How did humans learn to speak?
Scientists compared parts of the brain that correlate to speech in humans and primates to understand how speech evolved in humans.
Tag: evolution
Fig trees interbreed more at their climate extremes
Scientists tracked how fig trees interbreed and swap DNA across different climatic zones to determine where new species might arise.
Intelligent life might be rare
How hard is it for evolution to produce intelligent life like humans? We don't really know, but some computational modelers tried to answer…
Which came first, the cysteine or the egg?
Scientists used to think cysteine was required to manufacture itself. Turns out, it isn't. In fact, cysteine slows down the manufacture of…
Oxygen, nitrogen, and what happens when biology gets involved
When studying Earth’s past, researchers want to understand how nutrients like nitrogen cycled and the impact biology had on them.…
Can you teach an old gene new tricks?
Evolution explains how living things change over successive generations, giving rise to diversity. Across the evolutionary history of Earth,…
Skulls of dinosaurs give clues about their diets
The term “Darwin’s finches” was first used in 1936 to describe a group of birds from the Galápagos Islands. One of the key…
Dinosaur Brain Anatomy Helps to Clarify Evolutionary History
A paper authored by Mario Bronzanti, Oliver Rauhut, Jonathas Bittencourt, and Max Langer in September of this year traced the evolution of…
Resurrecting Ancient Proteins and Simulating Evolution in the Lab
How does a cell stay alive? How do molecules in a cell “know” how to react with one another? Does this chemistry become more…