Biology

Apr 26th, 2024 - A prevailing opinion in land management is that non-native invasive plants are of no ecological value and they significantly diminish habitat quality for wildlife. Conservation practitioners allocate significant resources to invasive plant removal, often relying on surrounding native plants to passively fill the void. However, evidence that this practice improves food abundance or quality for wildlife is surprisingly limited. In a new study published in the journal Biological Invasions , ... [Read More]

Apr 26th, 2024 - Fujianipus yingliangi had a hip height of five foot nine inches and its 16ft length is almost three times as big as a usual raptor When Jurassic Park introduced the world to the 6ft velociraptor, disdainful palaeontologists were quick to point out that the dinosaurs were actually about the size of turkeys . Now a giant raptor even bigger than Michael Crichton's imaginings has been discovered in South Korea, and it would have dwarfed both its real and fictional counterparts. With a hip height of ... [Read More]

Apr 26th, 2024 - Massive dinosaur fossil footprints have been found in southern China. They were left behind by a raptor which might be among the largest ever. Raptor is the term commonly given to members of the Dromaeosauridae and Troodontidae groups of bipedal dinosaurs. Analysis of their skulls indicates that these were pack-hunters and the smartest of dinosaurs, rivalling mammals for intelligence. It is believed that dromaeosaurids are the group which ultimately led to modern birds . Palaeontologists in ... [Read More]

Apr 25th, 2024 - The mating strategies of squid are determined by their date of birth, according to a recent study from the University of Tokyo . The research sheds new light on the reproductive tactics of male spear squids. While humans might consider how their birth date influences personality or destiny, for these marine creatures, the timing of birth crucially influences their approach to mating. "Alternative reproductive tactics (ARTs) are discontinuous phenotypes associated with reproduction, observed in ... [Read More]

Apr 25th, 2024 - Paleontologists have discovered giant tortoise fossils in Colombia dating back some 57 million years, the university leading the excavation said, with the findings key to understanding South America's prehistoric eras. The fossils of the extinct reptiles—Puentemys mushaisaensis—were about 1.5 meters (5 feet) long and were found in the mountainous municipality of Socha, in the country's northeast, the University of Rosario said in a statement Wednesday. The discovery is unprecedented ... [Read More]

Apr 25th, 2024 - Sexual dimorphism , which is the observable difference in appearance between male and female members of a species, occurs widely across the animal kingdom, including in humans. An interesting variation of this is sex-limited polymorphism, where one sex exhibits more variation in a certain trait compared to the other.  An international team of scientists has explored this concept by examining the genetic basis for color polymorphism in adult female cuckoos of the genus Cuculus , which are ... [Read More]

Apr 25th, 2024 - The fossil of a huge great white shark relative that lived among the dinosaurs has been discovered in Mexico. The discovery was made in a limestone quarry to the country's northeast by an international team of archeologists and paleontologists. Their find is detailed in a Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences study. The bones of the creature , which lived during the Cretaceous period, were extremely well preserved, making this a rare find. Paleontologists believe the creature ... [Read More]

Apr 25th, 2024 - If a giant prehistoric salmon isn't scary enough for you, how about one with warthog-like tusks? According to a new study, Oncorhynchus rastrosus possessed just such appendages – even though the fish likely fed on tiny plankton. With an estimated length of up to 8.9 ft (2.7 m) and weight of 440 lb (200 kg), O. rastrosus was the largest salmon to ever exist. It lived 11 to 5 million years in the waters of the North American Pacific Northwest and Japan. The species was first described in ... [Read More]

Apr 25th, 2024 - TOPICS: Scientists have constructed a groundbreaking tree of life using 1.8 billion letters of genetic code. A recent study published in the journal Nature by an international team of 279 scientists, including three biologists from the University of Michigan, provides the latest insights into the flowering plant tree of life. Using 1.8 billion letters of genetic code from more than 9,500 species covering almost 8,000 known flowering plant genera (ca. 60%), this achievement sheds new light on ... [Read More]

Apr 25th, 2024 - In a landmark study based on one of the most comprehensive genomic datasets ever assembled, a team led by scientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Vanderbilt University offer a possible answer to one of the oldest questions about evolution: why some species are generalists and others specialists. Under the guidance of UW–Madison professor of genetics Chris Todd Hittinger and Antonis Rokas, a professor of biology at Vanderbilt, researchers mapped the genetic blueprints, ... [Read More]

Apr 24th, 2024 - More Than 80 Feet Long – Newly Discovered Ichthyosaur May Be the Largest Marine Reptile Ever A recently identified ichthyosaur species may be the largest marine reptile ever recorded, suggests a study recently published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE . The research, conducted by Dean R. Lomax and his team from the University of Bristol and the University of Manchester, UK, adds significant insights into the dimensions of prehistoric marine life. Over the past few years, Lomax and his ... [Read More]

Apr 24th, 2024 - Bioluminescence, the remarkable ability of organisms to generate light through chemical reactions, originated in marine invertebrates known as octocorals at least 540 million years ago, according to a new study by researchers at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History .  These findings significantly predate previous records, which dated the earliest emergence of this luminous trait in animals to about 267 million years ago in ostracods, a type of small marine crustacean. ... [Read More]

Apr 24th, 2024 - Species of Micropsalliota (Basidiomycota, Agaricomycetes, Agaricales, Agaricaceae) are mainly distributed in tropical and /or subtropical regions. These fungi are saprophytic in general and can decompose lignin and cellulose, and thus have significant value in ecosystems. Research on the Micropsalliota has a long history of more than one hundred years. However, the molecular phylogenetic study on this genus is very limited and the phylogenetic relationships of species within this genus remain ... [Read More]

Apr 24th, 2024 - A global team of researchers has constructed the most comprehensive and extensive bird family tree to date, detailing the evolutionary connections among 363 bird species over 93 million years. This chart represents 92% of all bird families. The advance was made possible in large part thanks to cutting-edge computational methods developed by engineers at the University of California San Diego , combined with the university's state-of-the-art supercomputing resources at the San Diego ... [Read More]

Apr 24th, 2024 - Salmon are pretty curious creatures now. In the past, they were even funkier. The oldest fossils of Oncorhynchus rastrosus date from around 12 million years ago, along the coast of California. This salmon lived along the Pacific coasts of North America and Japan, reaching sizes of up to 2.4 meters (7 ft 10 in) and weighing 200 kg (440 lb). Previous studies of the fossils showed that the Pacific salmon had strange, tusk-like teeth. Now, a new analysis suggests they were pointed sideways — ... [Read More]

Apr 24th, 2024 - A few dozen sea turtles were released back into the ocean after going through rehabilitation programs over the last few months. The turtles were taken to Jekyll Island in Georgia for the big moment.  Many animals can glow in the dark. Fireflies famously blink on summer evenings. But most animals that light up are found in the depths of the ocean . In a new study, scientists report that deep-sea corals that lived 540 million years ago may have been the first animals to glow, far earlier ... [Read More]