90 results
- Life
Molecular Evolution
Investigating the genetic books of life reveals new details of 'descent with modification' and the forces driving it.
- Life
Duckbill decoded
With a mix of reptilian, bird and mammalian features, the duck-billed platypus genome looks as strange as the animal.
- Life
Genes & Cells: Science news of the year, 2008
Science News writers and editors looked back at the past year's stories and selected a handful as the year's most interesting and important in Genes & Cells. Follow hotlinks to the full, original stories.
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- Paleontology
Twice upon a Time
New fossil finds suggest that the complex features of mammals originated earlier than previously thought and might even have evolved independently in different mammalian lineages.
- Math
A frustrating view of complexity
The unifying theme of complex systems, a researcher argues, is frustration.
- Paleontology
Out of the Shadows
An ongoing flurry of fossil finds is triggering a reevaluation of how early mammals and their close kin eked out an existence during the Age of Dinosaurs.
- Paleontology
Killer Bite: Ancient, tiny mammal probably used venom
Paleontologists have unearthed the remains of an ancient, mouse-size mammal that seems to have had a venomous bite.
- Paleontology
Groovy Bones: Mammalian ear structure evolved more than once
Fossils of an ancient egg-laying mammal indicate that the characteristic configuration of the bones in all living mammals' ears arose independently at least twice during the group's evolution.
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19031
I found the article on Welwitschia enthralling–it made me want to set off for the Namibian desert straightaway! The author mentions that a local name for the plant is “long-haired thing,” but an even more evocative and picturesque one is the Afrikaans tweeblarkanniedood (two-leaf-cannot-die). Darwin was fascinated when he learned of Welwitschia and its extraordinary […]
- Paleontology
Early Mammal’s Jaw Lost Its Groove
A tiny fossil skull found in 195-million-year-old Chinese sediments provides evidence that crucial features of mammal anatomy evolved more than 45 million years earlier than previously thought.
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Bacterial cells reveal skeletal structures
The finding of a cytoskeleton in Bacillus subtilis bacteria eliminates a fundamental difference between bacteria and higher (eukaryotic) cells.
