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It’s clear that humans are now, more than ever, a driving force in evolutionary biology. Early domestication efforts through breeding and training have changed some species to the point that they’ve grown to be as we wanted them to become. The effects of climate change, a great part of which is anthropogenic, actually influence animals […]
A fossil of a small, forest-floor-dwelling animal called Megaconus puts a big question mark on the evolution of mammals – it suggests that its group predated animals, while another one, from its tree dwelling ‘cousing’ Arboroharamiya shows the group belonged to the mammals. The two fossils have paleontologists scratching their heads, not knowing where to […]
A few years ago ZME Science reported how a group of researchers at University of Maastricht in Holland were on a mission to grow the first lab cultured ‘hamburger’. After five years of painstaking work and €250,000 invested (backed by Google’s Sergey Brin), an edible version was finally developed and what better way to put it to […]
The king of all predators, the godfather of his time, la creme de la creme – Tyrannosaurus Rex (T. Rex) was the ultimate predator… or was he? When Jurassic Park came out, even though the cinema crowd went wild as T. Rex smashed and ate velociraptors (and the occasional human), at the time, there was […]
An extremely challenging study published by a team of researchers from the Stanford School of Medicine claims that through some unknown mechanism mammals can bias the sex of their offspring in order to win the genetic lottery and produce extra grandchildren. The holy graal of modern evolutionary biology After analyzing 90 years of breeding records […]
The reason why some drugs can only be taken by injecting them, instead of less intrusive solutions like oral ingestion, is because otherwise these drugs can not reach the bloodstream effectively. For people suffering from chronic diseases that require a lifetime treatment of drugs administered by injection, like those suffering from diabetes who need an […]
What if the world’s greatest unsolved heists were made by aviary burglars? Bear with me for a second. A bird is small enough to fit through cages and window cracks, it can fly in and out fast and on the sly, and if it ever gets caught, it won’t turn its partners in crime since […]
A number of human-like unique limb features, like the thumb, can be witnessed from the earliest most stages of development. Intuition tells us that this means the genetic changes and material that underlie these traits are active in the embryo stage. Recently, researchers Yale School of Medicine found there are thousands of active sequences that control […]
Located in the North Atlantic, right in between Greenland and Scotland, Faroe Islands is one of the smallest countries in the world. At the same time, however, it has also remained fairly isolated for many centuries, which in time has led to the formation of a distinct language and population. You can spot a native […]
Scientists at The University of Nottingham have come across what can be a monumental discovery, demonstrating for the first time a new layer of the human cornea. The layer, which was described in a paper in Ophthalmology, could help surgeons to dramatically improve outcomes for patients with severe cornea affections and those undergoing surgery. The […]
As reported earlier on ZME, as little as three thousand tigers are currently alive today in the wild from six subspecies, or thirty times fewer than 100 years ago. Loss of habitat and poaching are the main drivers that brought these majestic cats at the brink of extinction. Now, a new threat might put tigers […]
A new visualization technique developed by researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute used a thin sheet of laser light that beams, stepwise, into different planes of a specimen to create intricate and detailed snapshots of cells. In these pictures featured above and below you can see how zebrafish and fruit fly embryos were imaged using this novel […]
Living fossils, fast adapters Sturgeons have been conserved as fossils ever since the early Cretaceous – some 130 million years ago; they are what we call ‘living fossils’. But a new study by University of Michigan researchers revealed that in some aspects, sturgeons are one of the fastest-evolving fish on the planet. “Sturgeon are thought […]
Our general appearance and dominating facial features have come a long way since the days of our early homo sapiens ancestors some hundreds of thousands of years ago. For instance the size of our brain, and of course skull that houses it, has grown in size three times since then. Moreover, medical records only a […]
The case of birds missing out on a proper penis has been a longstanding mystery in evolutionary biology. Roughly 97% of avian species sport little or nothing like a real phallus, yet they still reproduce via internal fertilization. A new study, conducted by Martin Cohn, a developmental biologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville […]
