News
How Shark Embryos Are Revealing The Evolutionary Origins Of Faces
4+ hour, 7+ min ago (959+ words) By tracking neural crest cells in catshark embryos, researchers discovered that the molecular toolkit behind face-building is surprisingly conserved across jawed vertebrates. The real differences appear to come from where these cells go and how they behave during development. How…...
Meet The 42-Foot Snake That Ruled Earth After The Dinosaurs " A Biologist Explains
6+ mon, 1+ week ago (536+ words) But beyond its immense size alone, Titanoboa also teaches us how the Earth's climate shaped evolution, during a time when it was recovering from the greatest mass extinction since the dinosaurs disappeared. Titanoboa was first discovered in 2009, when scientists excavating…...
What A 5-Million-Year-Old Bite Reveals About Climate Change And Sharks
2+ week, 3+ day ago (854+ words) Forbes What A 5-Million-Year-Old Bite Reveals About Climate Change And Sharks This story begins not in the open ocean, but in a dockyard. Decades ago, fossil hunters working along the busy port of Antwerp (a historic Belgian port city which…...
A Biologist Explains What The First Eyes On Earth Could See. Hint: They Were Made Of Crystal
3+ mon, 1+ week ago (795+ words) Millions of years before color vision and binocular sight, one of the animal kingdom's most transformative inventions emerged: the eye. Although eyesight seems incredibly commonplace today, few people realize that vision wasn't always part of life's toolbox. The earliest fossil…...
Meet The Snail That Thrives Where Almost Nothing Else Can. Hint: It Has Armor Made Of Iron
4+ mon, 2+ week ago (314+ words) In hydrothermal vent fields, a small snail evolved an iron-reinforced shell. Here's how it challenges assumptions about nature's toughest composites....
Meet The World's Weirdest Primate. Hints: It Uses Its Finger Like A Woodpecker's Beak
1+ mon, 1+ week ago (999+ words) The aye-aye looks almost nothing like a primate. Most would describe it as a creature assembled from spare animal parts. It has oversized ears like a bat, teeth like a rodent and glowing eyes like an owl. But its most…...
Did Humans Evolve To Eat Meat? An Evolutionary Biologist Explains What Your Anatomy Actually Reveals
1+ mon, 3+ week ago (895+ words) The most comprehensive synthesis of this evidence was published in a 2021 study in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Drawing on roughly 400 scientific papers spanning genetics, zooarchaeology, stable isotope analysis and comparative physiology, the authors argued that for the better…...
Why Are 90% Of Humans Right-Handed? An Evolutionary Biologist Explains
1+ mon, 3+ week ago (485+ words) The story of human handedness stretches back millions of years and weaves together evolutionary pressure, brain architecture, embryonic biology and a healthy dose of genetic complexity we haven't fully untangled. Here's what we've learned so far, according to research in…...
A Biologist Reveals The Longest Mammal Migration On Earth. Hint: It Happens Underwater
4+ mon, 3+ week ago (608+ words) Every year, unbeknownst to many, one of the most astonishing wildlife spectacles on the planet unfolds like clockwork: the steady, ceaseless migration of enormous marine mammals swimming thousands of miles. Gray whales (Eschrichtius robustus) hold the title of what marine…...
Meet The Biggest Millipede To Ever Exist. Hint: It Was Longer Than A Person
4+ mon, 3+ week ago (1058+ words) The idea of a human-sized arthropod sounds like either science fiction or a nightmare to most people. Some of the largest land-dwelling arthropods of today, such as coconut crabs or giant millipedes, are impressive, but they're still modest in scale....