Evolution News
December 24, 2024
Top Headlines
Dec. 19, 2024 Fossilized skeletons and shells clearly show how evolution and extinction unfolded over the past half a billion years, but a new analysis extends the chart of life to nearly 2 billion years ago. The chart shows the relative ups and downs in species ...
Dec. 12, 2024 Researchers have uncovered in anglerfish a specialized motor neuron population for the first dorsal fin used for 'fishing'. When the first dorsal fin evolved from a swimming and buoyancy aid to a ...
Dec. 12, 2024 Nearly all living organisms use the same genetic code, a complicated mechanism by which genetic information is translated into proteins, the building blocks of life. A new study suggests conventional wisdom about how the code evolved is likely ...
Dec. 12, 2024 Few genomes have been sequenced from early modern humans, who first arrived in Europe when the region was already inhabited by Neanderthals. An international team has now sequenced the oldest modern human genomes to date. The genomes were recovered ...
Latest Headlines
updated 7:55pm EST
Dec. 11, 2024 A groundbreaking study has shed light on how lizards and snakes -- the most diverse group of land vertebrates with nearly 12,000 species -- have evolved remarkably varied jaw shapes, driving their ...
Dec. 11, 2024 How can we explain the morphological diversity of living organisms? Although genetics is the answer that typically springs to mind, it is not the only explanation. By combining observations of ...
Dec. 5, 2024 A new study suggests that the fundamental abilities underlying human language and technological culture may have evolved before humans and apes ...
Dec. 5, 2024 Researchers have tested ancient DNA from corn found at archaeological sites in Arkansas, shedding new light on the dispersal of one of the world's ...
Dec. 2, 2024 A groundbreaking study sheds light on the extraordinary evolution of anglerfish, a group of deep-sea dwellers whose bizarre adaptations have captivated scientists and the public alike. The research ...
Nov. 28, 2024 More than a million years ago, on a hot savannah teeming with wildlife near the shore of what would someday become Lake Turkana in Kenya, two ...
Nov. 27, 2024 Researchers have been able to identify undigested food remains, plants and prey in the fossilized feces of dinosaurs. These analyses of hundreds of samples provide clues about the role dinosaurs ...
Nov. 27, 2024 Brain size increased gradually within each ancient human species rather than through sudden leaps between ...
Nov. 25, 2024 Armenians, a population in Western Asia historically inhabiting the Armenian highlands, were long believed to be descendants of Phrygian settlers ...
Nov. 19, 2024 Leveraging a unique statistical analysis and applying it to ancient DNA extracted from human skeletal remains, a team of researchers has revealed new insights into how ancient Europeans adapted to ...
Earlier Headlines
Nov. 20, 2024 Wings may be the obvious choice when studying the connection between dinosaurs and birds, but a pair of paleontologists prefer drumsticks. That part of the leg, they say, is where fibular reduction ...
Nov. 18, 2024 A newly discovered pterosaur fossil is shedding light on the evolutionary journey of these ancient flying reptiles. This complete specimen, named Skiphosoura bavarica, provides crucial insights into ...
Nov. 18, 2024 The history of a major animal group, composed of millions of species of insects, arachnids, and nemotodes, has been elusive -- until now. A team has now identified the oldest known ecdysozoan in the ...
Nov. 14, 2024 New research exploring the roots of modern Japanese populations has linked the genetic signature of Jomon hunter-gatherers to a higher body mass index (BMI) among individuals, underlining that ...
Nov. 14, 2024 Could social bonds be the key to human big brains? A study of the fossil teeth of early Homo from Georgia dating back 1.77 million years reveals a prolonged childhood despite a small brain and an ...
Nov. 13, 2024 A 'one of a kind' fossil discovery could transform our understanding of how the unique brains and intelligence of modern birds evolved, one of the most enduring mysteries of vertebrate ...
Nov. 11, 2024 A study described the three-dimensional architecture of turtle genomes, which fold in a configuration unlike any other animal observed so ...
Nov. 8, 2024 Scientists believe individuals of the most recently discovered 'hominin' group (the Denisovans) that interbred with modern day humans passed on some of their genes via multiple, distinct ...
