evolution

The paleoanthropologist was widely celebrated for his unmatched ability to find and identify fossils.

The simple act of chewing gum can raise the body’s metabolic rate by as much as 15 percent, a study finds.

A strange layer in the fossil record contains evidence that fern populations exploded following the mass extinction that ended the Cretaceous period. Scientists want to know why.

A paper argues that the evolutionary loss of a thin vocal membrane in the larynx may have facilitated oral communication.  

Research traces the evolution of a gene variant that reduces the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, finding that it originally evolved in response to infectious bacteria.

Understanding the biomechanics of the trap-jaw ant could help humans build better, faster robots.

Female fruit flies assess the physical symmetry of male suitors through the songs they sing, a study claims.

A study suggests that several species of brown algae may have independently evolved to express both sexes simultaneously, and it’s likely that female algae evolved male traits—not the other way around.

Several mechanisms contribute to the increased transmissibility of this SARS-CoV-2 variant.

Researchers mapped ear canal shape to body temperature to predict when ancestors of mammals first became endothermic.

The findings mean that penguins may struggle to adapt under rapid climate change, researchers say.

Today’s extinction rates are sky-high. But scientists debate if that’s sufficient evidence to conclude that Earth is undergoing a mass extinction event—or whether that’s even a helpful designation.

Extinction is a natural part of life on Earth. But occasionally, extinction rates have surged far beyond usual levels, driving mass extinction events that have reshaped the trajectory of life.

Coppens, alongside Donald Johanson and Maurice Taieb, found a 3.2-million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis fossil in the 1970s.

Fossil findings shed light on a little-known group of Cretaceous-era beasts—and indicate that the combination of a large head and diminutive arms was no evolutionary fluke.

A fossil analysis suggests that the yunnanozoan, a wormlike fish that flourished around 520 million years ago, sported structures that were the precursors of the head and jaws of modern vertebrates.

A new study using fairly complete genetic datasets of two phyla of small suspension feeders (Ectoprocta and Entoprocta) reopens the debate on the phylogenetic relationships between them and other animals.

Genetic studies have made it clear that eukaryotic horizontal gene transfer can and does happen. Exactly how, though, remains speculative.

A peptide found in bull ant venom closely resembles a hormone of its primary predator, triggering hypersensitivity and making subsequent bites even more painful than the ones that came before.

Horizontally transferred genes play significant roles in eukaryotic genomes