A nearly complete fossil skeleton 3.67 million years old provides new insight into how the hominin ancestors of man used their arms.
The current prevailing view in biological science is that the DNA of mitochondria, the structures that convert nutrients into cellular energy, is passed on only through maternal inheritance. How this idea came to be, and why it's wrong, is the subject of a review paper by physical anthropologist, Jeffrey H. Schwartz.
An international team of researchers has reconstructed the oldest modern human genome from a human skull found in the modern Czech Republic that is thought to be at least 45,000 years old.
The sweet potato whitefly, Bemisia tabaci, is a costly menace to agricultural crops worldwide, and now researchers have found a possible reason for the whitefly's success: It has found a way to protect itself from the usual plant toxin defense.
Archaea are one of three domains of life, along with bacteria and the more complex eukaryotes. Now, new research has confirmed that archaea microbes package their DNA in tight coils that bend like a slinky, which may be the precursor for the more elaborate DNA system of eukaryotes.
Constructive Neutral Evolution (CNE) is a useful concept in the study of evolution that should be better known among molecular and evolutionary biologists, state the authors of a review article on the subject in the Journal of Molecular Evolution, Feb. 19.
An exotic microbe, Candidatus Desulforudis audaxviator (CDA), found very deep in the earth on three continents has developed almost identically in each location, with minimal evolution over millions of years.
Scientists have developed a new, more efficient method for converting one type of human cell into another type of human cell for use in disease modeling, cell transplants, and gene therapies.
Researchers have demonstrated an easy way to transfer ultrathin organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) to temporary tattoo paper that can be applied to any kind of surface. The result is a light-emitting tattoo.
A group of Italian medical researchers has issued a "call for action" to the medical community to protect frontline healthcare workers from heavy psychological stress in dealing with COVID-19 patients.
Contrary to common belief, evolution sometimes produces organisms that are less fit than their distant ancestors.
A new genomic study of how the three orders of amphibians evolved and diverged over millions of years, provides an updated view of amphibian evolutionary discordances, and of the differing explanations of amphibian relationships.
The physiology of baleen whales is not well understood, but a new research project is changing what marine biologists know about the health and environmental stress of these large aquatic animals.
Scientists have identified how the giant unicellular slime mold, Physarum polycephalum, uses its own body network to encode the position of a food source for future use.
The discovery of terrestrial fungus-like fossils dating back to the end of the Cryogenian ice ages 635 million years ago can provide clues as to how the frozen Earth was able to return to normal and allow life to develop.
For an embryo to develop, new cells of different types must know precisely where to place themselves and in what direction to grow. How the cells are able to do this has been an unexplained question for more than a century.
Geoscientists have condensed 1 billion years of Earth's tectonic plate movements into a 40-second video.
Carbon-14 dating of fossil bones is an important tool for a variety of scientific disciplines, yet its inaccuracy is called "the elephant in the room" by an ecologist at the University of Adelaide in Australia.
A significant indirect effect of the COVID-19 pandemic was a sudden and sharp decrease in the number of cardiology diagnostic procedures performed worldwide, and especially in lower-income countries.
The risk of developing cancer usually increases with body size and lifespan in mammals, but elephants and some other animals are an exception.