Tag Archive for Evolution

Today, lepidosaurs — the reptile group that includes lizards, snakes and New Zealand’s tuatara — are among the most diverse vertebrates on...

Biologists at the University of Minnesota say they have built a synthetic cell — made entirely from non-living chemical components — that can...

Fossils from the Jose Creek Formation in New Mexico reveal that angiosperms (flowering plants) had built dense, fruit-bearing forests nearly 75 million...

The way humans laugh — in rapid, rhythmically timed bursts — is not uniquely ours. New research by the University of Warwick and the University...

Paleontologists working in Brazil have identified a previously unknown species of archosauriform that lived about 240 million years ago and may belong...

A new genus and species of four-winged pennaraptoran dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous of northern China is adding another twist to the story of how birds...

For decades, paleoanthropologists assumed that hominins — the lineage leading to modern humans — gradually grew larger over millions of years....

Two elusive groups of millipedes, Siphoniulida and Siphonocryptida, were the last missing pieces in the evolutionary history of Earth’s oldest land animals,...

Paleontologists have identified a previously unknown species of amphicyonid — the extinct family of carnivorous mammals popularly known as bear-dogs...

Fossils from some of the oldest-known animals on Earth, dating from 574 million years ago (Ediacaran period), suggest that cloning, not competition, dominated...

Along with armadillos and anteaters, sloths are members of Xenarthra, the only clade of placental mammals to have originated in South America. In new research,...

Near-complete bovine skeletons unearthed the Early Pliocene site of Camp dels Ninots in northeastern Spain reveal that the ancestors of today’s buffalo...

Paleontologists have described a new species of bipedal shuvosaurid archosaur from New Mexico, shedding light on a group of creatures that roamed North...

New research from the University of Oxford and the University of Reading suggests bipedalism and expanding brain size helped drive the overwhelming dominance...

Paleontologists have described three previously unknown species of multituberculate mammals — named Camurodon borealis, Qayaqgruk peregrinus, and...

Paleontologists from University College London and the University of Cambridge say the large predatory dinosaurs’ tiny arms evolved alongside massive...

Fossils unearthed on a remote Argentine ranch belong to a new genus and species of macronarian sauropod dinosaur, according to an international team of...

A new hypothesis proposes that the Cambrian Explosion — the sudden burst of animal diversity 500 million years ago — was not driven by shells...

A landmark study of several butterfly lineages and a day-flying moth in South America shows that convergent evolution — when unrelated species arrive...

CT scans of a decades-old specimen from the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History show a new species of short-snouted crocodylomorph with unusually strong...