evolution

Geologists correct a rift in Africa
03/26/2012 - 22:36

The huge changes in the Earth’s crust that influenced human evolution are being redefined, according to research published today in Nature Geoscience.

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Surprising diversity at a synapse hints at complex diversity of neural circuitry
02/22/2012 - 14:08

A new study reveals a dazzling degree of biological diversity in an unexpected place — a single neural connection in the body wall of flies.

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Dramatic Links Found Between Climate Change, Elk, Plants, and Birds
01/09/2012 - 13:22

Climate change in the form of reduced snowfall in mountains is causing powerful and cascading shifts in mountainous plant and bird communities through the increased ability of elk to stay at high elevations over winter and consume plants, according to a groundbreaking study in Nature Climate Change.

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100-year-old lock of hair of an Aboriginal man maps the man’s DNA.
09/26/2011 - 23:10

AN Australian research team including international scientists has published findings that reinterpret the history of early Aboriginal descendants. Published this week in Science, the researchers from Murdoch University, UWA, Griffith University and the University of Copenhagen, used a 100-year-old lock of hair donated by an Aboriginal man to map the man’s DNA.
 

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First life may have arisen above serpentine rock, say Stanford researchers
09/22/2011 - 22:30

Stanford Earth scientists lend geophysical support to a theory of life's origins – but show that, if it's accurate, the first organisms could only have arisen during one brief stretch of geological time, long ago.

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Max Planck researchers refutes the claim that Earth is periodically hit by asteroids or comets
08/01/2011 - 06:41
Danger looms from out of space: asteroids and comets are a threat to our planet. The history of Earth has always been punctuated by cosmic catastrophes. Several studies have claimed to have found periodic variations, with the probability of giant impacts increasing and decreasing in a regular pattern. Now a new analysis by Coryn Bailer-Jones from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) shows those simple periodic patterns to be statistical artifacts. His results indicate either that the Earth is as likely to suffer a major impact now as it was in the past, or that there has been a slight increase impact rate events over the past 250 million years

 

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