Category Archives: Latest on Evolution

Mystery solved: Where the penis comes from

It’s not a question a lot of scientists ponder out loud, but it’s key to much of life on Earth: Exactly how does the penis form? Today, two teams of researchers report having solved one part of this mystery, pinpointing how the organ gets its start in snake, lizard, mouse, and chick embryos. Now that…

Madagascar Fossil Offers Clues in Evolution of Mammals

Four years ago, while searching for fish fossils on Madagascar, paleontologists came upon what proved to be a well-preserved cranium of a mammal that lived about 66 million to 70 million years ago, in the closing epoch of the mighty dinosaurs. Such a discovery, expected to provide new and important insights into early mammalian evolution,…

DNA sequences used to look back in time at key events in plant evolution

Scientists from North America, Europe and China have published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that reveals important details about key transitions in the evolution of plant life on our planet. From strange and exotic algae, mosses, ferns, trees and flowers growing deep in steamy rainforests to the grains and…

Scientists make enzyme that could help explain origins of life

Mimicking natural evolution in a test tube, scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have devised an enzyme with a unique property that might have been crucial to the origin of life on Earth. Aside from illuminating one possible path for life's beginnings, the achievement is likely to yield a powerful tool for evolving new…

How did complex life evolve? The answer could be inside out

A new idea about the origin of complex life turns current theories inside out. In the open access journal BMC Biology, cousins Buzz and David Baum explain their 'inside-out' theory of how eukaryotic cells, which all multicellular life -- including us -- are formed of, might have evolved. Scientists have long pondered the question of how…

Florida lizards evolve rapidly, within 15 years and 20 generations

Scientists working on islands in Florida have documented the rapid evolution of a native lizard species -- in as little as 15 years -- as a result of pressure from an invading lizard species, introduced from Cuba. After contact with the invasive species, the native lizards began perching higher in trees, and, generation after generation,…

Oldest DNA ever found sheds light on humans’ global trek

Scientists said Wednesday they had unravelled the oldest DNA ever retrieved from a Homo sapiens bone, a feat that sheds light on modern humans' colonisation of the planet. A femur found by chance on the banks of a west Siberian river in 2008 is that of a man who died around 45,000 years ago,…

Origins of sex discovered: Side-by-side copulation in distant ancestors

A profound new discovery announced in Nature today by palaeontologist, Flinders University Professor John Long, reveals how the intimate act of sexual intercourse first evolved in our deep distant ancestors. In one of the biggest discoveries in the evolutionary history of sexual reproduction, Professor Long has found that internal fertilisation and copulation appeared in ancient armoured fishes,…

Geneticists solve 40-year-old dilemma to explain why duplicate genes remain in the genome

Geneticists at Trinity College Dublin have made a major breakthrough with important implications for understanding the evolution of genomes in a variety of organisms. They found a mechanism sought for more than four decades that explains how gene duplication leads to novel functions in individuals. Gene duplication is a biological phenomenon that leads to the…

Fossil of ancient multicellular life sets evolutionary timeline back 60 million years

A Virginia Tech geobiologist with collaborators from the Chinese Academy of Sciences have found evidence in the fossil record that complex multicellularity appeared in living things about 600 million years ago -- nearly 60 million years before skeletal animals appeared during a huge growth spurt of new life on Earth known as the Cambrian…