Tag Archives: evolution

A team of biologists from the United States, Canada, Panama and Taiwan has isolated a new species of cyanobacteria from a tropical hornwort plant found in Panama. The discovery, reported in a paper in the Current Biology, opens a new window to further illuminate the dawn of oxygenic photosynthesis. Anthocerotibacter …

Humans, mice, zebrafish, and most likely other animals, share enhancers — DNA regions that help to regulate gene expression and evolve rapidly — with Amphimedon queenslandica, a species of sea sponge from the Great Barrier Reef, according to new research. Amphimedon queenslandica. Image credit: University of Queensland. “Some elements of …

HL Tauri, a young star located 450 light-years away in the constellation of Taurus, is glowing at the center of an system of concentric protoplanetary rings and is producing planets, one for each gap in the ring. Worcester Polytechnic Institute mathematical physicist Dr. Mayer Humi believes HL Tauri provides an …

Two New Species from New Mexico Help Fill Gap in Evolution of Horned Dinosaurs Two new transitional species of plant-eating horned dinosaurs have been unearthed in New Mexico, the United States. Navajoceratops sullivani and Terminocavus sealeyi. Image credit: Ville Sinkkonen Denver Fowler. The newly-discovered dinosaurs roamed the Earth approximately 75 …

Genetic material from 161 modern breeds helped a team of researchers at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) of the National Institutes of Health assemble the most comprehensive evolutionary tree of dogs. The results are published in the journal Cell Reports. Representatives from each of the 23 clades of …

After only nine generations, the same plant species is larger and more fragrant if pollinated by bumblebees rather than flies, according to University of Zurich evolutionary biologists Florian Schiestl and Daniel Gervasi. The study by Florian Schiestl and Daniel Gervasi focuses on the role insect pollinators can play in plant …

Paleontologists have unearthed the remains of a previously unknown slug-like creature that lived during the Early Ordovician epoch, 478 million years ago. The discovery, reported in the journal Nature, sheds new light on the earliest stages in the evolution of mollusks, a group of invertebrates that includes clams, snails and …

Northwest Africa (NWA) 7635 — a Martian meteorite found in Algeria in 2012 — has given planetary researchers information about volcanic activity on the Red Planet, and it’s not like anything we’ve ever seen on Earth. Hand sample images of the cut NWA 7635 stone and a representative backscattered electron …