Evolution News

August 20, 2016

When Was the Atlantic Separated from Pacific?

Reinterpreting the Fossil Record on Jaws

Moss Helped Create Our Oxygen-Rich Atmosphere

Primordial 'RNA World' of Early Earth

Latest Headlines

updated 11:31am EDT

New Species of Extinct River Dolphin Discovered in Smithsonian Collection

Aug. 16, 2016 — A fossil that has been in the collection of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History since it was discovered in 1951 is today helping scientists piece together ... read more

Twenty-Five Little Bones Tell a Puzzling Story About Early Primate Evolution

Aug. 15, 2016 — A cache of exquisitely preserved bones, found in a coal mine in the state of Gujarat, India, appear to be the most primitive ... read more

Schizophrenia Emerged After Humans Diverged from Neanderthals

Aug. 15, 2016 — Schizophrenia poses an evolutionary enigma. The disorder has existed throughout recorded human history and persists despite its severe effects on thought and behavior, and ... read more

Large Human Brain Evolved as a Result of 'Sizing Each Other Up'

Aug. 12, 2016 — Humans have evolved a disproportionately large brain as a result of sizing each other up in large cooperative social groups, researchers ... read more

Human Selection Pressure on Novel Peptide Aided Domestication of Asian Rice

Aug. 10, 2016 — An international research team identified a novel signal peptide that matures in rice flowers to promote bristle (awn) elongation. The gene encoding this peptide contains a ... read more

Deer Evolution: Ancient DNA Reveals Novel Relationships

Aug. 9, 2016 — Researchers have sequenced mitochondrial DNA from museum specimens of rare species of deer. Analysis of partial nucleotide sequences has enabled the team to refine our picture of the evolutionary ... read more

Stone Age Hunter-Gatherers Experimented With Farming in Turkey Before Migrating to Europe

Aug. 4, 2016 — Clusters of hunter-gatherers spent much of the late Stone Age working out the basics of farming on the fertile lands of ... read more

Whales' Ultrasonic Hearing Has Surprisingly Ancient History, Fossilized Ear Shows

Aug. 4, 2016 — All living toothed whales rely upon echoes of their own calls to navigate and hunt underwater, a skill that works best in ... read more

New Light Shed on How Vertebrates See: Details in Eyes of 300-Million-Year-Old Lamprey and Hagfish Fossils

Aug. 2, 2016 — New research has overturned a long-standing theory on how vertebrates evolved their eyes by identifying remarkable details ... read more

'Red Gene' in Birds, Turtles Suggests Dinosaurs Had Bird-Like Color Vision

Aug. 2, 2016 — A gene for red colour vision that originated in the reptile lineage around 250 million years ago has resulted in the bright red bird feathers and 'painted' turtles we see ... read more

Scientists Are Pushing Ahead With Human-Animal Hybrid Research

Spider Silk Puts New Spin on Violin Design

Helping Chimps Hang on to Their Wild Side

Peppered Moth's Genetic Secret

Where There's Smoke -- And a Mutation -- There May Be an Evolutionary Edge for Humans

Aug. 2, 2016 — A genetic mutation may have helped modern humans adapt to smoke exposure from fires and perhaps sparked an evolutionary advantage over their archaic competitors, including Neanderthals, according to ... read more

New Fossil Evidence Supports Theory That First Mass Extinction Engineered by Early Animals

July 29, 2016 — Newly discovered fossil evidence from Namibia strengthens the proposition that the world's first mass extinction was caused by 'ecosystem engineers' -- newly evolved biological ... read more

New Zealand Wren DNA Analysis Reshapes Geological Theory

July 27, 2016 — A DNA analysis of living and extinct species of mysterious New Zealand wrens may change theories around the country's geological and evolutionary ... read more

Before Animals, Evolution Waited Eons to Inhale

July 25, 2016 — Time to smash the beaker when thinking about oxygen concentrations in water, at the time when animal life first evolved. Oceans stacked oxygen here and depleted it there, as a new novel model ... read more

