If 'Why?' is the first question in science, 'Why not?' must be a close second. Sometimes it's worth thinking about why something does not exist. Such as a truly three-legged animal. At least one researcher has been pondering the non-existence of tripeds.
Read moreResearchers have analyzed remains from ten archaeological sites in England, France, Germany, Russia, and Switzerland to gain insight into the different stages of the second plague pandemic and the genetic diversity of Yersinia pestis during and after the Black Death. The researchers reconstructed 34 Y. pestis genomes, tracing the genetic history of the bacterium, which revealed key insights into the initiation and progression of the second plague pandemic in Europe.
Read moreBefore the French Revolution, family trees were reserved for the feudal upper classes, who used them to consolidate their social status. While feudalism broke down and family trees lost their old roles, the trees gained new functions as scientific models.
Read moreA team of evolutionary biologists have demonstrated that some limb muscles known to be present in many mammals but absent in the adult human are actually formed during early human development and then lost prior to birth. These findings offer insight into how our arms and legs evolved from our mammalian ancestors, and also help explain rare limb anomalies found in humans born with congenital malformations.
Read moreResearchers have produced some of the first evidence that shows that artificial selection and natural selection act on the same genes, a hypothesis predicted by Charles Darwin in 1859.
Read moreSongs are a storehouse for ethnobiological knowledge and a means to construct, maintain and mobilize peoples' relations with their local environments.
Read moreBy looking at 90-year-old crocodile skulls in museum collections and double-checking with live specimens at a zoological park in Florida, researchers have just discovered a new species of ten-foot-long croc. The new species, Crocodylus halli, is from the southern part of New Guinea, and until now, scientists had thought it was the same species that lived on the northern part of the island.
Read moreAn evolutionary biologist has spent more than three decades studying the skulls of many species of large carnivores — including wolves, lions and tigers — that lived from 50,000 years ago to the present. She reports today the answer to a puzzling question.
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Mosasaurs were true sea monsters of late Cretaceous seas. These marine lizards — related to modern snakes and monitor lizards — grew as long as fifty feet, flashed two rows of sharp teeth, and shredded their victims with enormous, powerful jaws.
Giant, predatory croc-like animals that lived during the Triassic period in southern Africa preyed on early dinosaurs and mammal relatives 210 million years ago. These predators, known as 'rauisuchians' preyed on early herbivore dinosaurs and their mammal relatives living at the time.
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