How Birds Got Their Beaks
When birds got their wings, they lost the clawed fingers wielded by their dinosaur relatives. But they evolved a new “finger”—in their face. And what a boon that has been….
biology
Scientists Identify Tissue-Degrading Enzyme in Bat-Killing Fungus
Scientists at UC San Francisco and Brown University have figured out the likely way that white-nose syndrome breaks down tissue in bats, opening the door to potential treatments for a…
Resistance to Antibiotics Found in Isolated Amazonian Tribe
When scientists first made contact with an isolated village of Yanomami hunter-gatherers in the remote mountains of the Amazon jungle of Venezuela in 2009, they marveled at the chance to…
How The Wolf Became The Dog
Scientists who study canine origins seem to fight about everything: where dogs arose, when this happened, and even the best way to find these answers. But there’s one thing most…
Chimps That Hunt Offer a New View on Evolution
Studies of hunters and gatherers — and of chimpanzees, which are often used as stand-ins for human ancestors — have cast bigger, faster and more powerful males in the hunter…
Why Iceland Is the World’s Greatest Genetic Laboratory
Today, the journal Nature Genetics released a set of four papers based entirely on the genetic sequences of Icelanders. Their results, which range from the identification of a new Alzheimer’s-associated…