A team of evolutionary biologists have demonstrated that some limb muscles known to be present in many mammals but absent in the adult human are actually formed during early human development and then lost prior to birth. These findings offer insight into how our arms and legs evolved from our mammalian ancestors, and also help explain rare limb anomalies found in humans born with congenital malformations.
Read moreResearchers have produced some of the first evidence that shows that artificial selection and natural selection act on the same genes, a hypothesis predicted by Charles Darwin in 1859.
Read moreWestern Australia's famous 3.5-billion-year-old stromatolites contain microbial remains of some of the earliest life on Earth, scientists have found.
Read moreBy looking at 90-year-old crocodile skulls in museum collections and double-checking with live specimens at a zoological park in Florida, researchers have just discovered a new species of ten-foot-long croc. The new species, Crocodylus halli, is from the southern part of New Guinea, and until now, scientists had thought it was the same species that lived on the northern part of the island.
Read moreA key theory that attributes the climate evolution of the Earth to the breakdown of Himalayan rocks may not explain the cooling over the past 15 million years, according to a new study. The study could shed more light on the causes of long-term climate change. It centers on the long-term cooling that occurred before the recent global warming tied to greenhouse gas emissions from humanity.
Read moreEtched onto the steep walls of Arizona's 6,000-foot-deep, 277-mile-long Grand Canyon are clues that chronicle the sweeping changes the region has experienced during the past two billion years. The canyon's colorful layers narrate tales of ancient environments come and gone, from lofty mountain ranges and tropical seas to a Saharan-scale desert that once stretched across much of western North America.
Read moreScientists studying genetic transcription are gaining new insights into a process that is fundamental to all life. Transcription is the first step in gene expression, the process taking place within all living cells by which the DNA sequence of a gene is copied into RNA, which in turn (most generally speaking) serves as the template for assembling protein molecules, the basic building blocks of life.
Read moreRNA World is a fascinating theory but it may not hold true. The problem is that the ingredients, such as enzymes, to make RNA World work just didn't exist on early Earth.
Read moreUsing DNA from museum specimens collected in the early 20th century, researchers identified two new species of giant salamander — one of which they suspect is the world's biggest amphibian.
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