News by Subject Earth Science

The earliest predators appeared on Earth 480 million years ago -- and they even had teeth which were capable of repairing themselves. A team of palaeontologists led by Bryan Shirley and Madleen Grohganz from the Chair for Palaeoenviromental Research at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) have been able to discover more about how these organisms were able to grow and regenerate their teeth.

Researchers at University of Tsukuba used a novel approach for analyzing the central nervous system of a proto-vertebrate to identify a regulatory cocktail that induces the creation of dopaminergic neurons/coronet cells, a primitive version of the hypothalamus. The findings shed more light on how neurons differentiate into particular subtypes, with potential implications for the treatment of conditions such as Parkinson's disease.

Land-based bird populations are becoming confined to nature reserves in some parts of the world -- raising the risk of global extinction -- due to the loss of suitable habitat, according to a report led by UCL. Researchers analyzed biodiversity in the peninsula of Thailand, Borneo, Malaysia, Sumatra, Java and Bali, one of the world's most biologically degraded regions. They found that up to 25 percent of heavy-bodied ground-feeding birds have been made locally extinct in the region.

The three stages of mammalian backbone evolution are far clearer now, thanks to work by a team of researchers that examined fossilized backbones of primitive mammal ancestors and applied novel statistical analyses.

A new study is challenging the long-held belief that specialization in mammal backbones date back to the earliest land animals. Evidence suggests that the spine gained regions during mammal evolution, with the first -- located in close proximity to the shoulders and front legs -- appearing some 250 million years ago, just as dramatic changes began to appear in the forelimbs of animals known as non-mammalian therapsids.