Humans have extensively shaped animals and plants through domestication. Although wine and table grapes have been important culturally for thousands of...
Different genetic traits can be beneficial (for example, fending off disease) or harmful (making humans more susceptible to illness), depending on the...
Humans, whales, elephants, and naked mole-rats all share a somewhat rare trait for mammals: their bodies are covered with little to no hair. The common...
Cratonavis zhui, a new species of pygostylian bird from the Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota of China, had a unique combination of a dinosaurian skull with...
Most birds today can lift the upper beak independently of the brain case, enabled by a series of mobile joints and bending zones in the skull. The computed...
Octopuses and their cephalopod relatives are exceptionally intelligent invertebrates with a highly complex nervous system that evolved independently from...
Scientists from the Institute for Fundamental Biomedical Research at the Biomedical Sciences Research Center ‘Alexander Fleming’ and the Smurfit Institute...
The Devonian period, which occurred 419 to 358 million years ago, prior to the evolution of life on land, is known for a series of catastrophic mass extinction...
Paleontologists from Curtin University and elsewhere have studied a three-dimensionally mineralized heart (the oldest ever found), stomach, intestine and...
Scientists from the United Kingdom and Spain have discovered that tetrapods had more complex connections between their skull bones than fish and, rather...
The evolution of land plants took place about 430 million years ago (Silurian period), when North America and Europe were conjoined in a landmass called...
The sea cows originated in the Tethys Sea, between southern Europe and northern Africa, during the latest part of the Paleocene epoch, according to a new...
Paleontologists have described a new species of the enigmatic stem-salamander genus Marmorerpeton from the well-preserved fossils found on the Isle of...
‘Jumping genes,’ also known as transposons or transposable elements, widely contribute to the evolution of genomes allowing genomic innovations. These...
Paleontologists have identified a new species of giraffoid that lived in northern China during the Early Miocene epoch some 17 million years ago. Named...
Biological structures frequently exhibit modularity and symmetry, but the origin of such trends is not well understood. It can be tempting to assume —...
‘Slow and steady wins the race,’ according to a new study of lepidosaurs (lizards, snakes, amphisbaenians, and tuatara) published in the journal Palaeontology.
Pleurosaurus,...
In response to heavy poaching by armed forces during the 20-year Mozambican civil war, populations of African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana) in...