Nov. 7, 2024 A recent study finds that color vision evolved in animals more than 100 million years before the emergence of colorful fruits and flowers. And there has been a dramatic explosion of color signals in ...
Nov. 6, 2024 Chromosphaera perkinsii is a single-celled species discovered in 2017 in marine sediments around Hawaii. The first signs of its presence on Earth have been dated at over a billion years, well before ...
Nov. 1, 2024 New research has found that, unlike birds, the evolution of bats' wings and legs is tightly coupled, which may have prevented them from filling as many ecological niches as ...
Oct. 30, 2024 Geneticists have deciphered the prehistory of aurochs -- the animals that were the focus of some of the most iconic early human art -- by analyzing 38 genomes harvested from bones dating across 50 ...
Oct. 30, 2024 Paleobiologists have found that the sinuses of ocean dwelling relatives of modern-day crocodiles prevented them from evolving into deep divers like whales and ...
Oct. 25, 2024 Researchers reveal new insights into the complex evolutionary history behind the distinctive upright posture of modern placental and marsupial mammals, showing the transition was surprisingly complex ...
Oct. 24, 2024 New Zealand's native stoneflies have changed colour in response to human-driven environmental changes, new research shows. The study provides arguably the world's most clear-cut case of ...
Oct. 21, 2024 Scientists have generated the genome assemblies of two hidden-neck turtles, unpublished until now. The results, which revealed a new three-dimensional structure of the genome within the phylogenetic ...
Oct. 17, 2024 A new study reveals how the duplication of the salivary amylase gene may not only have helped shape human adaptation to starchy foods, but may have occurred as far back as more than 800,000 years ...
Oct. 16, 2024 From Tasmania to Madagascar to New Guinea, islands make up just over five per cent of Earth's land yet are home to 31 per cent of the world's plant species. A new study shows that of all ...
Oct. 14, 2024 Seven of the most common forest trees in Europe have been shown to be able to shelter their genetic diversity from major shifts in environmental conditions. This is despite their ranges having shrunk ...
Oct. 10, 2024 They say that hindsight is 20/20, and though the theory of ecological speciation -- which holds that new species emerge in response to ecological changes -- seems to hold in retrospect, it has been ...
Wednesday, November 20, 2024
Monday, November 18, 2024
Thursday, November 14, 2024
- Genetic Legacy of Jomon Hunter-Gatherers Linked to Increased BMI in Modern Japanese, Study Finds
- The Secrets of Fossil Teeth Revealed by the Synchrotron: A Long Childhood Is the Prelude to the Evolution of a Large Brain
Wednesday, November 13, 2024
Monday, November 11, 2024
Friday, November 8, 2024
Thursday, November 7, 2024
Wednesday, November 6, 2024
Friday, November 1, 2024
Wednesday, October 30, 2024
- Ancient DNA Brings to Life History of the Iconic Aurochs, Whose Tale Is Intertwined With Climate Change and Human Culture
- Sinuses Prevented Prehistoric Crocodile Relatives from Deep Diving
Friday, October 25, 2024
Thursday, October 24, 2024
Monday, October 21, 2024
Thursday, October 17, 2024
Wednesday, October 16, 2024
Monday, October 14, 2024
Thursday, October 10, 2024
- How Playing Songs to Darwin's Finches Helped Biologists Confirm Link Between Environment and the Emergence of New Species
- Early Human Species Benefited from Food Diversity in Steep Mountainous Terrain
Wednesday, October 9, 2024
- In Studying the Mating Rituals of Fruit Flies, Scientists May Have Learned Something About How Brains Evolve
