The first four-legged fossil snake ever found is forcing scientists to rethink how snakes evolved from lizards. Although it has four legs, Tetrapodophis amplectus has other features that clearly mark it as a snake, says Nick Longrich, a palaeontologist at the University of Bath, UK, and one of the authors of a paper describing the animal in Science.…
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NASA finds ‘Earth’s bigger, older cousin’
NASA said Thursday that its Kepler spacecraft has spotted "Earth's bigger, older cousin": the first nearly Earth-size planet to be found in the habitable zone of a star similar to our own. Though NASA can't say for sure whether the planet is rocky like ours or has water and air, it's the closest match yet…
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The oceans are warming faster than climate models predicted
As I have said many times on this blog, if you want to know how much “global warming” is happening, you really have to be able to measure “ocean warming”. That is because more than 90% of the excess energy coming to the Earth from greenhouse gases goes into the ocean waters. My colleagues and…
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Chimps Can Spot Faces Like Humans Do
Chimpanzees can quickly identify the faces of other chimps, as well as those of human adults and babies. These new findings could shed light on human and chimp evolution, scientists say. Faces are key to human social lives, conveying key data about how one feels. As such, humans are wired to pay special attention to…
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The Devonian extinction saw the oceans choke to death
It was the age of fish. 360 million years ago, there were no large land animals, and the biggest animals were still in the oceans. One of the largest was Dunkleosteus. This was a sea monster like no other. Dunkleosteus was a powerful fish that grew up to 10m long and was covered with thick…
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Scientists find mechanism for altered pattern of brain growth in autism spectrum disorder
As early as 1943, when autism was first described by psychiatrist Leo Kanner, reports were made that some, but not all, children with autism spectrum disorder have relatively enlarged heads. But even today, more than half a century later, the exact cause of this early abnormal growth of the head and brain has remained unclear.…
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Bizarre fish species, ancient volcanoes discovered off Australia
Not only did an Australian government research team discover a cluster of 50 million-year-old volcanoes — an amazing find by itself — it discovered a new scary-looking fish species that features terrifying jaws and teeth, relative to their size. The bizarre scale-less blackfish that was found was about the size of a fingertip, and had…
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Extra DNA acts as a ‘spare tire’ for our genomes
Carrying around a spare tire is a good thing -- you never know when you'll get a flat. Turns out we're all carrying around "spare tires" in our genomes, too. Today, in ACS Central Science, researchers report that an extra set of guanines (or "G"s) in our DNA may function just like a "spare" to…
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Do micro-organisms explain features on comets?
Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, studied in detail by the European Space Agency Rosetta and Philae spacecraft since September 2014, is a body with distinct and unexpected features. Now two astronomers have a radical explanation for its properties -- micro-organisms that shape cometary activity. Dr Max Wallis of the University of Cardiff set out their ideas today (Monday…
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Lonely flatworms inject sperm into their own heads
All you single people: If you think dating is a headache, consider the lengths that some hermaphroditic flatworms will go to in the name of reproduction. In the absence of mating opportunities, hermaphroditic flatworms such asMacrostomum hystrix self-fertilize by stabbing themselves in the head with their penile appendage and injecting sperm, report biologists from the…
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