“Smoking Gun” Evidence That Mammals Were Not the First To Be Warm-Blooded
Karoo fossils provide “smoking gun” to when warm-bloodedness evolved in pre-mammalian ancestors. The ability of mammals and birds to generate their own body heat and…
Mammals
Variations in Climate Don’t Drive Evolutionary Change As Much as Previously Thought
Combining climate change records over the last 3.5 million years with fossil evidence of mammals in Africa revealed that times of erratic climate change are…
Mammals With Larger Brains Were More Likely To Survive Late Quaternary Extinction
Mammals with larger brains than similar-sized related species were more likely to have survived extinction during the Late Quaternary (between 115,000 to 500 years ago)…
Brawn Before Brains: Mammals Bulked Up To Survive Post-Dinosaur World
Prehistoric mammals bulked up, rather than develop bigger brains, to boost their survival chances once dinosaurs had become extinct, research suggests. For the first 10…
Hundreds of “Hidden” New Mammal Species Waiting To Be Found
Research suggests where these species may be “hidden.” At least hundreds of so-far unidentified species of mammals are hiding in plain sight around the world,…
New Sabre-Tooth Predator Discovered That Precedes Cats by Millions of Years
Paleontologists describe sabre-toothed mammal new to science, offering view into evolution of meat-eaters. The fossil, housed in The Nat’s paleontology collection, offers a window into…
Balkanatolia: Forgotten Continent Discovered by Team of Paleontologists and Geologists
Balkanatolia: The Forgotten Continent That Sheds Light on the Evolution of Mammals A team of geologists and paleontologists has discovered that, some 50 million years…
Why Lost Birds and Mammals Spell Doom for Some Plants
Animal-dispersed plants’ ability to keep pace with climate change reduced by 60%. In one of the first studies of its kind, researchers have gauged how…
Scientists Puzzled: Tasmanian Devils Have Just Broken the Laws of Scavenging
They are the only known scavengers in the world to have picky diets. If there’s one thing that scavengers do, it’s scavenge: feed on whatever…
Tracing Back Through Time: The Secret Life of Tasmanian Devils Is Hiding in Their Whiskers
I know what you did last summer: chemical clues in the marsupial’s whiskers can reveal what they ate months – and even seasons – ago….
New Insights Into the Timeline of Mammal Evolution With Precisely Dated Evolutionary Trees
A new study, published on December 22, 2021, in the journal Nature, has provided the most detailed timeline of mammal evolution to date. The research…
Peto’s Paradox – Biological Enigma Offers New Insights Into the Mystery of Cancer
The cells in the body can be thought of as tiny archery targets, each vulnerable to the deadly arrow of cancer. The more cells a…
Common Origin: Venoms in Snakes and Salivary Protein in Mammals Evolved From the Same Ancestral Gene
A new study has found that a class of toxins found in snake and mammalian venom evolved from the same ancestral gene. A new study…
Primates vs Cobras: How Our Last Common Ancestor Built Venom Resistance After Long Evolutionary Arms Race
The last common ancestor of chimps, gorillas, and humans developed an increased resistance toward cobra venom, according to University of Queensland-led research. Scientists used animal-free…
The Primitive Streak and Building a Human Body Through Gastrulation
In their publication in Science, Professor Guojun Sheng (Kumamoto University, Japan), Professor Alfonso Martinez Arias (Universidad Pompeu Fabra, Spain) and Professor Ann Sutherland (University of…
Baby Seals Can Change Their Tone of Voice – And May Help Unravel the Mystery of Speech
Hoover the seal was initially kept in a family home and could imitate human speech, barking catch phrases in a gruff accent (“Come over here”)….
Strange Animals That Lived Before the Dinosaurs Reveal the Evolutionary Origin of Tusks
A wide variety of animals have tusks, from elephants and walruses to five-pound, guinea pig-looking critters called hyraxes. But one thing tusked animals have in…
Fossil Dental Exams Reveal How Tusks Evolved – Originated in “Very Weird Animals” Called Dicynodonts
Most people picture an elephant when imagining animals with tusks. But many other animals have tusks including warthogs, hippopotamuses, Arctic-dwelling walruses, and even a five-pound,…
