Life
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We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Life
News in brief: Counting project reveals forest’s bug diversity
Some 25,000 species of arthropods live in Panamanian forest.
By Susan Milius - Life
Early life forms may have been terrestrial
A controversial theory suggests that at least some of the earliest widespread complex life forms lived on land.
By Susan Milius -
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- Life
News in brief: Fins to limbs with flip of genetic switch
Boost of gene activity may help explain how arms and legs evolved in vertebrates.
- Life
Feces study gets the poop on gorillas’ diet
Chemical traces in animals’ droppings reflect shifts in recent food consumption.
By Tanya Lewis - Life
Genes & Cells
Healing broken hearts, tracing Romani migration using genes, and how insulin irregularities may be linked to obesity.
- Life
Contender for world’s oldest dinosaur identified
An African specimen suggests the lineage may have arisen 15 million years earlier than thought.
By Tanya Lewis - Life
Among bass, easiest to catch are best dads
Recreational fishing may be inadvertent evolutionary force, favoring cautious fish over better caretakers of the young.
By Susan Milius - Life
Gut bacteria may affect cardiovascular risk
An abundance of antioxidant-producing microbes seems to keep plaques from breaking free and causing heart attacks and stroke.
- Life
Immune disease an added blow to fungus-ridden bat populations
Rare immune complication previously seen only in people devastates animals that had appeared to evade white nose syndrome.
By Janet Raloff