Search Results for: Vertebrates
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- Ecosystems
A new road map shows how to prevent pandemics
Past viral spillover events underscore the importance of protecting wildlife habitats.
- Paleontology
Dinosaur feathers may have been more birdlike than previously thought
Feather proteins can change during fossilization, raising questions about what dinosaur feathers really can tell us about feather evolution.
- Neuroscience
Chickadees use memory ‘bar codes’ to find their hidden food stashes
Unique subsets of neurons in a chickadee’s memory center light up for each distinct cache, hinting at how episodic memories are encoded in the brain.
By Jake Buehler - Animals
Static electricity can pull ticks on to their hosts
Ticks brought near objects with a static charge frequently get pulled to those surfaces, a new study finds, suggesting one way the bugs find hosts.
By Soumya Sagar - Genetics
A genetic parasite may explain why humans and other apes lack tails
Around 25 million years ago, a stretch of DNA inserted itself into an ancestral ape’s genome, an event that might have taken our tails away.
- Paleontology
Newfound bat skeletons are the oldest on record
The newly identified species Icaronycteris gunnelli lived about 52.5 million years ago in what is now Wyoming and looked a lot like modern bats.
By Sid Perkins - Paleontology
Newfound fossil species of lamprey were flesh eaters
In China, paleontologists have unearthed fossils of two surprisingly large lamprey species from the Jurassic Period.
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Scientific meetings — it’s nice to see you again
Executive editor Elizabeth Quill discusses the importance of covering scientific meetings.
- Life
Crabs left the sea not once, but several times, in their evolution
A new study is the most comprehensive analysis yet of the evolution of “true crabs.”
By Amanda Heidt -
New discoveries are bringing the world of pterosaurs to life
The latest clues hint at where pterosaurs — the first vertebrates to fly — came from, how they evolved, what they ate and more.
By Sid Perkins - Paleontology
Ancient fish fossils highlight the strangeness of our vertebrate ancestors
New fossils are revealing the earliest jawed vertebrates — a group that encompasses 99 percent of all living vertebrates on Earth, including humans.
- Animals
A global report finds amphibians are still in peril. But it’s not all bad news
A survey of about 8,000 amphibian species provides the latest update on extinction risk trends stretching back to 1980.
By Anna Gibbs