Old bone links lost American parrot to ancient Indigenous bird trade
University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin)For centuries, Indigenous communities in the American Southwest imported colorful parrots from Mexico.
For centuries, Indigenous communities in the American Southwest imported colorful parrots from Mexico.
While the physical differences between humans and non-human primates are quite distinct, a new study reveals their brains may be remarkably similar. And yet, the smallest changes may make big differences in developmental and psychiatric disorders.
Early crust on Mars may be more complex than previously thought—and it may even be similar to our own planet’s original crust.
The platypus is possibly the most irreplaceable mammal existing today. They have a unique combination of characteristics, including egg-laying despite being mammals, venomous spurs in males, electroreception for locating prey, biofluorescent fur, multiple sex chromosomes, and the longest evolutionary history in mammals.
Using DNA from two ancient humans unearthed in two different archaeological sites in northeast Brazil, researchers have unraveled the deep demographic history of South America at the regional level with some surprising results. Not only do they provide new genetic evidence supporting existing archaeological data of the north-to-south migration toward South America, they also have discovered migrations in the opposite direction along the Atlantic coast – for the first time. Among the key findings, they also have discovered evidence of Neanderthal ancestry within the genomes of ancient individuals from South America. Neanderthals ranged across Eurasia during the Lower and Middle Paleolithic. The Americas were the last continent to be inhabited by humans.
Nature seems to have an inexhaustible supply of inspiration when it comes to butterflies.
Scientists have so far found at least two genetic pathways leading to the same physical outcome: all-black feathers. This change was no random accident. It was a result of nature specifically selecting for this trait. The new study is published in the journal PLOS Genetics.
By scrutinising over a century’s worth of photos, University of Cambridge researchers have made the first ever measurements that show rhinoceros horns have gradually decreased in size over time.
Often we simply do not know enough about a species to know how it is doing. On the recognized red list from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), thousands of plants and animals are listed as "data deficient."
The use of ancient DNA, including samples of human remains around 45,000 years old, has shed light on a previously unknown aspect of human evolution.
A South American marsupial with ties to an ancient line of animals may go extinct in the next half-century due to warming temperatures. Researchers from the Universidad Austral de Chile will present a mathematical model of the monito del monte’s survival predictions this week at the American Physiological Society (APS) Intersociety Meeting in Comparative Physiology: From Organism to Omics in an Uncertain World conference in San Diego.
Digger bees lose large amounts of water during flight, which compromises their activity period and survival in the desert heat. Researchers from Arizona State University will present their work this week at the American Physiological Society (APS) Intersociety Meeting in Comparative Physiology: From Organism to Omics in an Uncertain World conference in San Diego.
The evolutionary clade and biodiversity of green lizards of the genera Lacerta and Timon —reptiles common in the Mediterranean basin and surrounding areas of the European continent, North Africa and Asia— have never been studied in detail from the perspective of historical biogeography.
A study led by University of South Australia conservation psychologist Dr Elissa Pearson reveals overwhelming public ignorance of Australia’s most threatened species, a factor that is contributing to the country's extinction crisis.
A fossil discovery from Scotland has provided new information on the early evolution of lizards, during the time of the dinosaurs.
A new paper in Genome Biology and Evolution, published by Oxford University Press, indicates that a type of octopus appears to have evolved independently to develop something resembling a shell, despite having lost the genetic code that produced actual shells in its ancestors and relatives.
Why are we such chatty, musical animals? Evolutionary biologists think that our capacities for speech and music may be linked: only animals that can learn new vocalisations—such as humans and songbirds—seem to have a sense of rhythm.
A newly published study of orb-weaving spiders — has yielded some extraordinary results: The spiders are using their webs as extended auditory arrays to capture sounds, possibly giving spiders advanced warning of incoming prey or predators.
The use of vocalizations as a resource for communication is common among several groups of vertebrates: singing birds, croacking frogs, or barking dogs are some well-known examples.
Zoologists from Trinity College Dublin, working with a research team in Indonesia, have found several new species of colourful, tropical sunbirds.
The first genetic data from Palaeolithic human individuals in the UK - the oldest human DNA obtained from the British Isles so far - indicates the presence of two distinct groups that migrated to Britain at the end of the last ice age, finds new research.
A big part of evolution is competition-- when there are limited resources to go around, plants and animals have to duke it out for nutrients, mates, and places to live.
Butterfly wing patterns have a basic plan to them, which is manipulated by non-coding regulatory DNA to create the diversity of wings seen in different species, according to new research.
The Atacama desert, which stretches for approximately 1,600 km along the western coast of the cone of South America, is the driest place on Earth.
In response to a high-competition environment, Trinidadian killifish evolve larger brains, increasing their fitness and survival rates, according to a new study in Ecology Letters by biologists at The University of Texas at Arlington.
