News by Subject Earth Science

While reports of species going extinct are sadly becoming common, an international team of scientists has identified a new species of bird living on the Southern coast of China, that diverged from their Northern relatives around half a million years ago.

A collaborative research group has succeeded in identifying an important transcription factor, GCAM1, which allows liverwort plants to asexually reproduce through creating clonal progenies (vegetative reproduction). Furthermore, this transcription factor was revealed to have the same origin as those which regulate secondary bud formation in angiosperms. It is hoped that these discoveries will lead to the development of technologies to increase the cultivation rate of a variety of plants in agriculture and horticulture.

Researchers have discovered the genetic mechanism that explains how birds sing different songs depending on their species.

In the study, published in Nature, the team rebuilds multiple dental enamel proteins from an approximately two million-year-old Gigantopithecus molar fossil.

Researchers from the University of Copenhagen have succeeded in reconstructing the evolutionary relationship between a two million year old giant primate and the living orangutan. It is the first time genetic material this old has been retrieved from a fossil in a subtropical area. This allows the researchers to accurately reconstruct animal, including human, evolutionary processes way beyond the limits known today.

Jack Longino is a global ant expert and has traveled the world documenting and discovering ant species. But for his latest discovery, he didn't need to go any farther than his own backyard.

A cache of 118 million-year-old fossilized dinosaur and bird feathers has been recovered from an ancient lake deposit that once lay beyond the southern polar circle.

Just about all mammals, including humans, rely on a community of helpful bacteria living in our guts to help us digest food and fight off diseases. We've evolved along with these bacteria, to the point that closely related species have similar microbiomes in their guts. Scientists just discovered that bats break that rule. That tells us that bats probably don't rely on their microbiomes the way other mammals do -- we think it's because they fly.