to be completely wiped out.
Since first appearing in late 2019, the novel virus, SARS-CoV-2, has had a range of impacts on those it infects.
If you have been surrounded by the sight and smell of pine trees, you may have taken a closer look at the needles and then wondered how their properties are influenced by rainfall. In Physics of Fluids, researchers are currently probing how well pine needles allay the impact of rain beneath the tree. They explored the impact of raindrops onto fixed, noncircular fibers of the longleaf pine by using high-speed videography to capture the results.
Ecology is traditionally a data-poor discipline, but tiny microbial worlds offer the quantity of data needed to solve universal questions about abundance and diversity. New research in Nature Communications reveals the fundamental relationship between the environment and the species present in a microbial community and can be used as a starting point for investigating bigger systems.
Close bonds with the opposite sex can have non-romantic benefits. And not just for people, but for our primate cousins, too.
A milk-tooth found in the vicinity of "Riparo del Broion" on the Berici Hills in the Veneto region bears evidence of one of the last Neanderthals in Italy.
A new study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B from researchers at the University of Chicago and Universidade Federal do Pará explores regenerative ability in the tails of West African lungfish for the first time, and finds that the process shares many of the same traits as tail regeneration in salamanders. Their results indicate that this trait was likely found in a common ancestor – and provide a new opportunity for better understanding and harnessing the mechanisms of limb regrowth.
An over a century-long mystery has been surrounding the Taiwanese butterfly fauna ever since the "father of zoogeography" Alfred Russel Wallace, in collaboration with Frederic Moore, authored a landmark paper in 1866: the first to study the lepidopterans of the island.
Around 100,000 years ago, the climate worsened abruptly and the environment of Central-Eastern Europe shifted from forested to open steppe/taiga habitat, promoting the dispersal of wooly mammoth, wooly rhino and other cold adapted species from the Arctic.
New research from an international team of evolutionary geneticists, bioinformaticians and paleontologists suggests that dramatic environmental changes accompanying the shift or melting of continental glaciers played a key role as American mastodons moved north from their southern ranges.
Scientists report evidence of a hibernation-like state in Lystrosaurus, an animal that lived in Antarctica during the Early Triassic 250 million years ago. The fossils are the oldest evidence of a hibernation-like state in a vertebrate, and indicate that torpor arose in vertebrates even before mammals and dinosaurs evolved.
A new scientific study has revealed unique life strategies of two major groups of microbes that live below Earth's surface.
If you could dive down to the ocean floor nearly 540 million years ago just past the point where waves begin to break, you would find an explosion of life--scores of worm-like animals and other sea creatures tunneling complex holes and structures in the mud and sand--where before the environment had been mostly barren.
"I'm fascinated with life, and that's why I want to break it."
Two groups of nerve cells may serve as “on-off switches” for male mating and aggression, suggests a new study in rodents.
The immune systems of mammals - including humans - might struggle to detect and respond to germs from other planets, new research suggests.
As several Neandertal genomes of high quality are now available researchers can identify genetic changes that were present in many or all Neandertals, investigate their physiological effects and look into their consequences when they occur in people today.
A chance mutation that led to spinal defects in a zebrafish has opened a little window into our own fishy past.
Frogs and toads are green for a very good reason - it makes them harder to see in their leafy environments. Good camouflage allows them to eat and not be eaten.
From movies to museum exhibits, the dinosaur Dilophosaurus is no stranger to pop culture. Many probably remember it best from the movie “Jurassic Park,” where it’s depicted as a venom-spitting beast with a rattling frill around its neck and two paddle-like crests on its head.
Freshwater lakes have often been invaded by species from salty environments. New research shows that fluctuating conditions in the home ranges gave these species the genetic flexibility they needed to evolve and adapt to their new homes.
The researchers extracted the DNA from bone powder and sequenced it to high quality. They estimate that the female Neandertal lived 60,000-80,000 years ago.