Biologists Home in on Paleo Gut for Clues to Our Evolutionary History

July 21, 2016 — A new study of the gut microbiomes of humans, chimps, bonobos and gorillas shows that at least two major groups of bacteria have cospeciated with these hosts, with a lineage going back at least 15 ... read more

After the Age of Dinosaurs Came the Age of Ant Farmers

July 20, 2016 — Soon after the demise of the dinosaurs, ants learned how to farm. The story of the mutualism between leafcutter ants and their fungal crop culminates in industrial-scale farming that surpasses even ... read more

Evolution of Flight in Birds

July 18, 2016 — New research challenges a long-held hypotheses about how flight first developed in ... read more

Real Reason Turtles Have Shells: Burrowing Tool

July 15, 2016 — Scientists have discovered the real reason turtles have shells. While many thought turtle shells were for protection, new findings show that the shells were actually for digging underground to escape ... read more

New Theropod Dinosaur Suggests That Small T. Rex-Like Arms Evolved Multiple Times

July 14, 2016 — The discovery of a theropod dinosaur with Tyrannosaurus rex-like arms suggests that these unusual forelimbs may have evolved multiple ... read more

GAGA May Be the Secret of the Sexes, at Least in Insects

July 14, 2016 — Without simple repeating sequences of the DNA 'letters' GA on the X chromosome, distinct genders could never have evolved, at least in flies and mosquitoes, report ... read more

The Success of the Plant-Eating Dinosaurs

July 14, 2016 — Plant-eating dinosaurs had several bursts of evolution, and these were all kicked off by innovations in their teeth and jaws, new research has ... read more

Technological and Cultural Innovations Amongst Early Humans Not Sparked by Climate Change

July 13, 2016 — Environmental records obtained from archaeological sites in South Africa's southern Cape suggest climate may not have been directly linked to cultural and technological innovations of Middle ... read more

Camp Stability Predicts Patterns of Hunter–gatherer Cooperation

July 13, 2016 — Reciprocal food-sharing is more prevalent in stable hunter-gatherer camps, shows new research that sheds light on the evolutionary roots of human ... read more

Homo Erectus Walked as We Do

July 12, 2016 — Researchers have recently discovered multiple assemblages of Homo erectus footprints in northern Kenya that provide unique opportunities to understand locomotor patterns and group structure through a ... read more

Changes in Primate Teeth Linked to Rise of Monkeys

July 11, 2016 — Searching for simple inherited dental characteristics that could lead to genes controlling tooth development, researchers have uncovered an easy-to-measure trait that tracks primate evolution over ... read more

Bird Research Suggests Calling Dinosaurs May Have Been Tight-Lipped

July 11, 2016 — Dinosaurs are often depicted in movies as roaring ferociously, but it is likely that some dinosaurs mumbled or cooed with closed mouths, according to a new ... read more

Evolution May Have Moved at a Furious Pace on a Much Warmer Earth

July 6, 2016 — The rate of a certain chemical change in DNA -- a key driver of spontaneous mutation and thus of evolution's pace -- increases rapidly with temperature, researchers have discovered. The ... read more

Mammals Diversified Only After Dinosaur Extinction Left Space

July 5, 2016 — Humans' early mammal relatives likely diversified 66 million years ago, after the extinction of dinosaurs opened up space for animals such as big cats, horses, elephants and eventually apes to ... read more

Evolutionary Split Up Without Geographic Barriers

July 5, 2016 — Evolutionary biologists have completed the most extensive study of sympatric speciation so far. They used around 20,000 characteristics of 450 fish to document the parallel evolution of cichlid fish ... read more

Analysis of Anatomy and Diet Finds Evolution Follows Least Resistant Path

June 30, 2016 — Evolution follows the path of least resistance, which can result in suboptimal physical traits that don't ideally match the functional need, according to a new ... read more

Tuesday, August 2, 2016