Evolution News

September 9, 2016

Smarter Brains Are Blood-Thirsty Brains

Rare Specimen from Age of Flying Giants

How Vertebrate Body Comes from a Single Cell

Looking to Saliva to Gain Insight On Evolution

Latest Headlines

updated 1:01am EDT

New Species of Pterosaur Discovered in Patagonia

Aug. 30, 2016 — Scientists today announced the discovery of a new species of pterosaur from the Patagonia region of South America. The cranial remains were in an excellent state of preservation and belonged to a new ... read more

Endangered Cuban Solenodon Evolved After the Extinction of Dinosaurs

Aug. 24, 2016 — The Caribbean islands form a natural laboratory for the study of evolution due to their unique biological and geological features. There has been heated discussion since the ... read more

'Cyclops' Beetles Hint at Solution to 'Chicken-and-Egg' Problem in Novel Trait Evolution

Aug. 22, 2016 — Beetles with cyclops eyes have given scientists insight into how new traits may evolve through the recruitment of existing ... read more

Recent Connection Between North and South America Reaffirmed

Aug. 17, 2016 — Long ago, one great ocean flowed between North and South America. When the Isthmus of Panama joined the continents, it also separated the Atlantic from the Pacific Ocean. If ... read more

Reinterpreting the Fossil Record on Jaws

Aug. 17, 2016 — Scientists use the fossil record to make judgments on the physiology and behavior of species. But are those interpretations correct? New research puts into question how we ... read more

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

Humble Moss Helped Create Our Oxygen-Rich Atmosphere

Aug. 15, 2016 — The evolution of the first land plants including mosses may explain a long-standing mystery of how Earth's atmosphere became enriched with oxygen, according to an ... read more

Scientists Take Big Step Toward Recreating Primordial 'RNA World' of 4 Billion Years Ago

Aug. 15, 2016 — Scientists have succeeded in creating a ribozyme that can basically serve both to amplify genetic information and generate ... 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

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

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 have ... 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 GC-rich region that ... 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

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 conjunction with high-frequency hearing. Now, researchers who studied one of ... 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 Turkey before taking this knowledge to Europe. In an analysis of ancient ... 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 of the retina in the eyes of 300 million year-old lamprey and hagfish ... 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 today, and may be ... read more

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

Friday, August 12, 2016