Hundreds of fossils uncovered in southern China's province of Yunnan reveal that at least some of the life-forms scientists had thought arose in the Cambrian period were alive and thriving millions of years earlier, in an era known as the Ediacaran period.
During major floods, thousands of tiny fish convene at Luvilombo Falls in the upper Congo River Basin to undertake a peculiar vertical migration, described for the first time today in Scientific Reports.
Four protrusions appear to be arranged in pairs, each consisting of two connected branches surrounding a central depression. We really don't understand what any of these features represent anatomically.
The Spinosaurus is a sail-backed, crocodile-snouted dinosaur that Hollywood depicted as a giant terrestrial predator capable of taking down a T. rex in Jurassic Park 3. Then they changed their mind and made it a fully aquatic diver in Jurassic World Rebirth—a rendering that was more in line with the latest paleontological knowledge. But now, deep in the Sahara Desert, a team of researchers led by Paul C. Sereno discovered new Spinosaurus fossils suggesting both scientists and filmmakers might have got it all wrong again.
We think that in this early deuterostome, the median eye contained both ciliary and rhabdomeric cells. As a result, both cellular lineages were incorporated into a single, ancient, cyclopean eye, which later evolved into the vertebrate eyes.
The bodies of the crabs displayed male reproductive structures, while other parts showcased female features, including gonopores, said K.S. Anoop Das.
'Orcas are psychos,' quipped a close friend recently. He wasn't joking, nor was he ill-informed. In fact, he is probably the world's leading historian of whales and people. He had just watched a BBC Earth clip, narrated by David Attenborough, in which three killer whales separate a male humpback calf from his mother in the waters of Western Australia. The video's closing footage, with two of the orcas escorting the naive youngster to his imminent death, resembles nothing so much as a kidnapping:
1 Rodney King beating. 2 Boreal forest (taiga). 3 Named storm in the UK. 4 Dr Faustus (Marlowe play). 5 Floella Benjamin. 6 Gentlemen v Players. 7 RNLI. 8 Classical music. 9 Plots against Elizabeth I. 10 Ways of having your steak in France. 11 Animals that can walk on water. 12 Birth states of US presidents. 13 Scales used to measure natural phenomena: tornadoes; earthquakes; hurricanes; hazard from near-Earth objects.
Wooden objects carrying the marks of carving and use could be the oldest wooden tools ever found. Researchers dated the artefacts, found in what is now Greece, to 430,000 years ago - and suggest they might have been made by early Neanderthals or their ancestors, Homo heidelbergensis. A separate study describes 480,000-old flint-knapping tools made from antler and elephant bone, from what is now the United Kingdom.
Which animals came first? For more than a century, most evidence suggested that sponges, immobile filter-feeders that lack muscles, neurons and other specialized tissues, were the first animal lineages to emerge. Then, in 2008, a genomic study pointed to a head-scratching rival: dazzling, translucent predators called comb jellies, or ctenophores, with nerves, muscles and other sophisticated features. That single study ignited a debate that has raged for nearly 20 years, sparking fierce arguments about how complexity evolved in animals.
At first glance, it looked like Wooller and his colleagues might have found evidence that mammoths lived in central Alaska just 2,000 years ago. But ancient DNA revealed that two "mammoth" bones actually belonged to a North Pacific right whale and a minke whale-which raised a whole new set of questions. The team's hunt for Alaska's last mammoth had turned into an epic case of mistaken identity, starring two whale species and a mid-century fossil hunter.
The animals do, however, have neuronsnerve cells that appear interconnected throughout their body. And now a new study shows that how these animals sleep is surprisingly similar to humans, suggesting that sleep may have evolved before even the most primitive brains. The findings, published on Tuesday in Nature Communications, also help answer one of science's prevailing mysteries: Why do animals sleep?
The lava heron also has a much thicker bill than other closely related herons - an adaptation linked to feeding among sharp volcanic rocks and hard-shelled prey. "What we learned was something that hadn't been reported before," Mendales said. The discovery underscores how much remains unknown, even in iconic places like the Galápagos, said John Dumbacher, the Academy's curator of birds and mammals and Mendales' thesis adviser.
Some deep-sea fish may be able to see light in a different way from most other vertebrates, according to a new study. The fish, found in the Red Sea, have what the scientists behind the new study describe as hybrid photoreceptorslight-sensing cells in the retina that combine elements of two distinct kinds of photoreceptors, cones and rods. In human retinas, cone cells enable us to see in bright environments, detecting color and fine detail,
It looked like the silvery blade of a knife. Peering through his goggles, diver Ted Judah had laid eyes on a deep-sea creature rarely encountered by humans. He and wife Linda were diving off McAbee Beach in Monterey County in late December when, near the surface, he spotted the undulating thing. It was some kind of ribbon fish, he wrote in a post on the Facebook group Monterey County Dive Reports. Kevin Lewand solved the mystery.
