How to Find Large Animals by Tracking Dung Beetles
Big animals make lots of dung. And where there’s dung, there’s dung beetles. Researchers counted fossilized dung beetles to figure out…
Category: Earth Systems
These articles summarize studies that are all about how the planet Earth works!
Who’s the Living Fossil? The genus Crocodylus is Younger Than We Think!
What comes to mind when you think of crocodiles? You might think of ancient reptiles, or “living fossils,” that have been…
Hitting the jackpot — a new vertebrate family endemic to West Africa
Biological classification arranges taxa according to their degree of relationship; several species may be grouped in a genus, several…
Environment-related morphological changes can confuse scientists
For many years, morphology-based classification has served us so well, and still forms a basis of what we are viewing the biological world…
The never before revealed history of the Mediterranean pipefish Syngnathus abaster: secrets found in its maternal inherited DNA.
Mitochondrial DNA studies shows the occurrence of three well-defined groups of pipefish populations – which independently evolved in a…
Tropics are main source of global mammal diversity
Ever since the nineteenth century scientists have recognised that some regions contain more species than others, and that the tropics are…
DNA Barcoding unveils a “ray of sunshine” in products sold to consumers
“Ray” or “Skate” is the common name under which a number of different species of rays (cousins to sharks) fished from the Northeast…
Lost world discovered in Australia
A James Cook University-National Geographic expedition to Cape Melville in north-east Australia has found three vertebrate species new to…
Reptiles give birth, then lay eggs, then give birth again
The ancestor of snakes and lizards likely gave birth to live young, rather than laid eggs, and over time species have switched back and…
Tropical pipefish dresses up like it’s southern seadragon relatives
Seadragons are known for their elaborate appendages that help them blend in with their kelp and algae habitats. But an evolutionary tree…