Evolution News

July 19, 2024

Top Headlines

New Snake Discovery Rewrites History, Points to North America's Role in Snake Evolution

July 19, 2024 — A new species of fossil snake unearthed in Wyoming is rewriting our understanding of snake evolution. The discovery, based on four remarkably well-preserved specimens found curled together in a ...

Ancient Microbes Offer Clues to How Complex Life Evolved

July 16, 2024 — Researchers have discovered that a single-celled organism, a close relative of animals, harbors the remnants of ancient giant viruses woven into its own genetic code. This finding sheds light on how complex organisms may have acquired some of their ...

'A History of Contact': Geneticists Are Rewriting the Narrative of Neanderthals and Other Ancient Humans

July 11, 2024 — Using genomes from 2,000 living humans as well as three Neanderthals and one Denisovan, an international team mapped the gene flow between the hominin groups over the past quarter-million ...

Insight Into One of Life's Earliest Ancestors Revealed in New Study

July 12, 2024 — Researchers have shed light on Earth's earliest ecosystem, showing that within a few hundred million years of planetary formation, life on Earth was already ...

Latest Headlines

updated 11:15pm EDT

AI-Powered Study Explores Under-Studied Female Evolution

July 1, 2024 — Pioneering AI-powered research on butterflies has probed the under-studied evolution of females and adds to a debate between Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel ...

Sixty-Million-Year-Old Grape Seeds Reveal How the Death of the Dinosaurs May Have Paved the Way for Grapes to Spread

July 1, 2024 — Scientists discovered the oldest fossil grapes in the Western Hemisphere, which help show how after the death of the dinosaurs, grapes spread across ...

Researchers Find Genetic Stability in a Long-Term Panamanian Hybrid Zone of Manakin Birds

June 26, 2024 — We often think of species as separate and distinct, but sometimes they can interbreed and create hybrids. When this happens consistently in a ...

Ammonites' Fate Sealed by Meteor Strike That Wiped out Dinosaurs

June 27, 2024 — Ammonites were not in decline before their extinction, scientists have ...

Last Surviving Woolly Mammoths Were Inbred but Not Doomed to Extinction

June 27, 2024 — The last population of woolly mammoths was isolated on Wrangel Island off the coast of Siberia 10,000 years ago, when sea levels rose and cut the mountainous island off from the mainland. A new ...

Newly Discovered Dinosaur Boasts Big, Blade-Like Horns

June 20, 2024 — A new dinosaur has been identified and named. The dinosaur's name, Lokiceratops rangiformis, translates roughly to 'Loki's horned face that looks like a ...

Interaction With Insects Accelerates Plant Evolution

June 19, 2024 — Researchers have discovered that plants benefit from a greater variety of interactions with pollinators and herbivores. Plants that are pollinated by insects and have to defend themselves against ...

Ancient Polar Sea Reptile Fossil Is Oldest Ever Found in Southern Hemisphere

June 17, 2024 — An international team of scientists has identified the oldest fossil of a sea-going reptile from the Southern Hemisphere -- a nothosaur vertebra ...

Paleontology: New Fossil Fish Genus Discovered

June 13, 2024 — Paleontologists have identified a new genus of fossil goby, revealing evolutionary secrets of a lineage that stretches back millions of ...

Novel Genetic Clock Discovers Oldest Known Marine Plant

June 10, 2024 — An international research team has discovered the oldest known marine plant using a novel genetic clock. This 1400-year-old seagrass clone from the Baltic Sea dates back to the Migration Period. The ...

Earlier Headlines

'Missing' Early Sea Sponges Discovered

June 5, 2024 — Geobiologists reported a 550 million-year-old sea sponge that had been missing from the fossil record. The discovery sheds new light on a conundrum that has stumped zoologists and paleontologists for ...

Food Drove the Evolution of Giraffes' Long Neck

June 3, 2024 — A study explores body proportions of Masai giraffes, lending insight into why giraffes have such long necks and how this trait might have ...

How Sharks Survived a Major Spike in Earth's Temperature

June 3, 2024 — The sharks we know today as the open ocean's top predators evolved from stubby bottom dwellers during a dramatic episode of global warming millions of years ...

