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Stories about: Evolution


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Trials Evolution Has Half a Million Players on Global Leaderboards

Developer RedLynx and publisher Ubisoft have announced that their video game Trials Evolution has managed to get 500,000 players up on its global leaderboards since it was launched on Xbox Live Arcade during the previous week. Tero Virtala, who is the managing director working at RedLynx, stated, “To date, pla...

22 May 2012
05:31 GMT

Autism Possibly Triggered by Evolutionary Adaptation

Yale University investigators have discovered that children suffering from a disorder associated with autism and learning disabilities do not display a certain pattern of gene activity, which affects areas of the brain in charge of handling decision-making and language. What makes this research so interesting is the...

16 May 2012
11:18 GMT

Dogs Break Cross-Species Empathy Barrier

Dogs are among a select few animals that can break the species barrier, and mirror behaviors they see in humans. Sadness or joy are easily transmitted from a person to Fido, and sometimes even vice versa.Yawning is an excellent example of this. Scientists say that this behavior may be a manifestation of empathy, both...

10 May 2012
10:42 GMT

Polar Bears Are 600,000 Years Old

According to a paper published in the April 20 issue of the top journal Science, it would appear that polar bears have been roaming Earth's ices for at least 600,000 years. This estimate pushes back the suspected age considerably. Known as Ursus maritimus, the polar bear was initially thought to have evolved s...

20 April 2012
05:47 GMT

How Omnivore Mammals Evolved

When it comes to the foods they prefer, mammals today fall under three distinct categories – carnivores, herbivores and omnivores. In a new study, experts at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESC) in Durham, North Carolina, shed more light on how the latter evolved. Big cats, including tigers and li...

17 April 2012
03:47 GMT

Evolution of Domesticated Crops Revealed by Ancient Cotton

University of Warwick investigators recently conducted an important investigation into the history of domesticated plants, when they analyzed 1,600-year-old Egyptian cotton samples, harvested from the very banks of the Nile River. Plant domestication has a relatively brief history on our planet, since our ancestors...

3 April 2012
08:46 GMT

Why Humans Walk on Just Two Limbs

A group of experts from the University of Cambridge believes that the earliest humans may have started walking on two feet in order to be able to monopolize resources in their environment. This was achieved by being able to carry a lot more food than other species. Freeing two of the limbs for transporting cargo is...

21 March 2012
09:48 GMT

Human Brain Genetically Linked to the Worm Brain

The origins of the human brain may go way farther back in time than we first believed. According to the conclusions of a new study, the brains of humans and sea-dwelling worms share a genetic link. Needless to say the two species separated from their last common ancestor millions of years ago, but traces that both c...

16 March 2012
07:01 GMT

Horses Were Once the Size of Cats

The horse has a rich evolutionary history, having first appeared about 50 million years ago. Since that time, it underwent a number of significant changes, especially in terms of size. A team of researchers has just published a new investigation that sheds more light on how this happened. When the first horse appear...

24 February 2012
03:10 GMT

Adult Elephants Teach Youngsters How to Raid Farms

Talk about being a bad role model! A study conducted in Kenya recently shows that adult elephants are teaching their kids how to raid poor peasants' farms. At first, researchers thought they were dreaming, but apparently that behavior is real. I don't think I've ever seen a study demonstrating the ex...

23 February 2012
08:52 GMT

History of Earth's Building Blocks May Reveal the Evolution of Life

Michigan State University investigators say that it may be possible to develop an entirely unique perspective on the evolution of life on this planet, if we just analyze the history of its building blocks. Team leader Robert Root-Bernstein, a professor of physiology at MSU, believes that an entirely new field of pal...

20 February 2012
07:21 GMT

Cougar Launches Evolution Tower Case for Gamers

Cougar has added a new product to its collection, a tower case that gamers and overclockers may want to look at before starting on their new system.Colored either “Pure Black” or “Galaxy White”, it has loads of internal and external storage compartments, not to mention good cooling and everyth...

