#vertebrate-evolution

#vertebrate-evolution

"If you would ask a regular person, do you think fish can climb falls, most of them will tell you: you are crazy. Well, it exists, it is out there."

Red-necked keelback snakes possess a potent toxin derived from the toads they consume, which can cause severe harm to predators like mongooses. The snakes store these toxins in specialized nuchal glands.

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.

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.

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.

The vast majority of animal species on this planet lay eggs, most insects, most fish, most amphibians, most reptiles, all birds, and even a few mammals lay eggs to reproduce. And if you go back far enough, you can see that our ancestors laid eggs for millions of years too.

Few transformations in the history of life have been as extreme as the embrace of the ocean by seagrass. Like whales and dolphins, modern seagrasses descend from land-dwelling ancestors.

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.

Although there are many amber stones containing a single creature, there are fewer that include two or more, as is the case with a pair of mosquitoes trapped in amber 130 million years ago which tell us that, back then, males also sucked blood. Even more extraordinary is when several organisms can be seen interacting, either eating the other, acting as a parasite, or cooperating.

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.

Human breasts sit at an elevated temperature, protecting a newborn from hypothermia. What's more, the size and shape of the breast allows for broad contact surface - enhancing the heat transfer from mother to child. This could improve a newborn's chances of survival and provide an evolutionarily grounded explanation for the development of external breasts in humans.

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.

From the beginning, we knew these bones were exceptional because of their minute size. It is equally impressive how the study of this animal overturns global ideas on ornithopod dinosaur evolution,

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.

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.