New computational tool simulates evolution of jumping genes
A genome contains all of the DNA of every living organism, but its contents don’t stop there –…
Barn Owls Conquered the Americas After an Incredible Flight Across the Atlantic
Tyto furcata – the American barn owl. Credit: Wikimedia Commons Here’s something strange about barn owls. They’re not…
Evolutionary history reveals why brains connect to opposite bodies
Dr Martin Wessendorf is a neuroscientist and an associate professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota. His work…
Newly discovered protein controls the space between mitochondrial membranes
Mitochondria are the tiny powerpacks that supply most of the energy our cells need. Their ability to generate…
Shared meiosis proteins show surprising functional differences across animals
Every egg cell and sperm cell depends on meiosis, a tightly choreographed process in which chromosomes find their…
Early Cambrian Fossil Rewrites Starfish Family Tree
A 518-million-year-old ambulacrarian fossil from China suggests that the common ancestor of starfish and their relatives was not…
Babies use saliva sharing to map out close relationships
Imagine you’re an infant. Just a few months in the world, trying to gather your faculties, testing gravity…
New Gobi Desert Fossil Rewrites a Chapter of Mammal Evolution
Tamirkhan balcarceli (skull and partial hindlimb) – credit, Nicole Wong / © AMNH A remarkably well-preserved fossil from…
120-Million-Year-Old Fossil Pushes Back Origin of Marsupial Lineage
A new species of deltatheroidan mammal from China may be the oldest confirmed ancestor of marsupials yet found,…
Scientists Found a Deep-Sea ‘Death Pool’ That Vanished. It May Show How Earth’s First Life Survived
Marine ecologists used to call them “black pools of death.” Only as far back as a decade ago,…
New Therizinosaurian Dinosaur Unearthed in China
Paleontologists have described a new genus and species of therizinosaur based on a nearly complete skeleton found in…
KAUST researchers develop AI tool to map cell evolution
Publishing in Nature Communications, a KAUST-led team has developed the AI tool Unify to help scientists compare similar…