Search Results for: Vertebrates
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1,562 results for: Vertebrates
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Anthropology‘Hobbits’ likely scavenged dragons’ kills
Homo floresiensis may have scavenged Komodo dragon leftovers instead of hunting small elephant relatives.
By Jake Buehler -
PaleontologyAncient flowering plants may have used dinosaurs to spread their seeds
Scientists thought angiosperms didn’t use animals to spread seeds until after the Age of Dinosaurs. Fossilized fruits from these plants challenge this idea.
By Jake Buehler -
EarthMammals moving between the Americas stopped over in Mexico
Ancient mammals may have had an easier time moving across the Isthmus of Panama from north to south thanks to Mexico’s climate.
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PaleontologyMummified reptile hints at the origins of how we breathe
A cave preserved two animals’ rib cages, cartilage and even traces of protein, revealing a flexible breathing apparatus like that of today’s land dwellers.
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PaleontologyIf wings came before flight, what were they for?
Scientists use simulated dinosaurs to trigger real insect brains and test how wings originally evolved.
By Lily Burton -
LifeTalking dogs and chatty cats could one day ‘speak’ in our language
Advances in decoding animal sounds might someday make animal translators a possibility.
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AnimalsSpider silk-making organs evolved due to a 400-million-year-old genetic oops
An ancient ancestor of spiders and relatives doubled its genome about 400 million years ago, setting the stage for the evolution of spinnerets.
By Jake Buehler -
GeneticsWhy African striped mice can be the best of dads — or the worst
Environmental cues can flip a molecular switch in the brain, turning males from caregivers to killers.
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GeneticsThe Amazon molly — a sex-skipping fish — hacks evolution
The Amazon molly reproduces without sex. A genomic copy-and-paste trick called gene conversion may explain how it avoids evolutionary meltdown.
By Elie Dolgin -
EcosystemsFood chains in Caribbean coral reefs are getting shorter
Shorter food chains could mean reefs are less able to weather changes in food availability, threatening an already vulnerable ecosystem.
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AnimalsHuge relatives of white sharks lived earlier than thought
Lamniform sharks such as great whites and tiger sharks are famous for their size. The first such giants evolved 15 million years earlier than thought.
By Jake Buehler -
AnimalsHow Greenland sharks defy aging
When it comes to bucking the biological ails of aging, humans could learn something from Greenland sharks.
By Meghan Rosen