Evolution

Pregnancy sounds like the ultimate form of animal cooperation – mothers share their own bodies to grow and support their children’s prenatal development. But in reality, embryos use every trick in…

Some new speculation on animal (metazoan) evolution, suggesting that it was partly mediated through a biochemical oscillator (cycler), named Life's Timekeeper, present in all animal cells. The cycler…

Inside Science -- How can you tell how a creature walked when all that you have is the head? For many years, scientists looked to the foramen magnum – the large hole at the base of the skull where…

1) Motivation (insufficient justification): Throughout the world, there is a ‘new enlightenment.’ Maintaining certain illusions has become so demanding and frustrating that increasingly people simply…

The fungal pathogen Batrachochrytrium dendrobatridis (Bd), which has been known to cause the disease chytridiomycosis and decimate frog populations for close to half a century, is causing frogs to…

If you trace our evolutionary tree way back to its roots, before the shedding of gills or the development of opposable thumbs, you will likely find a common ancestor with the amazing ability to…

While wheat has been much maligned recently for it's gluten content, and new suspicions casted about as to its nutritional value, scientists have been eager to trace the evolutionary history of wheat…

Researchers have identified unique anatomical features in a species of blind, walking cavefish in Thailand that enable the fish to walk and climb waterfalls in a manner comparable to tetrapods, or…

Anyone that has eaten chicken knows what a drumstick is - it's the lower leg of a long, spine-like bone, more specifically the fibula, one of the two long bones of the lower leg (the outer one). In…

Researchers have identified a common ancestral gene that enabled the evolution of advanced life over a billion years ago. The gene, found in all complex organisms, including plants and animals,…