Why do zebras have stripes? Because they make bad landing strips for flies
Scientists are providing new evidence to answer the long-standing question about why zebras have stripes. It appears stripes make terrible landing strips, bamboozling the fierce blood-sucking flies that try to feast on zebras and carry deadly diseases. Researchers on Wednesday described experiments demonstrating that horse ...
A relatively complete skeleton of a long-necked, long-tailed plant-eater excavated from a rocky cliff above a Tanzanian river is providing insight into the early evolution of a dinosaur group that later included Earth's largest-ever land animals. Scientists on Wednesday announced the discovery of fossils of ...
Siberian cave findings shed light on enigmatic extinct Denisovan human species
Scientists using sophisticated techniques to determine the age of bone fragments, teeth and artifacts unearthed in a Siberian cave have provided new insight into a mysterious extinct human species that may have been more advanced than previously known. Research published on Wednesday shed light on ...
The little blind fish that can mend a broken heart
The Mexican tetra is a small and boring-looking animal, but appearances are deceptive. This fish is famous among evolutionary biologists, physiologists and sleep scientists for its hidden talents.
Scientists launch plan to map genes of all complex life on earth
Scientists launched a vast project on Thursday to map the genetic code of all 1.5 million known species of complex life on Earth, aiming to complete the work within a decade. They described the Earth BioGenome Project (EBP) as "the next moonshot for biology" after ...
Complex organic molecules have been discovered originating from one of Saturn's moons, Enceladus, adding to its potential to support life, researchers said on Wednesday. The Cassini spacecraft first flew close to the ice-covered moon in 2005 as part of a mission to gather data on ...
Scientists have pinpointed three genes that may have played a pivotal role in the evolution of the striking increase in brain size that helped define what it means to be human. These genes, found only in people, appeared between 3 and 4 million years ago, ...
Scientists discover hormone that helps plants sense drought
Plants deserve more credit. They can't move to find food or water, or to escape a predator. But that doesn't mean they are helpless — far from it. They don't have eyes, ears, a nose or mouth, but they can sense the world remarkably ...
Fossils of 'badass' Argentine meat-eating dinosaur unearthed
On a semiarid Patagonian landscape 85 million years ago, a formidable meat-eater called Tratayenia rosalesi reigned as the apex predator, part of an enigmatic dinosaur group that menaced South America and Australia for tens of millions of years. Scientists on Wednesday described Tratayenia, a two-legged ...
Tiny tardigrades might hold the key to the origin of life
The city of Tsuruoka in Yamagata Prefecture is famous for the three sacred mountains that are central to the practice of Shugendo. In this fascinating fusion of Buddhism and Shinto, disciples climb and descend the thousands of stone steps that lead to the summit ...
Cold-blooded? Study finds female pythons care for their young
Shedding their cold-blooded image, snakes emerge from a recent study as more caring creatures that protect their nests and remain with their young for a brief period after hatching. The study of the nesting behavior of the southern African python, published this month in the ...
Analysis finds shape of human brain evolved over time to accommodate key advances in function
An analysis of fossils including the oldest-known Homo sapiens specimen has revealed that brain shape in our species evolved over time to become less elongated and more globular, a change that appears to have accommodated key advances in its function. Scientists said Wednesday they examined ...
