Feather Flop 2 – Pterosaur “protofeather” according to reports in ScienceDaily 28 September 2020 and Nature Ecology and Evolution, 28 September 2020; doi: 10.1038/s41559-020-01308-9. In 2018 a group of scientists led by Zixiao Yang of Nanjing University claimed they had found evidence that pterosaurs (flying reptiles) had proto-feathers. Their claim was based on fine filaments, […]
Humans still evolving, claim scientists, according to Flinders University News and SciTech Daily 8 October 2020, BBC Science Focus and Science Alert 9 October 2020, Interesting Engineering 11 October 2020, and Journal of Anatomy published online 10 September 2020 doi:10.1111/joa.13224. Researchers at Flinders University and University of Adelaide have found an increase in the number […]
Parrots discarded dull colours, claim scientists, according to Inside JEB 17 June 2020 and Journal of Experimental Biology, published online 17 June 2020, doi:10.1242/jeb.225912. Most birds colour their feathers by producing a mix of two types of melanin pigment – eumelanin, which produces black and grey, and pheomelanins, which produce browns, reds and yellows. Birds […]
Missing billion years may be found, claim scientists, according to reports in ScienceDaily and UC Santa Barbara News, 7 May 2020, and PNAS published online 27 April 2020, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1913131117. The rock layers covering the earth are considered to be a record of the evolution of life over many millions of years, but the record […]
Insect pollination extended by 50 million years, claim scientists in Science (AAAS) News and ScienceDaily 11 November 2019, and PNAS 11 November 2019 doi: 10.1073/pnas.1916186116. Scientists from China, Germany and USA have studied a beetle preserved in Burmese amber and found it was carrying pollen grains from a flowering plant. The beetle belongs to a […]
Re-run evolution proves flagellum evolved, claim scientists in an article in ABC Science 7 November 2019. Matt Baker, a biophysicist at the University of New South Wales, Australia, and Nick Matzke a phylogeneticist at University of Auckland, New Zealand, have written an article entitled “Evolution or intelligent design? The story of the bacterial flagellar motor”. […]
“Ancient four-legged whale” found, claim ScienceDaily 4 April 2019, BBC News 5 April 2019, about a fossil described in Current Biology 4 April 2019 doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2019.02.050. An international team of palaeontologists from Peru, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Belgium who were exploring in Peru have found a jaw bone, forelimb and hind limb bones, the […]
Dingo species dispute reported in ABC News 7 March 2019 and Zootaxa 5 March 2019, doi: 10.11646/zootaxa.4564.1.6. A group of researchers has carried out an extensive study of the Australian wild dog, known as the dingo, and claim it should be classified as a separate species of dog with the name Canis dingo, rather than […]
Rabbit evolution in three countries, claim scientists in articles in Science (AAAS) News 14 February 2019, and Science 14 February 2019, doi: 10.1126/science.aau7285. European rabbits were introduced into Australia in the mid 1800s and over the following decades they multiplied and spread, eventually reaching plague proportions, and devastated crops and pasturelands. In 1950 the myxoma […]
Human evolution in Israel, according to an article in Nature 14 February 2019 entitled “My hopes for Israel’s human evolution gallery” by Israel Hershkovitz. Hershkovitz and colleagues have set up a permanent exhibition on human evolution at Steinhardt Museum of Natural History’s Dan David Center for Human Evolution and Biohistory Research at Tel Aviv University. […]