15 February 2012
10:25 GMT

Chimps Can't Get Us Like Dogs Do

As an interesting example of how 11,000 years of cohabitation can trump millions of years of common history, a group of scientists has recently found that chimpanzees are not as good at understanding us, or what we want, as dogs are. The animals were put to an extremely simple test – a human pointed at an obj...

10 February 2012
11:06 GMT

Why Dinosaurs Were So Large

Though not all dinosaurs were behemoths, some grew to be more than 100 feet (30 meters) tall. Experts have always wondered what made the creatures grow so tall, and now they are starting to form a picture of the factors that interacted to make this a reality. Some of the contributing factors may sound weird at firs...

6 February 2012
10:50 GMT

Natural Selection Is Augmented by the “Founder Effect”

A new investigation has revealed an interesting interaction between two evolutionary processes – natural selection and the founder effect. This has never been studied before in nature, but the phenomenon was discovered in a population of lizards living in a tiny island in the Bahamas. The particular islands wh...

3 February 2012
04:50 GMT

Reaching Life's Mass Limit Took 24 Million Generations

Lifeforms need about 24 million generations to develop into something entirely different from what they once were; case in point: the rabbit-to-elephant transition. A new study found that this is the length of time needed to affect such impressive changes in a creature. The same study found that it takes about 100,...

1 February 2012
11:18 GMT

Cougar Evolution BO Case Comes in February, 2012

Compucase decided this was an opportune moment for its latest chassis to be unveiled, even though the actual release isn't going to happen for a few weeks still. That is to say, Compucase has prepared a new chassis that will be marketed under the Cougar brand and features the so-called “Super Midi-Tower&...

24 January 2012
18:41 GMT

The Social and Psychological Benefits of Gossip

Even if gossip is generally frowned upon in society (by the same people who also practice it), it does have a number of benefits. Scientists demonstrate that it plays in important role in maintaining social order, as well as in policing negative behaviors that may otherwise spread. Granted, when done excessively, i...

18 January 2012
04:40 GMT

How Multicellular Organisms Appeared

A collaboration of experts from the University of Minnesota (UMN) says that it was recently able to shed more light on one of the most mysterious and important processes that allowed single-cells organisms to develop into multicellular clusters. This took place more than 500 million years ago, but exactly how the t...

17 January 2012
03:13 GMT

Explaining the Evolution of Facial Features in Primates

Evolutionary “detectives” at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) recently took it upon themselves to identify the reasons why primates exhibit such a wide array of facial features. In order to do that, they analyzed the faces of 129 male primates of different species. The test “part...

12 January 2012
05:38 GMT

The Evolution of Ears Predates the Evolution of Predators

An analysis conducted on the fossilized remains of crickets and katydid that lived 50 million years ago revealed that these creatures evolved ears at a time when there were no predators to use them against. Understandably, ears evolved as a defense mechanism in most species, allowing them to detect a predator while...

4 January 2012
08:26 GMT

Creationists Attack Public School Science, Again

Three newly- proposed bills seek to make the teaching of evolution obsolete in public classrooms. The documents call, in various forms, for the well-established theory to be thought as philosophy, rather than science, or for it to be interpreted as just another theory or idea. The state of New Hampshire is leading t...

3 January 2012
04:27 GMT

Glow-in-the-Dark Bacteria Use Light to Attract Diners

Researchers were recently able to confirm one of the most important presuppositions about why certain species of deep-sea microorganisms glow in the dark. Apparently, the bacteria do so because they can then get a free ride to other parts of the ocean, inside the bellies of fish and other marine creatures. The pro...

28 December 2011
05:04 GMT

New Explanation for How Fish Got Limbs

University of Oregon professor of geological sciences Gregory J. Retallack says that the conclusions of his latest studies on how fish began turning into tetrapods (four-legged animals) indicate a picture different from commonly-accepted theories on how life moved out of the water. The idea that most evolutionary b...

28 December 2011
02:54 GMT

Humans May Have Appeared on Riverbeds

Studies on the origins of Homo sapiens have revealed that our species most likely appeared in tree-dotted savannas, somewhere in central-eastern Africa. But a new proposal says that our ancestors may have evolved on the banks of major rivers as well. The fact that rivers played an important role in human history is...