At 55 million years old, it represents the earliest known member of this broad group of animals that includes humans. It may be no bigger than a mouse, but it is a primate, and a very valuable one at that; paleontologists have named it Archicebus, which roughly translates as “ancient monkey”. The team which described […]
One big obstacle scientists face in their efforts to develop effective drugs against HIV is the virus’ capsid – an outer cell membrane-derived envelope and an inner viral protein shell that protects HIV essential proteins and genetic information. Current drugs have a hard time breaching this structure, however this might change. Using a supercomputer that crunched immense […]
New analysis of fossil teeth from extinct fossils has shown that human ancestors greatly expanded their diets 3.5 million years ago, moving on to eat grasses and also other animals. Before this, the humanlike creatures (hominis) ate a forest based diet, pretty similar to what chimps and apes eat today. Researchers from the California Academy […]
Despite the fact that triceratops are some of the most well known dinosaurs, finding a complete skeletons is an extremely rare treat. It was one of the last non-avian dinosaur genera to appear before the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event – the extinction which caused the end of dinosaurs and the Mesozoic. The scientists from the Black […]
Researchers have for the first time described an unique snail species that can only be found high on top Mount Kaputar in New South Wales, Australia. The snails exhibit an atypical coloring – fluorescent pink – and can grow as large as eight inches long, true giants by snail standards. Though Triboniophorus aff. graeffei […]
Every living being is important, however in a transnational-based society everything has a price label on it, even humans. A recent study, for instance, has assessed the economic value of sharks, both alive and dead. The researchers involved in the study found that shark ecotourism currently generates more than US$314 million annually worldwide and is expected […]
The Brazilian rain forest is a home to a slew of birds of all shapes, sizes and coloring – some 1,700 species to be more precise. One of such bird is the goofy looking toucan, which can be easily recognized by its extremely long beak which can reach half the size of the bird’s body. Human […]
Turtles are maybe the most majestic creatures in the reptile world, and have always been a source of inspiration for man. Everybody knows the fable of the turtle and the hare, which teaches how slow, but sturdy and resilient strides can outwit inconsistent sprints. The turtle’s really serious about it, and as evidence it practices […]
When you think about photosynthesis, the color green probably comes to mind – almost all plants are green, and they rely on photosynthesis, right? But purple bacteria have been around for a long time, and they are among the most efficient organisms at turning sunlight into usable chemical energy. Now, a key to their light-harvesting […]
MIT engineers have taken one step forward to the realm of sci-fi gadgets, transforming bacterial cells into living calculators that can compute logarithms, divide, and take square roots, using three or fewer genetic parts. Using cells as analog circuits Inspired by how analog electronic circuits function, the researchers created synthetic computation circuits by combining existing […]
Cockroaches, the blight of every urban apartment; they’re adaptable, they’re sturdy, and they reproduce really fast. The nasty, disease carrying bugs can eat pretty much anything they find around the house, from mold and rotten food to the thing they love the most – sugar. When given the opportunity, cockroaches always go for the sugary […]
It’s the Middle Ages, the 1600s, and the Little Ice Age is striking the planet. The Little Ice Age, as the name describes it pretty much was a period of cooling that occurred after the Medieval Warm Period (Medieval Climate Optimum). It is usually described as lasting from the 16th to the 19th centuries, but […]
A team of Canadian researchers has discovered a bacterium that thrives in the Arctic regions, much below freezing point, at -15 degrees C in one the coldest temperature ever reported for bacterial growth. The discovery of the bacterium Planococcus halocryophilus OR1 was made in Ellesmere Island, Canada, a part of the Canadian territory of Nunavut, […]
Serving as one of the strongest metaphors nature has to offer, at the later stages of its evolution the caterpillar - a soft bodied, not very pretty, ground based insect - morphs into a butterfly - a majestic flying insect of varying coloring and shape. What exactly goes inside the chrysalis the caterpillar wraps itself with for the many weeks required for metamorphosis remains a mystery, though.
