Search Results for: Vertebrates
Skip to resultsCan’t find what you’re looking for? Visit our FAQ page.
1,541 results for: Vertebrates
-
Health & MedicineThe two faces of prion proteins
Scientists are learning more about the protein behind mad cow and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, including how to interfere with the protein’s production in the brains of mice.
-
AnimalsWe all sing like fish
From opera singers to toadfish, vertebrates may use basically similar circuitry for controlling vocal muscles.
By Susan Milius -
LifeHow the snake got its fangs
A study of snake embryos suggests that fangs evolved once, then moved around in the head to give today’s snakes a variety of bites.
By Amy Maxmen -
LifeFemale frogs play the field
A female frog insures a safe home for her young by mating with many males.
-
LifeClimate warms, creatures head for the hills
Unusual data let scientists test predictions that global warming drives species up slopes.
By Susan Milius -
ChemistryClass Acts from New Pesticides: Chemicals have little effect on mammals
Two new classes of selective pesticides immobilize and eventually kill many crop-damaging insects by interfering with a cell receptor unique to those pests.
By Ben Harder -
PaleontologyRaptor Line: Fossil finds push back dinosaur ancestry
Fossils of a newly discovered raptor dinosaur species suggest that the reptile's lineage is older and more widespread than previously suspected.
By Sid Perkins -
AnimalsProxy Vampire: Spider eats blood by catching mosquitoes
Researchers studying food preferences among spiders report finding the first one with a taste for vertebrate blood.
By Susan Milius -
PaleontologyCaribbean Extinctions: Climate change probably wasn’t the culprit
Remains of extinct sloths unearthed in Cuba and Haiti indicate that the creatures persisted in Caribbean enclaves until about 4,200 years ago, a finding that almost absolves climate change following the last ice age as a cause for the die-offs.
By Sid Perkins -
PaleontologyMmmm, that’s crunchy
Isotopic analyses of the teeth of otters and mongooses from Africa have led one paleontologist to suggest that some of humanity's ancient kin shared those modern animals' preference for shelled prey such as freshwater crabs and snails.
By Sid Perkins -
PaleontologyTusk analyses suggest weaning took years
Changes in the proportions of various chemical isotopes deposited in mammoth tusks as they grew have enabled scientists to estimate how long it took juvenile mammoths to become fully weaned.
By Sid Perkins -
PaleontologyBig bird terrorized South America
Researchers in Argentina have discovered fossils that may represent the heftiest flightless bird to ever have roamed the planet.
By Sid Perkins