Flowering plants (angiosperms) are the most diverse of all land plants, becoming abundant in the Cretaceous period (145 to 66 million years ago) and achieving dominance in the Cenozoic (66 million years ago-present). However, the exact timing of their origin remains a controversial topic. To resolve this discrepancy, a team …
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Some probe-foraging birds locate their buried prey by detecting vibrations in the substrate using a specialized tactile bill-tip organ. This remarkable ‘sixth sense’ is known as remote touch, and the associated organ is found in probe-foraging species belonging to both the palaeognathous (in kiwi) and neognathous (in ibises and shorebirds) …
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According to a new study published today in the journal Cell, the enterococci — gram-positive aerobic bacteria and a leading cause of hospital-acquired infections — arose from an ancestor that dates back 450 million years (Ordovician period), about the time when animals were first crawling onto land. This digitally-colorized scanning …
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