An Unlikely Hero in Evolution: Worms

June 1, 2024 — One of Earth's most consequential bursts of biodiversity -- a 30-million-year period of explosive evolutionary changes spawning innumerable new species -- may have the most modest of creatures ...

Musankwa Sanyatiensis, a New Dinosaur from Zimbabwe

May 30, 2024 — Fossils found on the shoreline of Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe represent a completely new dinosaur species. This remarkable find, named Musankwa sanyatiensis, marks only the fourth dinosaur species named ...

Tracing the Evolution of Ferns' Surprisingly Sweet Defense Strategy

May 30, 2024 — Plants and the animals that eat them have evolved together in fascinating ways, creating a dynamic interplay of survival strategies. Many plants have developed physical and chemical defenses to fend ...

A Unified Account of Darwinism's Varieties

May 28, 2024 — A new article examines the question of what Darwinism is and how its nonscientific uses relate to the scientific theory of evolution. The authors observe that while some people claim Darwinism's ...

Bringing Back an Ancient Bird

May 28, 2024 — Using ancient DNA extracted from the toe bone of a museum specimen, biologists have sequenced the genome of an extinct, flightless bird called the little bush moa, shedding light into an unknown ...

How Killifish Embryos Use Suspended Animation to Survive Over 8 Months of Drought

May 28, 2024 — The African turquoise killifish lives in ephemeral ponds in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. To survive the annual dry season, the fish's embryos enter a state of extreme suspended animation or ...

On Repeat: Biologists Observe Recurring Evolutionary Changes, Over Time, in Stick Insects

May 24, 2024 — An evolutionary biologist reports evidence of repeatable evolution in populations of stick ...

Entomologist Sheds Light on 250-Year-Old Mystery of the German Cockroach

May 24, 2024 — Entomologists have solved the 250-year-old origin puzzle of the most prevalent indoor urban pest insect on the planet: the German cockroach. The team's research findings, representing the ...

Exploring Diversity in Cell Division

May 22, 2024 — Animals and fungi predominantly use two different modes of cell division -- called open and closed mitosis, respectively. A new study has shown that different species of Ichthyosporea -- marine ...

Researchers Discover Hidden Step in Dinosaur Feather Evolution

May 21, 2024 — Scientists discover 'zoned development' in dinosaur skin, with zones of reptile-style scales and zones of bird-like skin with feathers. A new dinosaur skin fossil has been found to be ...

Diverse Headgear in Hoofed Mammals Evolved from Common Ancestor

May 20, 2024 — From the small ossicones on a giraffe to the gigantic antlers of a male moose -- which can grow as wide as a car -- the headgear of ruminant hooved mammals is extremely diverse, and new research ...

Evolutionary History of Extinct Duck Revealed

May 20, 2024 — The study's findings show mergansers arrived in the New Zealand region at least seven million years ago from the Northern Hemisphere, in a separate colonisation event to that which led to the ...

How Did Sabre-Toothed Tigers Acquire Their Long Upper Canine Teeth?

May 16, 2024 — In a groundbreaking study an international team of scientists has investigated the evolutionary patterns behind the development of sabre teeth, with some unexpected results along the ...

Iconic Baobabs: The Origin and Long-Distance Travels of Upside Down Trees

May 15, 2024 — The research cracks the code on the iconic baobab tree's origin story, revealing their surprising origins in Madagascar and incredible long-distance dispersals to Africa and Australia. The study ...

Genomes of 'Star Algae' Shed Light on Origin of Plants

May 3, 2024 — Land plants cover the surface of our planet and often tower over us. They form complex bodies with multiple organs that consist of a broad range of cell types. Developing this morphological ...

Scientists Unveil Genetics Behind Development of Gliding

Apr. 24, 2024 — Researchers explain the genomic and developmental basis of the patagium, the thin skin membrane that allows some mammalian species to soar through the ...

Bioluminescence First Evolved in Animals at Least 540 Million Years Ago

Apr. 23, 2024 — Bioluminescence first evolved in animals at least 540 million years ago in a group of marine invertebrates called octocorals, according to the results of a new study. The study focuses on an ancient ...