Evolution

Life on Earth may have originated as the organic filling in a multilayer sandwich of mica sheets, according to Helen Hansma of the National Science Foundation and the University of California, Santa…

A team led by the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Milan has discovered some unexpected forms of liquid crystals of ultrashort DNA molecules immersed in water, providing a new…

A multi-national team of biologists has concluded that developmental evolution is deterministic and orderly, rather than random, based on a study of different species of roundworms. The findings are…

A gene has been found in male cichlid fish that evolved to lure female fish so that male cichlids can deposit sperm in the females mouths. A study in BMC Biology reveals that the gene is associated…

What is the fundamental creative force behind life on Earth? It's a question that has vexed mankind for millennia, and thanks to theory and almost a year's worth of number-crunching on a…

New work on fruit fly genomics suggests new ways to look at the much larger human genome, and gives insights into the role of adaptation in evolution. In two recent papers, researchers led by David…

A theory explaining the evolution of giant rodents, miniature elephants, and even miniature humans on islands has been called into question by new research published today in Proceedings of the Royal…

It's historically been the case that fossil remains of Neanderthals paint an incomplete picture; they can't tell us about their cognitive skills or really give us details of what they looked like.…

The St Bernard dog – named after the 11th century priest Bernard of Menthon – may have ironically challenged the theory of creationism, say scientists. Biologists at The University of Manchester say…

By peering deep into evolutionary history, scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara have discovered the origins of photosensitivity in animals. The scientists studied the aquatic…