Evolutionary Biology

Long dormant moss has been extracted from the Antarctic permafrost, thawed out and revived. Sophie Bushwick reports

 

The patterns on the insect's wings closely match those of nearby fossilized leaves from the same period

Based on humans' ability to discriminate between various close odors, researchers calculate that the average person can distinguish at least a trillion smells. Cynthia Graber reports

 

There has been a lot of discussion recently about the evidence that we are currently within a period of mass extinction, the kind of event that will show up in the fossil record a few million years from now as a clear discontinuity, a radical change in the diversity of life on the planet.

Unlike most snakes, the pythons appeared able to find their way home after being displaced by many miles

The first bird being considered for endangered species protections due to climate change migrates 30,000 kilometers a year

Zaps of UV light may explain why some animals avoid the cables

The determination on children's faces as they struggled with a difficult task was not observed in chimpanzees involved in the same study, suggesting that the expression is an evolutionary trait

The fossil-rich layers date from the period when dinosaurs and birds split from a common ancestor

What with all the monitor-themed goodness around these parts lately (see links below), it seems only fitting that I provide a re-vamped, substantially updated version of this Tet Zoo ver 2 classic (originally published in September 2007).

An extinction crisis is quietly unfolding in the southeastern U.S.