Evolution

The famous Vitruvian Man, drawn by Leonardo da Vinci, pictures the canon of human's proportions- though we did not become bilaterally symmetric all at once. There are two main points of view on the last common bilaterian ancestor, its appearance and t ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 24 2015 - 10:55am

Vampire Squid And The Evolution Of Cephalopod Sex

Everyone loves vampire squid, right? Their monstrous name belies their gentle nature as graceful underwater flyers who eat poop. ...

Article - Danna Staaf - May 2 2015 - 8:18am

Convergent Evolution: Three Creatures Divergent For 550 Million Years Evolved The Same Swimming Solution

The ability to move in water is key to existence for many species so it may not be a surprise that so many species have converged on swimming. What is intriguing is how diverse creatures have evolved to swim with elongated fins using the same mechanical m ...

Article - News Staff - May 1 2015 - 2:13pm

Not A Slow March: Enzyme Evolution Rethink

A new paper suggests a need for a fundamental rethink of the evolutionary path of enzymes, the proteins vital to all life on Earth. Enzymes catalyze a vast array of biologically relevant chemical reactions even in the simplest living cells but biochemist ...

Article - News Staff - May 3 2015 - 8:01am

Genome 10k Project: Complex Animal Life And How It Has Evolved Over Time

Marsha Lewis, Inside Science TV – There are about 60,000 different vertebrates on this planet. Mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, even you are a vertebrate. And now for the first time, scientists from around the world are coming together to study ...

Article - Inside Science - May 2 2015 - 10:00am

New Origin Idea For Cells That Gave Rise To Vertebrates

The vivid pigmentation of zebras, the massive jaws of sharks, the fight or flight instinct and the diverse beaks of Darwin's finches. These and other remarkable features of the world's vertebrates stem from a small group of powerful cells, calle ...

Article - News Staff - May 8 2015 - 5:11pm

Adenine DNA Methylation May Affect Epigenetic Information

Common DNA modifications occur through methylation, a chemical process that can dramatically change gene expression, which regulates the eventual production of proteins that carry out the functions of an organism. DNA encodes genetic information in its c ...

Article - News Staff - May 6 2015 - 9:31am

Is Loki The Missing Link In The Evolution Of Complex Cells?

A new study and a new microbe provides a new understanding of how, billions of years ago, the complex cell types that comprise plants, fungi, but also animals and humans, evolved from simple microbes, according to a new paper. Cells are the basic building ...

Article - News Staff - May 11 2015 - 9:19am

Men Are Not Biologically Useless After All

Does the world really need men? It has been suggested that, in the age of cloning – and with enough sperm banks around to populate several future generations – the question is legitimate. However, new research suggests that the reason that we need two sex ...

Article - The Conversation - May 19 2015 - 11:00am

Hesperornithiform: Cretaceous Birds Evolved To Go Fishing

A new study of some Hesperornithiform bird fossils from the Cretaceous shows how several separate lineages evolved adaptations for diving. They began to go fishing. Living at the same time as the dinosaurs, Hesperornithiform has been found in North Americ ...

Article - News Staff - May 22 2015 - 10:12am