Category Archives: Latest on Evolution

‘Pinocchio Rex’: T. Rex’s Long-Snouted Cousin Discovered

Dead men tell no lies, but perhaps dead dinosaurs do. A new dinosaur species found in China and nicknamed "Pinocchio Rex" was a long-snouted cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex. The narrow-nosed beast was slightly smaller and more slender than T. rex, but was still a top predator, researchers say. It roamedthe Earth more than 66 million years ago…

RNA may have been the origin of life on Earth. Go on a whirlwind tour of RNA's evolving role through billions of years of evolutionary history. Source: NOVA Labs

Spark of life: Metabolism appears in lab without cells

Metabolic processes that underpin life on Earth have arisen spontaneously outside of cells. The serendipitous finding that metabolism – the cascade of reactions in all cells that provides them with the raw materials they need to survive – can happen in such simple conditions provides fresh insights into how the first life formed. It also…

Secret to surviving mass extinctions? Don’t be a picky eater

Finicky eaters usually do not survive mass extinction events, suggests a new study on prehistoric big cats. Cougars, which will eat meat, guts, bones — the proverbial whole enchilada, survived the mass extinction event 12,000 years ago, while their finicky cousins the saber tooth cat and American lion bit the dust. The study, published in…

Brain size matters when it comes to animal self-control

Chimpanzees may throw tantrums like toddlers, but their total brain size suggests they have more self-control than, say, a gerbil or fox squirrel, according to a new study of 36 species of mammals and birds ranging from orangutans to zebra finches. Scientists at Duke University, UC Berkeley, Stanford, Yale and more than two-dozen other research…

Humans May Have Dispersed Out of Africa Earlier Than Thought

Modern humans may have dispersed in more than one wave of migration out of Africa, and they may have done so earlier than scientists had long thought, researchers now say. Modern humans first arose between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago in Africa. But when and how the modern human lineage then dispersed out of Africa…

Neanderthals Had Shallow Gene Pool, Study Says

Neanderthals were remarkably less genetically diverse than modern humans, with Neanderthal populations typically smaller and more isolated, researchers say. Although Neanderthals underwent more genetic changes involving their skeletons, they had fewer such changes in behavior and pigmentation, scientists added. Modern humans are the only humans alive today, but Earth was once home to a variety of other…

New study outlines ‘water world’ theory of life’s origins

Life took root more than four billion years ago on our nascent Earth, a wetter and harsher place than now, bathed in sizzling ultraviolet rays. What started out as simple cells ultimately transformed into slime molds, frogs, elephants, humans and the rest of our planet's living kingdoms. How did it all begin? A new study…

Tiny fossils found in China appear to be 500-million-year-old embryos

Tiny, spherical fossils found in southern China appear to be the embryos of a previously unknown animal. The fossils come from the Cambrian, a period dating from 540 million to 485 million years ago and known for an explosion of diversity. Some of the organisms that appeared during the Cambrian, such as the bug-like trilobite,…

Drunken Monkeys: Does Alcoholism Have an Evolutionary Basis?

As the child of an alcoholic father, Robert Dudley long wondered what caused the destructive allure of alcohol. Then while working in the Panamanian forest as a biologist, Dudley saw monkeys eating ripe fruit, which likely contained small amounts of the stuff, and an answer occurred to him: Maybe alcoholism is an evolutionary hangover. Had…