New research from the University of Oxford, Yellowstone National Park, and Penn State, published today in the journal Science, may have finally solved why wolves change colour across the North American continent.
Ostrich-like dinosaurs called ornithomimosaurs grew to enormous sizes in ancient eastern North America, according to a study published October 19, 2022 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Chinzorig Tsogtbaatar of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and colleagues.
A major new project will help benchmark biodiversity change in the Arctic Ocean and guide conservation efforts by identifying unique species and assessing their extinction risk.
Psychedelic compounds found in ‘magic mushrooms’ are increasingly being recognised for their potential to treat health conditions such as depression, anxiety, compulsive disorders and addiction.
A new study led by researchers from the National University of Singapore revealed that variation in primate eye colouration is partly due to differences in lighting in the habitats of primate species. This helps tip the balance towards an ecological, rather than sexual selection explanation, for the evolution of blue eye colour in humans.
Oxygen levels in the Earth’s atmosphere are likely to have “fluctuated wildly” one billion years ago, creating conditions that could have accelerated the development of early animal life, according to new research.
Bumblebees don’t seem to keep memories for how sweet a flower was, but instead only remember if it was sweeter than another flower, according to researchers at Queen Mary University of London, along with an international team of scientists.
Modern humans may have co-existed with Neanderthals in France and northern Spain for between 1,400 and 2,900 years before Neanderthals disappeared, according to a modelling study published in Scientific Reports.
A Japan-based research team led by Professor Hiroki Obata has been continuing the work of identifying cultivated plants and household pests from Japan’s Jomon period (16,500 – 2,800 years ago) using their own technique of identifying the subtle traces of organisms in and on earthenware and clay pottery.
New research has identified how social spiders evolved different ways of hunting in groups. While these spiders have evolved socially similar behaviours - living in large family groups that share both communal nests and childcare duties - the findings suggest environmental conditions may have shaped how species developed different strategies of cooperating in hunting.
Morphological analysis of the discovered specimen's tooth shapes helped to determine that the specimen was one of the earliest nimravids dating back 37 to 40 million years. Sabertoothed nimravids were early members of Carnivoramorpha, but dogs and cats did not evolve from them. Changes in ecosystems may have driven the evolution and rise of nimravids.
In 2018, an international team of scientists used free-falling “landers” to study the Atacama Trench, gathering images and specimens of deep-sea creatures. The team discovered a new snailfish species unique to and to all other known fish species.
For centuries scientists have observed that when a visiting insect's tongue touches the nectar-producing parts of certain flowers, the pollen-containing stamen snaps forward.
The evolution of a new species by hybridization from two already described species without a change in chromosome number is very rare in the animal kingdom.
Bananas are thought to have been first domesticated by people 7,000 years ago on the island of New Guinea. But the domestication history of bananas is complicated, while their classification is hotly debated, as boundaries between species and subspecies are often unclear.
Story tips from Oak Ridge National Laboratory including reducing molten salt’s corrosive effect, VERIFI-ing and tracking carbon’s big footprint, moss genome study identifies two new species and ultrasound for battery health.
66 million years ago, a 10-kilometer asteroid hit Earth, triggering the extinction of the dinosaurs. New evidence suggests that the Chicxulub impact also triggered an earthquake so massive that it shook the planet for weeks to months after the collision.
Scientists seeking the connection between gravitational forces deep in the Earth and landscape evolution discovered that deep roots under mountain belts trigger dramatic movements along faults that result in collapse of the mountain belt and exposure of rocks that were once below the surface.
The latest dinosaur discoveries in the Dinosaurs channel on Newswise.
A long-term study led by primatologist Crickette Sanz at Washington University in St. Louis reveals the first evidence of lasting social relationships between chimpanzees and gorillas in the wild.Drawn from more than 20 years of observations at Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo, researchers documented social ties between individual chimpanzees and gorillas that persisted over years and across different contexts.
“It was pretty incredible, actually. The whole brain lit up,” said Anna Andreassen, a PhD candidate at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).
Living sharks are often portrayed as the apex predators of the marine realm. Paleontologists have been able to identify fossils of their extinct ancestors that date back hundreds of millions of years to a time known as the Palaeozoic period.
An international team has reconstructed the genome organization of the earliest common ancestor of all mammals.
A trove of fossils in China, unearthed in rock dating back some 436 million years, have revealed for the first time that the mysterious galeaspids, a jawless freshwater fish, possessed paired fins.
An international team of scientists, including from the Universities of Bristol and Oxford, and the Natural History Museum, have discovered that a well-preserved fossilised worm dating from 518-million-years-ago resembles the ancestor of three major groups of living animals.