-
+24 +1
Is our genome full of junk DNA?
Humans are astounding creatures, our unique and highly complex traits encoded by our genome – a vast sequence of DNA ‘letters’ (called nucleotides) directing the building and maintenance of the body and brain. Yet science has served up the confounding paradox that the bulk of our genome appears to be dead wood, biologically inert junk.
-
+14 +1
Scientists raised these fish to walk on land
Raising fish on land seems like the sort of idea you’d get while recovering from general anesthesia. But for three McGill University researchers, it made perfect sense. How else would you find out what behavioral and physiological changes might have taken place when fish first made the move from sea to land over 400 million years ago?
-
+6 +1
Should You Fear the Pizzly Bear?
By Moises Velasquez-Manoff In New England today, trees cover more land than they have at any time since the colonial era. Roughly 80 percent of the region is now forested, compared with just 30 per...
-
+14 +1
Jurassic squirrels: Fossils Shed Light on Early Mammal Evolution
Researchers have discovered fossils of three previously unknown species of squirrel-like animals that lived in China millions of years ago.
-
+21 +1
See What Our Earliest Mammal Ancestors Looked Like : DNews
Discovery of three new Jurassic Era animals suggests that early mammals, which resembled squirrels, first emerged 208 million years ago. Continue reading →
-
+20 +1
Bacteria harbor secret weapons against antibiotics
The ability of pathogenic bacteria to evolve resistance to antibiotic drugs poses a growing threat to human health worldwide, and scientists have now discovered that some of our microscopic enemies may be even craftier than we suspected, using hidden genetic changes to promote rapid evolution under stress and developing antibiotic resistance in more ways than previously thought.
-
+22 +1
Europeans Drawn From Three 'Tribes'
The modern European gene pool was formed when three ancient populations mixed with one another within the last 7,000 years.
-
+13 +1
The Sahara Is Millions of Years Older Than Thought
The movement of tectonic plates that created the Mediterranean Sea and the Alps also sparked the drying of the Sahara some 7 million years ago, according to the latest computer simulations of Earth’s ancient climate.
-
+15 +1
New evidence of ancient multicellular life sets evolutionary timeline back 60 million years
A Virginia Tech geobiologist with collaborators from the Chinese Academy of Sciences have found evidence in the fossil record that complex multicellularity appeared in living things about 600 million years ago – nearly 60 million years before skeletal animals appeared during a huge growth spurt of new life on Earth known as the Cambrian Explosion.
-
+20 +1
"Missing Links" Found between Birds and Dinosaurs
Birds didn't evolve in one fell swoop from their dinosaur ancestors, suggests a newly constructed dinosaur family tree showing our feathery friends evolved very gradually, at first.
-
+6 +1
Evolution: Why don’t we have hairier faces?
Have you ever stopped to consider your face? Compared to most of the rest of the animal kingdom, the human face has at least one really peculiar feature: it's almost completely devoid of hair. Sure, some people grow beards or moustaches, but even a full pirate's beard would leave quite a bit of skin showing. They don't call us "the hairless ape" for nothing. How did we come to be so bare-faced?
-
+2 +1
The Evolution of Sleep: 700 Million Years of Melatonin
As much as we may try to deny it, Earth’s cycle of day and night rules our lives. When the sun sets, the encroaching darkness sets off a chain of molecular events spreading from our eyes to our pineal gland, which oozes a hormone called melatonin into the brain. When the melatonin latches onto neurons, it alters their electrical rhythm, nudging the brain into the realm of sleep.
-
+22 +1
Here's what 9,000 years of breeding has done to corn, peaches, and other crops
Fruits and vegetables have changed a lot since the onset of agriculture 10,000 years ago, as generation after generation of farmers artificially bred crops to select for more desirable traits like size and taste.
-
+16 +1
With Mindware Upgrades and Cognitive Prosthetics, Humans Are Already Technological Animals
In recent years, the surprising idea that we’ll one day merge with our technology has warily made its way into the mainstream. Often it’s
-
+18 +1
Florida Lizards Evolve Rapidly, Within 15 Years and 20 Generations
Scientists working on islands in Florida have documented the rapid evolution of a native lizard species — in as little as 15 years — as a result of pressure from an invading lizard species, introduced from Cuba. After contact with the invasive species, the native lizards began perching higher in trees, and, generation after generation, their feet evolved to become better at gripping the thinner, smoother branches found higher up.
-
+15 +1
Jared Diamond: ‘150,000 years ago, humans wouldn’t figure on a list of the five most interesting species on Earth’
The bestselling biogeographer talks to Oliver Burkeman about dealing with the critics who condemn him as a cultural imperialist.
-
+17 +1
Pope Francis declares evolution and Big Bang theory are real and God isn't 'a magician with a magic wand'
The theories of evolution and the Big Bang are real and God is not “a magician with a magic wand”, Pope Francis has declared.
-
+18 +1
Quick evolution leads to quiet crickets
Quick evolution leads to quiet crickets December 2006, updates added June 2008, June 2011, and July 2014
-
+20 +1
Michigan State’s Perfect Response to a Creationist Conference on Campus, “It’s Not Debatable”
Because they are utterly unmoored from science, rationality, and reality, creationists make excellent debaters. Well-versed in the “Gish Gallop”—an underhanded strategy in which the debater throws out dozens of small lies that would take too long for his opponent to correct—the typical creationist can convince an uneducated audience that...
-
+17 +1
Scientists think they know why snakes get two penises and people only get one
Researchers may have figured out why different species develop different kinds of genitalia. In snakes and reptiles, the genitals grow to mimic leg buds — producing twin organs. In humans, the genitals grow to mimic a tail bud — so the penis ends up as a single structure.
Submit a link
Start a discussion