- Newly Discovered Late Cretaceous Birds May Have Carried Heavy Prey Like Extant Raptors
Tuesday, October 8, 2024
Friday, October 4, 2024
Thursday, October 3, 2024
Wednesday, October 2, 2024
Wednesday, September 25, 2024
- Brazilian Fossils Reveal Jaw-Dropping Discovery in Mammal Evolution
- Reconstructing the Evolutionary History of the Grape Family
- World's Oldest Cheese Reveals Origins of Kefir
Tuesday, September 24, 2024
Thursday, September 19, 2024
- Researchers Publish Breakthrough Study on How New Genes Evolve
- Insights Into South African Population History from 10,000-Year-Old Human DNA
Monday, September 16, 2024
Thursday, September 12, 2024
- New Fossil Fish Species Scales Up Evidence of Earth's Evolutionary March
- The Neanderthals May Have Become Extinct Because of Their Isolated Lifestyle
Tuesday, September 10, 2024
Wednesday, September 4, 2024
Friday, August 30, 2024
Monday, August 26, 2024
Friday, August 23, 2024
Thursday, August 22, 2024
- Creature the Size of a Dust Grain Found Hiding in California's Mono Lake
- How Baleen Whales Have Adapted Over the Past 50 Million Years
Wednesday, August 21, 2024
Tuesday, August 20, 2024
Wednesday, August 14, 2024
Tuesday, August 13, 2024
Tuesday, August 6, 2024
Friday, August 2, 2024
- Sea Level Changes Shaped Early Life on Earth, Fossil Study Reveals
- Half a Billion-Year-Old Spiny Slug Reveals the Origins of Mollusks
- Demographics of North African Human Populations Unravelled Using Genomic Data and Artificial Intelligence
- Fossil Shows How Penguins' Wings Evolved
Monday, July 29, 2024
Friday, July 26, 2024
- The Ancestor of All Modern Birds Probably Had Iridescent Feathers
- Lampreys Possess a 'jaw-Dropping' Evolutionary Origin
Thursday, July 25, 2024
Tuesday, July 23, 2024
Friday, July 19, 2024
Tuesday, July 16, 2024
Friday, July 12, 2024
Thursday, July 11, 2024
Monday, July 1, 2024
- AI-Powered Study Explores Under-Studied Female Evolution
- Sixty-Million-Year-Old Grape Seeds Reveal How the Death of the Dinosaurs May Have Paved the Way for Grapes to Spread
Thursday, June 27, 2024
- Ammonites' Fate Sealed by Meteor Strike That Wiped out Dinosaurs
- Last Surviving Woolly Mammoths Were Inbred but Not Doomed to Extinction
Wednesday, June 26, 2024
Thursday, June 20, 2024
Wednesday, June 19, 2024
Monday, June 17, 2024
Thursday, June 13, 2024
Monday, June 10, 2024
Wednesday, June 5, 2024
Monday, June 3, 2024
- Food Drove the Evolution of Giraffes' Long Neck
- How Sharks Survived a Major Spike in Earth's Temperature
Saturday, June 1, 2024
Thursday, May 30, 2024
- Musankwa Sanyatiensis, a New Dinosaur from Zimbabwe
- Tracing the Evolution of Ferns' Surprisingly Sweet Defense Strategy
Tuesday, May 28, 2024
- A Unified Account of Darwinism's Varieties
- Bringing Back an Ancient Bird
- How Killifish Embryos Use Suspended Animation to Survive Over 8 Months of Drought
Friday, May 24, 2024
- On Repeat: Biologists Observe Recurring Evolutionary Changes, Over Time, in Stick Insects
- Entomologist Sheds Light on 250-Year-Old Mystery of the German Cockroach
Wednesday, May 22, 2024
Tuesday, May 21, 2024
Monday, May 20, 2024
- Diverse Headgear in Hoofed Mammals Evolved from Common Ancestor
- Evolutionary History of Extinct Duck Revealed
Thursday, May 16, 2024
Wednesday, May 15, 2024
Friday, May 3, 2024
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
Thursday, April 18, 2024
Wednesday, April 17, 2024
- Mountain Chickadees Have Remarkable Memories. A New Study Explains Why
- Genetic Variant Identified That Shaped the Human Skull Base
- Interspecies Competition Led to Even More Forms of Ancient Human -- Defying Evolutionary Trends in Vertebrates
- New Butterfly Species Created 200,000 Years Ago by Two Species Interbreeding