http://www.physorg.com/ en-us Physorg.com internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. (PhysOrg.com) -- Ancient DNA retrieved from extinct horse species from around the world has challenged one of the textbook examples of evolution - the fossil record of the horse family Equidae over the past 55 million years. http://www.physorg.com/news179653662.html Biology Thu, 10 Dec 2009 08:40:01 EST news179653662 Despite their ability to fly, tropical birds waited until the formation of the land bridge between North and South America to move northward, according to a University of British Columbia study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition. http://www.physorg.com/news179591830.html Biology Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:45:31 EST news179591830 (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists have extracted organically preserved muscle tissue from an 18 million years old salamander fossil. The discovery by researchers from University College Dublin, the UK and Spain, reported in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B shows that soft tissue can be preserved under a broader set of fossil conditions than previously known. http://www.physorg.com/news176660912.html Other Sciences Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:20:01 EST news176660912 (PhysOrg.com) -- An 85 million-year-old plesiosaur fossil has been found with over 80 shark's teeth, suggesting the animal was the victim of sharks in a feeding frenzy. The find is perhaps the most spectacular example of a shark attack in the fossil record. http://www.physorg.com/news174052939.html Other Sciences Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:40:01 EST news174052939 (PhysOrg.com) -- An unexpected discovery made by Macquarie University PhD student Sargent Bray about the origin and nature of chemical compounds contained in ancient amber has changed our understanding of when modern flowering plants first began to evolve. http://www.physorg.com/news173704257.html Biology Fri, 02 Oct 2009 12:12:12 EST news173704257 (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists beleive extinct fungus species capitalised on a world-wide disaster and thrived on early Earth. http://www.physorg.com/news173634124.html Space & Earth Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:43:32 EST news173634124 In a special issue of Science, an international team of scientists has for the first time thoroughly described Ardipithecus ramidus, a hominid species that lived 4.4 million years ago in what is now Ethiopia. This research, in the form of 11 detailed papers and more general summaries, will appear in the journal's 2 October 2009 issue. http://www.physorg.com/news173615221.html Other Sciences Thu, 01 Oct 2009 11:27:38 EST news173615221 (PhysOrg.com) -- Chinese scientists today reveal the discovery of five remarkable new feathered dinosaur fossils which are significantly older than any previously reported. The new finds are indisputably older than Archaeopteryx, the oldest known bird, at last providing hard evidence that birds evolved from dinosaurs. http://www.physorg.com/news173079035.html Other Sciences Fri, 25 Sep 2009 06:31:08 EST news173079035 (PhysOrg.com) -- Biologists at the University of California, Riverside report new evidence for evolutionary change recorded in both the fossil record and the genomes (or genetic blueprints) of living organisms, providing fresh support for Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. http://www.physorg.com/news171272885.html Biology Fri, 04 Sep 2009 08:50:08 EST news171272885 Geologists of the University of Granada, Spain, have described for the first time ever the biological mechanism that explains how calcareous red algae grow on rocky substrates. http://www.physorg.com/news168352779.html Biology Mon, 03 Aug 2009 13:40:03 EST news168352779 In the Late Paleozoic (260 million years ago), long before dinosaurs dominated the Earth, ancient precursors to mammals took to the trees to feed on leaves and live high above predators that prowled the land, Jörg Fröbisch, PhD, a Field Museum paleontologist has concluded. Elongated fingers, an opposable "thumb," and a grasping tail of Suminia getmanovi demonstrate that this small plant-eating synapsid is the earliest known tree-climbing vertebrate http://www.physorg.com/news168072751.html Other Sciences Wed, 29 Jul 2009 10:00:01 EST news168072751 Hungry, sexual organisms replaced well-fed, clonal organisms in the Caribbean Sea as the Isthmus of Panama arose, separating the Caribbean from the Pacific, report researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The fossil record shows that if a species could shift from clonal to sexual reproduction it survived. Otherwise it was destined for extinction, millions of years later. http://www.physorg.com/news168072386.html Biology Wed, 29 Jul 2009 08:50:02 EST news168072386 For a group of paleontologists, a tour of the Creation Museum seemed like a great tongue-in-cheek way to cap off a serious conference. http://www.physorg.com/news165555744.html Other Sciences Tue, 30 Jun 2009 05:30:03 EST news165555744 New fossil findings discovered by scientists at UC Santa Barbara challenge prevailing views about the effects of "Snowball Earth" glaciations on life, according to an article in the June issue of the journal