Evolution Diary

Sporting a flashy pattern of lavender on black, this newfound species of toad is among two-dozen animals that scientists discovered recently in the highlands of the northern Amazon. (…)

In the 19th century the works of Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and of his son Isidore (e.g. Philosophie anatomique. (…)

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara have discovered significant clues to the evolutionary origins of the nervous system by studying the genome of a sea sponge, a member of a group considered to be among the most ancient of all animals. (…)

Nearly all of the 162 land-breeding frog species on Caribbean islands, including the coqui frogs of Puerto Rico, originated from a single frog species that rafted on a sea voyage from South America about 30-to-50-million years ago, according to DNA-sequence analyses led by a research group at Penn State, which will be published in the 12 June 2007 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and posted in the journal’s online early edition this week. (…)

Scientists at the University of Liverpool have found that humans’ ability to walk upright developed from ancestors foraging for food in forest tree tops and not from walking on all fours on open land
Scientists at the University of Liverpool have found that humans’ ability to walk upright developed from ancestors foraging for food in forest tree tops and not from walking on all fours on open land. (…)