Natural History
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3.6KBlue whale genome reveals the animals’ extraordinary evolutionary history
For the first time, scientists of the German Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Center, Goethe University and the University of Lund in...
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4.4KThe absence of ants — entomologist confirms first Saharan farming 10,000 years ago
BY analysing a prehistoric site in the Libyan desert, a team of researchers from the universities of Huddersfield, Rome and Modena &...
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4.2KMammals share mechanisms controlling the heart with a 400 million-year-old fish
Primitive air-breathing fish, whose direct ancestors first appeared around 400 million years ago, show mechanisms controlling the heart which were previously considered...
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10.8KAncient trail of Columbian mammoths uncovered in south-central Oregon
A fossilized trackway on public lands in Lake County, Oregon, may reveal clues about the ancient family dynamics of Columbian mammoths.
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6.4KWhat fluffy bunnies can tell us about domestication: It didn’t go the way you think
It turns out that nobody knows when rabbits were domesticated. Despite a well-cited story of the domestic bunny's origins, a review published...
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8.0KCockroach history traced back to last supercontinent
A research team from the Okinawa Institute of Science & Technology has carried out the first molecular dating on cockroaches in order...
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10.5KOrigins of domestic turkeys in Mayan and Aztec culture
An international team of researchers from the University of York, the Institute of Anthropology and History in Mexico, Washington State University and...
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7.8KEurope’s lost forests
More than 50% of Europe’s forest coverage has vanished over a period of 6,000 years due to agricultural demands and the burning...
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9.1KIberian Brown Bears not descended from fleeing ice age bears
Initial theories on glacier refuges suggested that after the conclusion of the glaciations during the ice age, bears from northern Europe fled...
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3.5KCooling climate drove evolution of the Tasmanian Devil and its relatives
A BIG drop in global temperatures 12-14 million years ago may explain the evolutionary success of Australia’s unique marsupial carnivores, a new...
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2.4KEvolution: In the beginning there was the sponge
Which group of animals evolved first? This problem has become a bone of contention among biologists. An international research team is now...
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4.1KA sub-desert savanna spread across Madrid 14 million years ago
The Central Iberian Peninsula was characterised by a very arid savanna during the middle Miocene, according to a study led by the...
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8.3KAncient life form discovered in remote Tasmanian valley
A team of Tasmanian researchers has uncovered rare, living stromatolites deep within the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.
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6.6KMammals switched to daytime activity after dinosaur extinction
Mammals only started being active in the daytime after non-avian dinosaurs were wiped out about 66 million years ago (mya), finds a...
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9.2KCrops evolving ten millennia before experts thought
Ancient hunter-gatherers began to systemically affect the evolution of crops up to thirty thousand years ago – around ten millennia before experts...
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6.7KMeet Madagascar’s oldest animal lineage, a whirligig beetle with 206-million-year-old origins
There are precious few species today in the biodiversity hotspot of Madagascar that scientists can trace directly back to when all of...
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4.2KMapping the thylacine’s mysterious loss from mainland
Ancient DNA extracted from fossil bones and museum specimens has shed new light on the mysterious loss of the Tasmanian tiger (thylacine)...
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5.5KSaber-toothed kittens may have been born with thicker bones than other contemporary cats
Saber-toothed kittens may have been born with thicker bones compared to other contemporary cats, but they have a similar pattern of bone...