21 December 2011
07:44 GMT

Lava Tube Microbes Could Live on Mars

During an expedition conducted in the Cascade Mountains, researchers in the United States collected microbe samples from within ice trapped in a lava tube. Further analysis revealed that microbes can thrive in this environment, which is extremely similar to Mars in many respects. The research again confirms that it...

16 December 2011
04:37 GMT

Ants Use Vapor Guns to Kill Targets from Afar

A common species of African ant was recently discovered to prefer fighting long-range, rather than melee. The insects are able to deploy a venomous vapor from their stingers, which is deadly even from a great distance. In a study conducted in Cameroon, investigators witnessed a battle between 15 ants of the Crematog...

15 December 2011
05:38 GMT

Self-Deception Is Key to Love Life

Psychologists from the University of Texas in Austin (UTA) say that individuals looking for mates are experiencing a type of self-deception that may, oddly enough, increase their chances at playing the mating game successfully. For starters, women have been proven to constantly underestimate the amount of interest ...

15 December 2011
04:21 GMT

Size of Crib Enclosed in Some Frogs' Calls

Investigators have determined in a new study that certain types of frogs are able to encode information about how large their burrows are into the calls they send out to prospective mates. Their real estate thus becomes an extra reason for females to select them over their rivals. This behavior is especially obviou...

7 December 2011
09:20 GMT

Species Will Have to Move Fast to Adapt to Climate Change

Researchers established that animal and plant populations in areas of the world most likely to be affected by climate change in the very near future will have to adapt to their new environment at the same speed. If this is not an option, then they will have to abandon their territories just as fast. This holds true...

4 November 2011
05:43 GMT

Heart of the Swarm Will Have 20 Mission Campaign, New Units and Maps

Video game developer Blizzard has announced some new information about the Heart of the Swarm expansion for its real time strategy game Starcraft II, confirming that it will have a single player campaign which includes 20 missions and talking about some new units and maps.The new campaign will be focused on Sarah Ker...

24 October 2011
16:31 GMT

Cycads Are Not Living Fossils, New Study Shows

The international scientific community knows a group of plants known as cycads for having lived at the same time the dinosaurs did, more than 65 million years ago. However, a new study shows that these plants are not living fossils, since they only developed a few million years ago.Until now, researchers were convinc...

22 October 2011
06:54 GMT

Robotic Insects Reveal Flight Evolution History

Learning more about how each species or group of species evolved over time is a daunting task, especially considering that the fossil record is incomplete. But some time robots can shed light on history, as was recently the case with a robotic bug that got a set of wings. As soon as experts outfitted the tiny bug wit...

18 October 2011
14:01 GMT

Corals Are Perfectly Adapted to Particular Depths

Scientists have determined in a new study that coral reefs of the same species display particular genetic and morphologic characteristics, which appear to be particular to their standard locations. In other words, same-species corals living at different depths are very different from each other as a result. The inves...

17 October 2011
16:01 GMT

Women's Voices Not Clear Indicators of Fertility

The results of a new investigation indicate that women's voices are not clear indicators of fertility. According to previous theories, females have higher-pitched voices during the times of a month when they are most fertile. However, the study learned that this is not necessarily the case. Investigators unco...

3 October 2011
03:00 GMT

Largest Model of Universal Evolution Created

Using the amazing capabilities of the NASA Pleiades supercomputer, a team of American experts was recently able to develop the most comprehensive, complex and encompassing simulation of how the Universe evolved since the Big Bang. Based on the Bolshoi simulation code, the new model was capable of producing a viab...

30 September 2011
16:01 GMT

Aging May Be an Evolutionary Adaptation

Investigators at the University of Sao Paolo, in Brazil, led by expert André Martins, say that a new computer simulation they conducted on the process of human aging revealed that the phenomenon has striking resemblances to an evolutionary adaptation. The reason behind this is very simple, even though a lit...

27 September 2011
03:07 GMT

Brains Became Capable of Invention 75,000 Years Ago

New evidence appears to support theories suggesting that the human brain – with is ability to create new things, invent and reinvent itself – appeared no later than 75,000 years ago, in a sudden event. A new study is bound to reignite the scientific debate already raging on on this issue. At first, th...

