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The teeth of a 200 million years old reptile reveal how snakes got their fangs

Snakes and other creatures have been menacing the world with venomous fangs since the early days of the dinosaurs, but until now nobody quite knew how they got their most fearsome weapon. Now a paleontologist has solved this evolutionary mystery. Central to solving this mystery was the reptile Uatchitodon, a creature dating back to the … Continued

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Does a primitive part of our brains make us less interested in mates who lose fights?

Female members of one fish species show strong responses in a primitive part of her brain when she watches her chosen male lose in a fight. Humans might also possess this overwhelming evolutionary imperative to find the toughest, most combat-ready mates. The African cichlid fish has a particular part of its brain that fires up … Continued

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Why did mammals evolve to enormous sizes – then get smaller again?

After the dinosaurs were wiped out by a massive meteor strike 65 million years ago, tiny mammals ruled the Earth. But they quickly evolved to be as big as dinosaurs, then evolved to be smaller again. What happened? This is what paleontologists have long wondered. Scientists knew that extremely large mammals evolved within a few … Continued

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The horrors of evolution: the 10 freakiest animals of speculative biology

Scottish geologist, illustrator, and speculative zoologist Dougal Dixon has made his career dreaming up dozens of fictional creatures shaped by evolution gone bonkers. Here are 10 of his creations who seemingly escaped from the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual. We’ve mentioned our love of Dixon’s never-was dinosaur menagerie before, but he’s worked on several projects … Continued

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The weird evolutionary story of cranberries

This Thanksgiving, take your cranberry sauce with a dollop of irony. You’re eating cranberries mostly because cranberries stopped trying to get mammals to eat them. Although there are a few plants that migrate, the vast majority of them are stuck in one place. This saves on energy, but has many disadvantages. One of those disadvantages … Continued

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Your genes may have very little to do with how you look

We already knew that creatures with very similar genomes, like humans and chimps, can be very different. Now it seems that creatures who look the same might have radically different genomes. Our post-human children may look like us after all. In a paper published today in Science, biologist France Denoeud and colleagues describe the strange … Continued

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Were humans really using tools 3.4 million years ago?

Animal bones were recently discovered that suggested humans were using tools 3.4 million years ago – 800,000 years earlier than previously thought. But that finding is being challenged, and the story of human evolution hangs in the balance. Shannon McPherron and his team at the Max Planck Institute reported back in August that they had … Continued

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How cats master the physical universe when they lap up milk

When cats drink, they never splash or make a mess. It turns out there’s a solid scientific reason for that. As a group of MIT engineers discovered, feline lapping requires a finely-tuned mastery of fluid dynamics. It turns out that cats’ sense of balance and grace extends even to their drinking habits. Until this study, … Continued

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Europeans learned to farm by marrying Eastern farmers 8,000 years ago

Anthropologists have long debated how farming spread from parts of Asia to Europe. Was it cultural transmission, or did farmers immigrate and settle down with European hunter-gatherers? A new study of ancient DNA reveals that intermarriage created agrarian Europe. An international group of scientists compared the DNA of contemporary Europeans with 7,500 year old DNA … Continued

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The sight of meat lowers human aggression

From an evolutionary standpoint, humans should become more aggressive when they see meat. But research indicates the exact opposite is true. In theory, humans can have innate predispositions to certain stimuli. These reactions would be vestiges of natural selection, in that early humans who had the most successful gut reaction would gain an evolutionary advantage. … Continued

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The brains of human and Neanderthal babies were almost identical

When we’re born, our brains are pretty much indistinguishable from those of our extinct Neanderthal relatives. Were our ancestors really so different from Neanderthals after all? It’s a major ongoing debate among scientists as to how intelligent Neanderthals really were. Although there’s a entrenched popular notion that Neanderthals were dullards compared to modern humans, recent … Continued

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Plants evolve multiple genes to avoid the perils of inbreeding

Humans aren’t the only organisms that possess taboos about inbreeding, although for plants it’s not cultural, it’s genetic. in order to keep plants from producing weaker offspring, they have evolved many genes to ensure they don’t mate with themselves. Although the dangers of inbreeding are somewhat overstated, it is true that the practice can increase … Continued

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Religious ritual has altered the evolutionary path of Mexican cavefish

For centuries, a group of Native Mexicans have poisoned and harvested cavefish as part of an annual ceremony. Now the cavefish have gotten wise, as they have evolved increased resistance to the deadly toxins in order to adapt and survive. The Zoque people are an indigenous group in southern Mexico. For centuries, they have traveled … Continued

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Building bigger bugs

Giant insects are stalwart monsters in science fiction, and million of years ago, arthropods grew to Brobdingnagian sizes. But why aren’t ants the size of rats disrupting our picnics today? Giant insects make great movie monsters. Everyone deals with bugs on a daily basis – usually by squishing or exterminating them. We all know what … Continued

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Watch the birth of “super Monarch butterflies” that live 10 times longer than their parents

Every four generations, Monarch butterflies create a “super generation” that lives long enough to migrate to Mexico. In this video from National Geographic, we see how the butterflies engineer their children for such astonishing longevity. This is part of a special called Great Migrations that National Geographic is airing this Sunday, Nov. 7. (Thanks, Marilyn … Continued

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We may be even more alone in the universe than we thought

Two scientists propose that the jump from bacteria to complex life might be much riskier than previously imagined. Even on planets with earthlike conditions, plant and animal life would therefore be incredibly rare. All cells need power. Some cells need more than others. Bacteria are widespread, adaptable, and hardy, mainly because they don’t suck down … Continued

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Malaria-carrying mosquito could be evolving into two separate species

As one of the primary carriers of malaria, the Anopheles gambiae mosquito is one of the most dangerous animals in the world. Now efforts to wipe out malaria must succeed quickly, because it’s rapidly evolving into two separate species. Malaria infects two hundred million people a year, and killed nearly 900,000 people in 2009. Many … Continued

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Making a baby in space could be dangerous for all involved

Any future astronauts here who are hoping to make the first space baby might want to think again – embryonic stem cells don’t act the same way in zero gravity, making successful procreation in space almost impossible. We already know that full-grown adults suffer harmful consequences the longer they stay in microgravity, as prolonged living … Continued

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Baby Born From 20-Year-Old Frozen Embryo

Cryopreservation was once the domain of sci-fi novels and B-rate movies. (Think Encino Man.) But it’s increasingly real, as the recent birth of a healthy boy from a frozen embryo created 20 years earlier shows. The birth, which is reported in a study in the online edition of the journal Fertility and Sterility, sets a … Continued

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Devastating volcanoes wiped out the Neanderthals

The ultimate fate of the Neanderthals remains a major mystery. We know they went extinct, but why did they die out when our ancestors thrived? New evidence suggests massive, deadly volcanoes killed off the Neanderthals while completely sparing our ancestors. The solution to the Neanderthal extinction mystery might be found in the Mezmaiskaya cave, found … Continued