News by Subject Earth Science

A study tracing acoustic communication across the tree of life of land-living vertebrates reveals that the ability to vocalize goes back hundreds of millions of years, is associated with a nocturnal lifestyle and has remained stable. Surprisingly, acoustic communication does not seem to drive the formation of new species across vertebrates.

Hard plant foods may have made up a larger part of early human ancestors' diet than currently presumed, according to a new experimental study of modern tooth enamel from Washington University in St. Louis. The results have implications for reconstructing diet, and for our interpretation of the fossil record of human evolution, researchers said.

A UC San Francisco-led research team has discovered the first conclusive evidence that selection may also occur at the level of the epigenome -- a term that refers to an assortment of chemical "annotations" to the genome that determine whether, when and to what extent genes are activated -- and has done so for tens of millions of years.

Volcanic activity did not play a direct role in the mass extinction event that killed the dinosaurs, according to an international, Yale-led team of researchers. It was all about the asteroid.

Previous analyses of global paleobiodiversity have been coarsely resolved to roughly 10 million years, obscuring the effects of ecological processes and events that operate at shorter timescales.

Birds fly in a meticulous manner not yet replicable by human-made machines, though two new studies in Science Robotics and Science -- by uncovering more about what gives birds this unparalleled control -- pave the way to flying robots that can maneuver the air as nimbly as birds.