Topic description and stories

Chimpanzee

Tree-dwelling mammals survived after asteroid strike destroyed forests

14 Oct 2021

An asteroid strike 66 million years ago wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs and devastated the Earth’s forests, but tree-dwelling ancestors of primates...

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Wild Kea, New Zealand

Going up: birds and mammals evolve faster if their home is rising

02 Sep 2021

The rise and fall of Earth’s land surface over the last three million years shaped the evolution of birds and mammals, a new study has found, with...

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Human fossil skulls and thigh bones

Climate changed the size of our bodies and, to some extent, our brains

08 Jul 2021

The average body size of humans has fluctuated significantly over the last million years and is strongly linked to temperature. Colder, harsher...

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Site of the Toba supereruption

Early humans were sheltered from worst effects of volcanic supereruption

05 Jul 2021

A massive volcanic eruption in Indonesia about 74,000 years ago likely caused severe climate disruption in many areas of the globe, but early human...

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Patient with cystic fibrosis

Ability of multi-drug resistant infection to evolve within cystic fibrosis patients highlights need for rapid treatment

29 Apr 2021

Scientists have been able to track how a multi-drug resistant organism is able to evolve and spread widely among cystic fibrosis patients – showing...

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New starfish-like fossil reveals evolution in action

20 Jan 2021

Researchers from the University of Cambridge have discovered a fossil of the earliest starfish-like animal, which helps us understand the origins of...

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Scelidosaurus: ready for its closeup at last

26 Aug 2020

The first complete dinosaur skeleton ever identified has finally been studied in detail and found its place in the dinosaur family tree, completing a...

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Figure from the PNAS paper showing the transmission routes using phylogenetic networks

COVID-19: genetic network analysis provides ‘snapshot’ of pandemic origins

09 Apr 2020

Study charts the 'incipient supernova' of SARS-CoV-2 through genetic mutations as it spread from China and Asia to Australia, Europe and North...

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‘Wonderchicken’ fossil from the age of dinosaurs reveals origin of modern birds

18 Mar 2020

The oldest fossil of a modern bird yet found, dating from the age of dinosaurs, has been identified by an international team of palaeontologists.

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Half billion-year-old 'social network' observed in early animals

05 Mar 2020

Some of the first animals on Earth were connected by networks of thread-like filaments, the earliest evidence yet found of life being connected in...

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‘Game-changing’ research could solve evolution mysteries

11 Sep 2019

An evolution revolution has begun after scientists extracted genetic information from a 1.7 million-year-old rhino tooth – the largest and oldest...

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Butterfly co-mimic pairs from the species Heliconius erato (odd columns) and Heliconius melpomene (even columns). Illustrated butterflies are sorted by greatest similarity (along rows, top left to bottom right)

AI used to test evolution’s oldest mathematical model

14 Aug 2019

Researchers have used artificial intelligence to make new discoveries, and confirm old ones, about one of nature’s best-known mimics, opening up...

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