evolution

Almost all animal species -- including humans -- have blood cells, but between different species our blood tells different stories.

Between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago, many of the world’s largest mammals disappeared. Picture creatures like saber-toothed cats with 7-inch fangs and elephant-sized sloths. Woolly mammoths whose curved tusks grew longer than 12 feet. Even a 3-ton wombat the size of a car. After roaming the Earth for millions of years, most large-bodied mammals — … The post Giants that vanished 10,000 years ago tr…

Scientists have peered inside the skull of a 380-million-year-old Antarctic fish that was closely related to the first animals to walk on land, revealing surprising clues about how life began its move out of the water. Using advanced neutron imaging, researchers discovered that Koharalepis jarviki had features suited for living near the water’s surface, including openings in its skull that may ha…

Deep inside 100-million-year-old amber from Myanmar, scientists uncovered a bizarre ancient bug with clawed front legs that look more like a crab’s pincers than anything seen in modern insects. The discovery is so unusual that researchers say these crab-like “chelae” evolved independently in this lineage, making it only the fourth known example of such structures appearing in insects at all.

Nature Communications, Published online: 25 May 2026; doi:10.1038/s41467-026-73573-4 Anaerobic methanotrophic (ANME) archaea are abundant in marine cold seeps. Here, the authors reconstruct high-quality circular metagenomic-assembled genomes and identify variable genomic hotspots associated with phylogenomic diversity at the species and strain levels.

A new genealogical study shows how genetic analyses threading together DNA across centuries can save...

Ancient asteroid craters may have been safe havens for Earth’s earliest oxygen-producing life. Scientists in South Korea have uncovered evidence suggesting that asteroid impact craters may have played an important role in the rise of oxygen-producing life on early Earth. A research team from the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (KIGAM) discovered stromatolites [...]

A new review highlights how human evolution has shaped the presence of pathogenic variations in DNA damage repair (DDR) genes, offering a new perspective on why modern populations face increased cancer susceptibility.

This paper develops a new metaphysics of interiority by grounding the ente—the living center of experience—in three mutually reinforcing structures: gradient, biological time, and symbolic reciprocity. I argue that a gradient is the minimal physical‑informational condition that allows an organism to generate a holographic interior, and that biological time emerges as the ente’s ongoing attempt to…

The Tyrannosaurus rex is famous for many things—its enormous size, terrifying bite, and surprisingly tiny arms. For years, scientists have wondered why such a powerful predator evolved such small forelimbs. Now, a new study suggests the answer may lie in the dinosaur’s massive head. Researchers from University College London and University of Cambridge studied 82 […] The post Why T. rex Ended Up …

It helped to have a number of features to aid survival following the end-Cretaceous mass extinction.

A brainy human relative who lived during an ice age nearly 150,000 years ago adapted...

More than 3 million years ago, early human relatives were not alone in ancient Africa. Researchers have identified a formidable crocodile fossil that may change how we picture one of the defining periods of human evolution.

Ancient genomes from northwest Europe show that farming, foraging, migration, and marriage shaped prehistory in ways far more complex than earlier models suggested. When ancient DNA research began drawing major attention a little over a decade ago, many geneticists came to believe that earlier ideas about how modern humans populated Europe needed to be reconsidered. [...]

A 59,000-year-old tooth hints that Neanderthals may have treated infections with stone tools. Long before modern dentistry, Neanderthals may already have understood something crucial about pain: where it came from and how to relieve it. A 59,000-year-old tooth discovered in Siberia contains evidence that one of our extinct relatives may have deliberately drilled into an [...]

A shark born before modern nations existed has forced scientists to rethink aging, survival, and the hidden biology of life in the deep.

Himachal Pradesh is an Indian state located in northwestern part of the Himalaya, a global biodiversity hotspot. An up-to-date checklist of orchids is provided for this state, along with the plains of five states/ Union territories (Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand), surrounding it from northwest to southeast. The study area lies between 29°34´–33°12´ N latitude and …