One of the mechanisms governing how our physical features and behavioural traits have evolved over centuries has been discovered by researchers at the University of Leeds.
Darwin proposed that such traits are passed from a parent to their offspring, with natural selection favouring those that give the greatest advantage for survival, but did not have a scientific explanation for this process.
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A team of researchers claims they have successfully excavated a complete fossil of a prehistoric giant elephant.
The fossil was recovered from an abandoned sand quarry in East Java–most of it has been uncovered within the last several weeks. Keep reading →
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After the dinosaurs perished, life on Earth didn’t take long to bounce back, a new study suggests.
A newfound 60-million-year-old creature called Eritherium azzouzorum—the oldest known elephant ancestor—bolsters the case that whole new orders of mammals were already around less than 6 million years after global catastrophe ended the age of reptiles some 65.5 million years ago. Keep reading →
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The beautifully preserved remains of a 47-million-year-old, lemur-like creature have been unveiled in the US.
The preservation is so good, it is possible to see the outline of its fur and even traces of its last meal.
The fossil, nicknamed Ida, is claimed to be a “missing link” between today’s higher primates - monkeys, apes and humans - and more distant relatives. Keep reading →
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In the first evolutionary study of the chromosome associated with being female, University of California, Berkeley, biologist Doris Bachtrog and her colleagues show that the history of the X chromosome is every bit as interesting as the much-studied, male-determining Y chromosome, and offers important clues to the origins and benefits of sexual reproduction.
The neo-X (top) and neo-Y chromosomes of the fruit fly Drosophila miranda, showing how the Y has shrunken slightly through loss of genes. The X has remained about the same size as the fly’s other chromosomes, though its genes are in the process of adapting to the Y’s degeneration. (Credit: Doris Bachtrog/UC Berkeley)”
Contrary to the traditional view of being a passive player, the X chromosome has a very active role in the evolutionary process of sex chromosome differentiation,” said Bachtrog, an assistant professor of integrative biology and a member of UC Berkeley’s Center for Theoretical Evolutionary Genomics.
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