Nature Geoscience. http://www.physorg.com/news162564864.html Space & Earth Tue, 26 May 2009 13:54:59 EST news162564864 (PhysOrg.com) -- Were major extinction events real biological catastrophes or were they merely the result of gaps in the fossil record? Research by a team of geologists from the Universities of Bristol, Plymouth, and Saratov State in Russia, has shed new light on a debate that has divided scientists of late and was recognised as far back as Darwin`s Origin of Species. http://www.physorg.com/news160663448.html Space & Earth Mon, 04 May 2009 13:44:41 EST news160663448 Dinosaurs were dying out much earlier than the mass extinction event 65 million years ago, Natural History Museum scientists report in the Proceedings of the Royal Society journal today. http://www.physorg.com/news160324445.html Other Sciences Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:34:45 EST news160324445 Large size and a fast bite spelled doom for bony fishes during the last mass extinction 65 million years ago, according to a new study to be published March 31, 2009, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://www.physorg.com/news157294064.html Biology Thu, 26 Mar 2009 13:48:46 EST news157294064 Colorful poison frogs in the Amazon owe their great diversity to ancestors that leapt into the region from the Andes Mountains several times during the last 10 million years, a new study from The University of Texas at Austin suggests. http://www.physorg.com/news155883644.html Biology Tue, 10 Mar 2009 06:01:26 EST news155883644 (PhysOrg.com) -- A 380-million-year-old fossil fish that shows an unborn embryo and umbilical cord has been discovered, scientists report in the journal Nature. http://www.physorg.com/news154796016.html Biology Wed, 25 Feb 2009 14:54:04 EST news154796016 (PhysOrg.com) -- A pregnant fossil fish at the Natural History Museum in London has shed light on the possible origin of sex, according to a study published in Nature today by an international team including Museum scientists. The fossil is an adult placoderm, an extinct group of armoured fish, and it contains a 5cm-long embryo. It is dated to the Upper Devonian period 350 million years ago and was found in the Gogo formation of western Australia. http://www.physorg.com/news154793593.html Biology Wed, 25 Feb 2009 14:14:12 EST news154793593 A recent study by researchers at the University of Bath and London`s Natural History Museum has found that scientists` knowledge of the evolution of dinosaurs is remarkably complete. http://www.physorg.com/news152200910.html Other Sciences Mon, 26 Jan 2009 14:02:22 EST news152200910 (PhysOrg.com) -- The fossil record is known to be biased by the unevenness of geographical and stratigraphical sampling, and the lack of exposed rocks containing fossils. In a recent Perspective in Science [2 January 2009] Professor Chris Hawkesworth from the University of Bristol and colleagues suggest that a similar unevenness biases the record of the evolution of the continental crust. http://www.physorg.com/news151164927.html Space & Earth Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:15:27 EST news151164927 It doesn't tick, it doesn't have hands, and it doesn't tell you what time of day it is. But a molecular clock does tell time -- on an epoch scale. The molecular clock, explained S. Blair Hedges, is a tool used to calculate the timing of evolutionary events. http://www.physorg.com/news146418967.html Biology Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:56:07 EST news146418967 (PhysOrg.com) -- University of Queensland deep sea research has dug up an insight into the evolutionary past of some of the earliest animals. http://www.physorg.com/news146410065.html Biology Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:27:45 EST news146410065 It is extremely unusual for a student to have their work accepted for publication in a prestigious scientific journal. However, Felix Marx, a fourth year student in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol has just published his first paper in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, a journal of international significance. Felix studied the quality of the fossil record of whales as part of his third year project. The work was so original and revealing that he was encouraged to publish it. http://www.physorg.com/news146323705.html Other Sciences Wed, 19 Nov 2008 13:28:25 EST news146323705 As the Arctic Ocean warms this century, shellfish, snails and other animals from the Pacific Ocean will resume an invasion of the northern Atlantic that was interrupted by cooling conditions three million years ago, predict Geerat Vermeij, professor of geology at the University of California, Davis, and Peter Roopnarine at the California Academy of Sciences. http://www.physorg.com/news137336433.html Biology Thu, 07 Aug 2008 14:00:33 EST news137336433 (PhysOrg.com) -- Evolution seems to have happened in fits and starts -- at least that's what the fossil record shows. From trilobites to pterodactyls, ammonites to Archaeopteryx, scientists find the same pattern: brief bursts of innovation in which a single species or branch on the tree of life turns into a cluster of new twigs, then lapses into long stretches ruled by the status quo. http://www.physorg.com/news134921975.html Biology Thu, 10 Jul 2008 15:19:35 EST news134921975