The life expectancy gap between men and women is a rather attested fact, and while in the past a laborious, physically tense lifestyle for men was used to serve as an explanation, in our day and age of gender equality this doesn’t quite cut it anymore. Researchers in Japan might have stumbled across a clue […]
Only 2% of the human genome is comprised of genes, while the vast majority of genetic material is known as noncoding DNA – that is to say DNA that doesn’t code proteins. A complex plant, the carnivorous bladderwort plant, known as Utricularia gibba, recently became the center of attention for evolutionary biologists after a recently published paper by […]
A matter of great debate and ardent discussion in the field of evolutionary biology today is the transition of complex life from a watery environment to land. So far, there have been numerous speculations put forward in attempt to explain how tetrapods (four-legged land animals) first evolved and washed ashore to start life fresh as […]
Scientists have always tried to answer how speech developed in humans or what are its evolutionary mechanisms, a mystery made even more difficult to unravel since none of our close primate relatives has been granted with even the most primitive forms of speech, or so it was thought. Researchers studying the gelada – a primate […]
Researchers at University of California, Davis have shown for the first time how whole cells and fragments orient and move in response to electrical stimuli like an electric field. Surprisingly enough, their results show that whole and fragments move in opposite directions, despite being governed by the same electric field. The findings help better our understanding […]
A Sri Lanka researcher has discovered a new tarantula species, and it’s literally a big deal. Spanning across eight inches, this tarantula is big enough to cover your entire face and boasts a unique coloring. Ranil Nanayakkara, a local researcher, along with his team found the tiger stripped arachnid while on a typical arachnid expedition […]
If you know your physics (or optics, to be more specific), you’ve probably heard a lot about Fermat’s principle (or the principle of least time). Basically, what it states is that the path taken between two points by a ray of light is the path that can be traversed in the least time. A ray […]
A while ago, we wrote about the ongoing efforts to pinpoint the cause that gives rise to the thousands of so called “fairy circles” scattered around hundreds of square miles from the edge of the Namib Desert in Angola to South Africa. These great rings of grass that cover whole patches of arid desert have […]
A team of researchers from the US claim they have finally found tangible evidence that will once and for all end the controversy surrounding the Geobacter sulfurreducens, a bacteria that conducts electricity along thin protein filaments, just like a metal. In the scientists’ paper, it’s reported that aromatic amino-acids are central to both the electrical and respiratory functions […]
For more than 50 years since its discovery, the single-celled organism Tetrahymena thermophila has stirred curiosity around its seven sexes. UC Santa Barbara biologists have now found how the creature picks its gender from the slew, and apparently it’s not a matter of choice since the Tetrahymena gender distribution is as random as a game of roulette. The team […]
The Iberian lynx is the only wild cat listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), numbering no more than 200 specimens, all of whom are entirely confined to southern Spain. Researchers from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) in Berlin recently salvaged embryos and egg cells from a pair of captive […]
While taking a walk with her parents on U.K.’s Isle of Wight (map) in 2008, Daisy Morris, who was then no more than 5 years old, came across blackened “bones sticking out of the sand”. Her family took the bones to paleontologist Martin Simpson at the University of Southampton, who, with the help of colleagues, […]
For the first time in history, researchers have found microbes living deep inside Earth’s oceanic crust – the black basalts that make some 60% of our planet’s surface – potentially the largest habitat on our planet. Engineering and microbes Microbiologist Mark Lever is on board the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program’s research vessel JOIDES Resolution to […]
The Mariana trench is the deepest point on Earth; now, an international team of researchers found that the very bottom of the Mariana Trench, which lies almost 11 km beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean, has high levels of microbial activity. No more than 30 years ago, we had a very different idea about […]
Ok, so big news on the horizon: alien life forms have been found in a meteorite that recently crashed in Sri Lanka, on December 29, bringing along a new perspective on how we view the origin and movement of life. But… have they really? Well, sorry to burst your bubble ladies and gentlemen, but in […]
A rather well rooted idea in evolutionary biology says that evolution itself is non-reversible. Simply put, once an organism has specialized certain traits, it can not return to its ancestral traits – this is commonly referred to as Dollo’s law. In a way, you could say that by looking at Dollo’s law, evolution isn’t ever […]
Just a few days ago, we were telling you about the exciting new findings in lake Vostok – a new bacteria unlike anything else found so far retrieved from the lake sealed beneath 2 kilometers of ice for 1 million years. Now, the head of genetics laboratory at the Saint Petersburg Institute of Nuclear Physics […]
Paleontologists spend a majority of their working years studying fossils with only one objective – to unearth a discovery that will further benefit mankind’s understanding of dinosaurs. One such recent discovery established the presence of a hitherto unknown herbivore dinosaur. This discovery was made possible thanks to efforts by Clint Boyd of the South Dakota […]
Life finds a way – the red alga Galdieria sulphuraria gives a really good argument to support that statement. In the hot springs of Yellowstone Park, it uses photosynthesis to produce its necessary nutrients. But in dark, murky, toxic mineshafts in drainage that are about as acidic as battery acid, not only does it survives, […]
A while ago, we were telling you about the very exciting environment that is lake Vostok. The lake has been sealed under ice for more than a million years; researchers believed that it still harbored life, possibly bacterian life that evolved on a parallel evolution line. Now, Russian researchers believe they confirmed that hunch, finding […]
Paleontologists from the University of Florida have unearthed remarkably well-preserved fossils of two crocodilians and a mammal previously unknown to science during recent Panama excavations that began in 2009. The animals lived during the Miocene, a period that lasted from about 23.03 to 5.332 million years ago; the flora and fauna from the Miocene was […]
