Feature Channels: Evolution and Darwin

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The evidence found suggests the earliest ancestors of modern sea turtles may have come from the Deep South.

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Fossil remains from an ancient reptile known as Drepanosaurus reveals unusual skeletal adaptations in the forelimb that scientists have never before recorded in land animals.

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A new study led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) offers a twist on a popular theory for how life on Earth began about four billion years ago.

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University of Washington biologist Dee Boersma and her colleagues combed through 28 years' worth of data on Magellanic penguins to search for signs that natural selection — one of the main drivers of evolution — may be acting on certain penguin traits.

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Iconic dinosaur shapes were present for at least a hundred million years on our planet in animals before those dinosaurs themselves actually appeared.

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With support from NASA, researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are exploring whether RNA could have formed on early Earth deep beneath the ocean's surface or deep underground.

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A rare small-bodied pterosaur, a flying reptile from the Late Cretaceous period approximately 77 million years ago, is the first of its kind to have been discovered on the west coast of North America.

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A University of Adelaide-led project has overturned the theory that the evolution of human intelligence was simply related to the size of the brain ─ but rather linked more closely to the supply of blood to the brain.

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A new study led by the University of Minnesota shows that monkeys in captivity lose much of their native gut bacteria diversity and their gut bacteria ends up resembling those of humans. The results suggest that switching to a low-fiber, Western diet may have the power to deplete most normal primate gut microbes in favor of a less diverse set of bacteria.

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Scientists today announced the discovery of a new species of pterosaur from the Patagonia region of South America. The researchers have named this new species ‘ Allkauren koi’ from the native Tehuelche word ‘all’ for ‘brain’, and ‘karuen’ for ‘ancient’.

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There’s no need to reinvent the genetic wheel. That’s one lesson of a new study that looks to the saliva of humans, gorillas, orangutans, macaques and African green monkeys for insights into evolution. The research is published today (Aug. 25) in Scientific Reports.

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MIAMI--An international team of scientists used a state-of-the-art computer model, a high-powered supercomputer, and five billion 'virtual' coral larvae to test Charles Darwin's 1880 hypothesis that marine species cannot cross the Eastern Pacific's "impassable" marine barrier. The team, which included University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science Associate Professor Claire Paris, found that Darwin's theory still hold true today even under extreme El Niño conditions known to speed up ocean currents.

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New research from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Fuller Evolutionary Biology Program shows that, genetically speaking, blue-winged and golden-winged warblers are almost identical. Scientists behind the research say the main differences between the two species are in feather color and pattern, in some cases just a simple matter of dominant or recessive pairings of gene variants, or alleles.

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Beetles with cyclops eyes have given Indiana University scientists insight into how new traits may evolve through the recruitment of existing genes -- even if these genes are already carrying out critical functions.

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The cells that make fin rays in fish play a central role in forming the fingers and toes of four-legged creatures, one of the great transformations required for the descendants of fish to become creatures that walk on land.

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Scientists use the fossil record to make judgments on the physiology and behavior of species. But are those interpretations correct? New research from the University of Notre Dame puts into question how we interpret the behavior of extinct organisms from their fossil remains, and the greater role of plasticity in determining evolution diversity.

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Researchers are on a real-life search for what one calls “the ultimate Pokémon”: Zenkerella, an elusive scaly-tailed squirrel that has never been spotted alive by scientists. However, biologists recently found three newly dead specimens that hint at how the “living fossil” has evolved over the past 49 million years.

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Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have created a ribozyme that can basically serve both to amplify genetic information and generate functional molecules, a big step toward the laboratory re-creation of the “RNA world,” generally believed to have preceded modern life forms based on DNA and proteins.

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A cache of exquisitely preserved bones, found in a coal mine in the state of Gujarat, India, appear to be the most primitive primate bones yet discovered, according to a new analysis.

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Virtual brains reconstructed from ancient, kiwi-sized primate skulls could help resolve one of the most intriguing evolutionary mysteries: how modern primates developed large brains.

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Dublin, Ireland, Thursday 11th August, 2016 - Scientists have discovered macabre fossil evidence suggesting that 300 million-year-old sharks ate their own young, as fossil poop of adult Orthacanthus sharks contained the tiny teeth of juveniles. These fearsome marine predators used protected coastal lagoons to rear their babies, but it seems they also resorted to cannibalising them when other food sources became scarce.

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New study has determined that the total number of neurons, not an enlarged prefrontal region, differentiates the human brain from those of other primates.

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A research team, led by Emeritus Professor Kazuhiro Nakaya of Japan's Hokkaido University, analyzed world-first footage captured by public broadcaster NHK in which two goblin sharks separately captured prey on a total of five occasions. The research has unraveled a century-old mystery surrounding how the deep-sea shark utilizes its protruding jaws, among other factors, to feed itself.

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Research from a University of North Texas historian supports the idea that the nation and region of origin of your ancestors contributes to your risk of developing, or not developing, a growing list of medical conditions.

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Looking different to your parents can provide species with a way to escape evolutionary dead ends, according to new research from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL).

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The social lives of crickets are similar generation to generation, even though the insects can't learn directly from their mum and dad.

