Category Archives: Latest on Evolution

How small genetic change in Yersinia pestis changed human history

While studying Yersinia pestis, the bacteria responsible for epidemics of plague such as the Black Death, Wyndham Lathem, Ph.D., assistant professor in microbiology-immunology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, found a single small genetic change that fundamentally influenced the evolution of the deadly pathogen, and thus the course of human history. In a paper…

‘Armored lizard’ was ancestor of today’s turtles

It’s a primitive turtle, but it looks nothing like today’s dome-shelled reptiles. Resembling a broad-bodied, short-snouted lizard, the 240-million-year-old creature—dubbed Pappochelys rosinae—appears to be a missing link between prototurtles and their modern relatives, according to a new study. If so, the find could fill in a number of pieces about turtle evolution. The findings are…

Humans Trekked Out of Africa Via Egypt, Study Suggests

The major gateway for modern humans out of Africa may have been Egypt, a new genetic analysis suggests. This finding may help scientists reconstruct how humans evolved as they wandered across the globe, the researchers added. Modern humans first arose about 200,000 years ago in Africa south of the Sahara. When and how the modern human…

New Species of Human Ancestor Found in Ethiopia

More than 3 million years ago, when “Lucy” was roaming the savannah of present-day Ethiopia, she may have encountered other two-legged apes not unlike her own species, Australopithecus afarensis—yet still just a wee bit strange. Represented by jawbones from three individuals, a newly described species named Australopithecus deyrimeda adds to the scatter of evidence that…

Scientists Created a Dino-Skulled Chicken to Explore Evolution

It’s not quite a dinosaur, but maybe it could play one on T.V. A research team led by scientists from Yale and Harvard have tweaked the activity of proteins in a chicken embryo to create a chicken with a reptile-like face. As dinosaurs slowly transitioned into their avian descendants, their snouts gradually morphed into beaks.…

Genetic changes to basic developmental processes evolve more frequently than thought

Newly evolved genes can rapidly assume control over fundamental functions during early embryonic development, report scientists from the University of Chicago. They identified a gene, found only in one specific group of midge flies, which determines the patterning of the head and tail in developing embryos. This newly discovered gene has the same developmental role…

Clues contained in ancient brain point to the origin of heads in early animals

A new study from the University of Cambridge has identified one of the oldest fossil brains ever discovered -- more than 500 million years old -- and used it to help determine how heads first evolved in early animals. The results, published in the journal Current Biology, identify a key point in the evolutionary transition…

40 million-year-old family tree of baleen whales

New University of Otago research is providing the most comprehensive picture of the evolutionary history of baleen whales, which are not only the largest animals ever to live on earth, but also among the most unusual. Most other mammals feed on plants or grab a single prey animal at a time, but baleen whales are…

Two ancient human fossils from Laos reveal early human diversity

An ancient human skull and a jawbone found a few meters away in a cave in northern Laos add to the evidence that early modern humans were physically quite diverse, researchers report in PLOS ONE. The skull, found in 2009 in a cave known as Tam Pa Ling in the Annamite Mountains of present-day Laos, and…

Most of us think of Europe as the ancestral home of white people. But a new study shows that pale skin, as well as other traits such as tallness and the ability to digest milk as adults, arrived in most of the continent relatively recently. The work, presented here last week at the 84th annual…