26 September 2011
05:06 GMT

Human Brain Develops Even After Age 20

Though past studies seemed to suggest otherwise, a collaboration of investigators determined in a recent research that the human brain indeed continues to develop well into a person's 20s. Until now, scientists widely believed that significant development stopped in adolescence. This groundbreaking study &nda...

23 September 2011
19:01 GMT

Bacteria Observed While Developing Drug Resistance

Over the past few years, a large number of factors have led to a steady rise in the number of bacteria species that are resistant to antibiotics. The microorganisms can learn to render the chemicals useless, and now experts finally managed to watch this process as it happened. Investigators at the Princeton Univer...

23 September 2011
18:11 GMT

Men Are Naturally Prone to Childcare as Well

The results of a new scientific study appear to indicate that men and women share an equal natural inclination towards rearing and taking care of their children. These conclusions go against decades of established data saying that only women evolved to display this type of behavior. Details of the investigation w...

13 September 2011
10:05 GMT

Human Bodies Adapt to Radiation Exposure

In a study conducted on doctors who are constantly exposed to radiations, scientists have determined that the human body has the ability to develop defenses that counteract the negative effects of radiations on healthy cells.This ability takes a lot of time to enter effect, and only applies to people who are exposed ...

24 August 2011
10:48 GMT

Fossil Sheds Light on the Evolution of Vertebrates

In a paper entitled “Fossil jawless fish from China foreshadows early jawed vertebrate anatomy,” which is published in the latest issue of the top scientific journal Nature, experts say that the key to the evolutionary success of vertebrates was the complex reorganization of their brains and sense organs....

18 August 2011
10:53 GMT

Alien Life May Be Based on Different Amino-Acids

Ever since the first lifeforms developed on our planet, their basic components were founded on a specific group of 20 molecules in a group called amino-acids. A particular set of combinations made life possible here, but it could be that different amino-acids did the same on other worlds, experts say.The reason why t...

18 August 2011
09:14 GMT

How the Blue Whale's Maw Evolved

During a recent scientific investigation, researchers were able to identify a special fossil, which apparently belonged to what is now known to be the oldest baleen whale ever discovered. The study covered a gap in the data we had on the evolution of the gaping maw modern blue whales display. The blue whale is the la...

17 August 2011
10:06 GMT

Earth Generates 50-Light-Years-Long Electronic Trail

Seth Shostak, the chief astronomer at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute, says that our planet is leaving behind a massive trail of electronic signals that alien civilizations could detect even if we want them to or not. The trail is produced by all our electromagnetic communications, such ...

4 August 2011
08:11 GMT

Evolution Turned Mosasaurs into an Awesome Predator

While land-based dinosaurs were competing for dominance on the surface of the Earth, an equally-powerful war was being fought in the planet's oceans, where numerous voracious species lived. In time, the mosasaurs became the ultimate predators, and scientists now analyze their rise in careful detail.According to ...

1 August 2011
08:50 GMT

Common Ancestor Had Advanced Brain 600 Million Years Ago

In a recent study conducted on small RNA molecules called microRNA, experts in Heidelberg, Germany, determined that the last common ancestor humans and worms shared have a sophisticated brain. The animal roamed the world's seas more than 600 million years ago.Experts at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory ...

1 August 2011
04:44 GMT

Body Language Evolved as a Type of Social 'Glue'

University of California in San Diego (UCSD) investigators determined that the evolutionary explanation for the development of body language is rather simple – this set of behaviors acts like a “social glue” of sorts. What this does is it enables humans to bond and trust each other without having...

30 July 2011
06:57 GMT

Guiana Dolphins Can Sense Electrical Fields

Experts have just discovered the first placental mammal capable of detecting electrical fields, the common Guiana dolphin. Instances of electrical field detection abilities are well documented in lesser species, but this is the first time such a sixth sense was discovered in a mammal as advanced as this.According to ...

27 July 2011
11:00 GMT


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