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

Aug. 10, 2016 — Latest analysis of the famous Piltdown Man forgeries points the finger of suspicion even more firmly at their discoverer, Charles ... read more

Aug. 9, 2016 — An evolutionary historian has determined that the region of origin of ancestors contributes to descendants' risk of developing certain medical ... read more

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

July 25, 2016 — Conducting the first large-scale, genome-wide analyses of ancient human remains from the Near East, an international team of scientists has illuminated the genetic identities and population dynamics ... read more

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

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

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

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

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

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

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