Poring over decades of existing research, University of Rhode Island Professor Holly Dunsworth has reevaluated and rewritten the narrow, reigning theories for sex differences in height and pelvic width in a new paper, “Expanding the evolutionary explanations for sex differences in the human skeleton.” The paper, published online by the journal Evolutionary Anthropology, maps out the critical role of estrogen production on bone growth in men and women.
How could the tiny, tightly connected parts of the ear adapt independently to the amazingly diverse functional and environmental regimes encountered in mammals? A group of researchers from the University of Vienna and the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research proposed a new explanation for this evolutionary puzzle.
Chimpanzee lip-smacks exhibit a speech-like rhythm, a group of researchers led by the University of Warwick have found
Climate scientists from the IBS Center for Climate Physics discover that, contrary to previously held beliefs, Neanderthal extinction was neither caused by abrupt glacial climate shifts, nor by interbreeding with Homo sapiens.
Researchers trace the evolutionary origins of hemoglobin by resurrecting ancient proteins from more than 400 million years ago
A major transformation in vertebrate evolution took place when breathing shifted from being driven by head and throat muscles—like in fish and frogs—to the torso—like in reptiles and mammals. But what caused the shift? A new study posits that the intermediate step was locomotion—the mechanics follow the same pattern as inhalation and exhalation.
A good grip can mean the difference between life and death for lizards in a hurricane -- and as a result, populations hit more frequently by hurricanes have larger toepads. A new study from Washington University in St. Louis is the first to demonstrate evolutionary response to hurricanes on a wide geographic scale.
University at Buffalo and University of Chicago scientists set out to investigate the evolution of a gene that helps women stay pregnant: the progesterone receptor gene. The results come from an analysis of the DNA of 115 mammalian species.
Genetic research throughout Europe shows evidence of drastic population changes near the end of the Neolithic period, as shown by the arrival of ancestry related to pastoralists from the Pontic-Caspian steppe.
Scientists Ethan A. Beseris, Steven E. Naleway and David R. Carrier recently discovered that though having a beard won’t save you from getting knocked out in a fight, it will likely save you from collateral damage.
Researchers from Cambridge, UK, and Germany have reconstructed the early "evolutionary paths" of COVID-19 in humans - as infection spread from Wuhan out to Europe and North America - using genetic network techniques.
Plant-derived chemicals called cardenolides – like digitoxin – have long been used to treat heart disease, and have shown potential as cancer therapies. But the compounds are very toxic, making it difficult for doctors to prescribe a dose that works without harming the patient. Researchers now show that the wormseed wallflower could be used as a model species to elucidate how plants biosynthesize cardenolides, knowledge that could aid the discovery and development of safer drugs.
A new study reinforces the concept that Neanderthal DNA has been woven into the modern human genome on multiple occasions as our ancestors met Neanderthals time and again in different parts of the world.
Using precise imaging technology to scan fossil skulls, researchers found that as early as 3 million years ago, children had a long dependence on caregivers.
A partial skeleton of Homo naledi represents a rare case of an immature individual, shedding light on the evolution of growth and development in human ancestry, according to a study published April 1, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Debra Bolter of Modesto Junior College in California and the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and colleagues.
New research from a team of anthropologists has found that a species widely accepted to be an ancestor to humans had a brain with characteristics of apes.
Over 80,000 years ago, Neanderthals were already feeding themselves regularly on mussels, fish and other marine life.
In a new study published by a Florida State University team, researchers found that male Trinidadian guppies observe a form of nepotism when it comes to pursuing the opposite sex. These tiny tropical fish often help their brothers in the mating process by darting in front of other males to block access to a female.
An international team of scientists studying lifespans of wild mammals have found that, just like humans, females tend to live significantly longer than their male counterparts.
Teeth constitute a permanent and faithful biological archive of the entirety of the individual’s life, from tooth formation to death, a team of researchers has found. Its work provides new evidence of the impact that events, such as reproduction and imprisonment, have on an organism.
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