News tagged with fossil evidence

Namibia sponge fossils are world's first animals: study

Scientists digging in a Namibian national park have uncovered sponge-like fossils they say are the first animals, a discovery that would push the emergence of animal life back millions of years.

Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils

created Feb 06, 2012 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (12) | comments 0

Competition is at the root of diversity in rainforests: study

Another attractive theory falls foul of the facts. A census of trees in rainforests on three continents has confirmed that competition plays a central role in structuring communities. This contradicts the so-called neutral ...

Biology / Ecology

created Jan 26, 2012 | popularity 4 / 5 (1) | comments 8 | with audio podcast

'Animal embryo' fossils are actually microbes (Update)

Tiny fossils that scientists have thought for decades were the embryos of the earliest animals ever found have turned out to be the remains of much simpler microbial organisms.

Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils

created Dec 22, 2011 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (11) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

Research team finds new explanation for Cambrian explosion

(PhysOrg.com) -- For hundreds of years, researchers from many branches of science have sought to explain the veritable explosion in diversity in animal organisms that started approximately 541 million years ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Nov 29, 2011 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (20) | comments 11 | with audio podcast report

Early cretaceous birds with crops found in China

The crop is characteristic of seed-eating birds today, yet little is known about its early history despite remarkable discoveries of many Mesozoic seed-eating birds in the past decade. Scientists from Institute ...

Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils

created Sep 06, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (5) | comments 4 | with audio podcast

Farming to blame for our shrinking size and brains

(PhysOrg.com) -- At Britain's Royal Society, Dr. Marta Lahr from Cambridge University's Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies presented her findings that the height and brain size of modern-day ...

Biology / Evolution

created Jun 15, 2011 | popularity 3.1 / 5 (14) | comments 68 | with audio podcast weblog

Ancient bacterial mats may have been key to first mobile animals

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers from Canada studying the highly salty coastal lagoons at Los Roques, Venezuela and the microbial mats found at the bottom of the sea there, have discovered that oxygen levels in ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created May 16, 2011 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (4) | comments 10 | with audio podcast report

Evolution of human 'super-brain' tied to development of bipedalism, tool-making

Scientists seeking to understand the origin of the human mind may want to look to honeybees -- not ancestral apes -- for at least some of the answers, according to a University of Colorado Boulder archaeologist.

Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils

created Apr 20, 2011 | popularity 3.5 / 5 (6) | comments 3 | with audio podcast

Genetic analysis finds that modern humans evolved from southern Africa's Bushmen

A team of Stanford University scientists, using the largest-ever genetic analysis of remote tribal people, have determined that the human family tree is rooted in one of the world's most marginal and primitive people - the ...

Biology / Evolution

created Mar 09, 2011 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (24) | comments 16

Fossil finger bone yields genome of a previously unknown human relative (w/ Video)

(PhysOrg.com) -- A 30,000-year-old finger bone found in a cave in southern Siberia came from a young girl who was neither an early modern human nor a Neanderthal, but belonged to a previously unknown group ...

Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils

created Dec 22, 2010 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (31) | comments 42 | with audio podcast

Scientists announce discovery of first horned dinosaur from South Korea

Scientists from South Korea, the United States and Japan analyzed fossil evidence found in South Korea and published research describing a new horned dinosaur. The newly identified genus, Koreaceratops hwaseongensis, lived ...

Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils

created Dec 06, 2010 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0

New statistical model moves human evolution back 3 million years

Evolutionary divergence of humans from chimpanzees likely occurred some 8 million years ago rather than the 5 million year estimate widely accepted by scientists, a new statistical model suggests.

Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils

created Nov 05, 2010 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (18) | comments 5 | with audio podcast

First great predator not much of one at all

The meters-long, carnivorous "shrimp" from hell that once ruled the seas of Earth a half billion years ago may have been a real softy, it turns out. A new 3-D modeling of the mouth parts of the Anomalocaris, along with e ...

Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils

created Nov 01, 2010 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (4) | comments 0

Researchers provide new understanding of bizarre extinct mammal

University of Florida researchers presenting new fossil evidence of an exceptionally well-preserved 55-million-year-old North American mammal have found it shares a common ancestor with rodents and primates, ...

Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils

created Oct 11, 2010 | popularity 5 / 5 (6) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Tracking viruses back in time

How long have viruses been around? No one knows. Scientists at Portland State University have begun taking the first steps toward answering this question.

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Sep 06, 2010 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (11) | comments 1 | with audio podcast