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When human and chimp infants are dozing, they sometimes show facial movements that resemble smiles. These facial expressions -- called spontaneous smiles -- are considered the evolutionary origin of real smiles and laughter.

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A detailed study of a nearly-complete fossil skull reveals much about the evolution of high-frequency hearing, which plays a key role in echolocation. Researchers at NYIT conclude high-frequency hearing evolved about 27-million years ago, about the same time as echolocation, although some features evolved even earlier.

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New research from the University of British Columbia suggests evolution is a driving mechanism behind plant migration, and that scientists may be underestimating how quickly species can move.

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New research is casting doubt on a commonly held belief about how cells use DNA to make proteins, suggesting the genetic code is more diverse than previously thought.

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Time to smash the beaker when thinking about oxygen concentrations in water, at the time when animal life first evolved. Oceans stacked O2 here and depleted it there, as this novel model demonstrates. It may well toss a wrench into the way we have dated the evolution of the earliest animals.

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A new species of extinct flesh-eating marsupial that terrorised Australia's drying forests about 5 million years ago has been identified from a fossil discovered in remote northwestern Queensland.

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University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists set out to measure the energetics of wild two- and three-toed sloths at a field site in in northeastern Costa Rica. The purpose of the study was to help explain why arboreal folivores are indeed so rare and why more animals have not evolved to take advantage of a widespread ecological niche.

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A group of South American ants has farmed fungi since shortly after the dinosaurs died out, according to an international research team including Smithsonian scientists. The genes of the ant farmers and their fungal crops reveal a surprisingly ancient history of mutual adaptations. This evolutionary give-and-take has led to some species--the leafcutter ants--developing industrial-scale farming that surpasses human agriculture in its efficiency.

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Research by post-doctoral fellow Alexander Dececchi challenges long-held hypotheses about how flight first developed in birds. Furthermore, his findings raise the question of why certain species developed wings long before they could fly.

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LSU researchers Jeremy M. Brown and Eric N. Rittmeyer, in collaboration with colleagues at Florida State University, are shedding light on how often and where species hybridize through time, thanks to the rediscovery of 40-year-old tissue samples preserved at the LSU Museum of Natural Science, or LSUMNS. In a recent study published in Ecology and Evolution, they show that two species of chorus frogs now form hybrids across a much wider area of Louisiana and Mississippi than they did just 30-40 years earlier. A widening area of hybridization has important implications for the future of these species and suggests that recent alterations to their environment have affected their fitness or dispersal ability.

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The largest island in the Philippines may be home to the greatest concentration of mammal diversity in the world, according to a research team that has been exploring the island for the past 15 years.

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Why do some organisms within a single species have many offspring, while others have relatively few? A new study led by University of Minnesota researcher Emilie Snell-Rood finds that access to some nutrients may be a star player in shaping traits related to fitness such as fecundity and eye size over the long term. Given drastic increases in the availability of many nutrients due to the widespread use of fertilizers and road salts, the finding has important implications for agriculture and ecology.

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Imagine rolling your eyes to help you see more clearly. Although it wouldn't work for humans, new research published today in Nature Communications has shown mantis shrimp use eye rotations to enhance their polarization vision.

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Sauropod dinosaurs were the largest land-dwelling animals of all time, with highly elongated necks and tails that were held suspended above the ground.

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Summer days resonate with the sound of cicadas trying to make a love connection. But like a lot of singles, male cicadas don’t always attract the kind of mates they’re hoping for.

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During the Ordovician period, the concentration of CO2 in the earth's atmosphere was about eight times higher than today. It has been hard to explain why the climate cooled and why the Ordovician glaciations took place. A new study, published in Nature Communications, shows that the weathering of rock caused by early non-vascular plants had the potential to cause such a global cooling effect.

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Researchers found that the rate of a certain chemical change in DNA – a key driver of spontaneous mutation and thus of evolution’s pace – increases rapidly with temperature. The scientists concluded that the rate of spontaneous mutation was at least 4,000 times higher than it is today.

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A microbial partnership thriving in an acidic hot spring in Yellowstone National Park has surrendered some of its lifestyle secrets to researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

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QUT evolutionary biologist Dr Matthew Phillips used molecular dating from DNA sequences to challenge the dominant scientific theory that placental mammals diversified 20 million years before dinosaurs became extinct.

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A new reconstruction of Antarctic ocean temperatures around the time the dinosaurs disappeared 66 million years ago supports the idea that one of the planet's biggest mass extinctions was due to the combined effects of volcanic eruptions and an asteroid impact.

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Evolution follows the path of least resistance, which can result in suboptimal physical traits that don’t ideally match the functional need, according to a new analysis by University of Arkansas anthropologist Peter Ungar.

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A new study of the 37,000-year old remains of the “Deep Skull” – the oldest modern human discovered in island South-East Asia – has revealed this ancient person was not related to Indigenous Australians, as had been originally thought.

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A new study by UCSB evolutionary biologists Todd Oakley and Emily Ellis demonstrates that for fireflies, octopuses and other animals that choose mates via bioluminescent courtship, sexual selection increases the number of species -- thereby impacting global diversity. Their results appear in the journal Current Biology.