Looking to Saliva to Gain Insight on Evolution
There’s no need to reinvent the genetic wheel. That’s one lesson of a new study that looks to the saliva of humans, gorillas, orangutans, macaques and African green monkeys for…
Evolutionary Biology
Where There's Smoke And A Mutation There May Be An Evolutionary Edge For Humans
A genetic mutation may have helped modern humans adapt to smoke exposure from fires and perhaps sparked an evolutionary advantage over their archaic competitors, including Neandertals, according to a team…
Orangutan Gives Clues To The Origins Of Human Speech
An orangutan called Rocky could provide the key to understanding how speech in humans evolved from the time of the ancestral great apes, according to a study led by Dr…
This Species Of Brazilian Monkey Has Been Using Stones As Tools For 700 Years
Breaking into a cashew nut can be difficult; but not if you’re a monkey. Primates in Brazil are well honed in using stones to break into the nuts and new…
Robot Helps Study How First Land Animals Moved 360 Million Years Ago
When early terrestrial animals began moving about on mud and sand 360 million years ago, the powerful tails they used as fish may have been more important than scientists previously…
How Did Birds Get Their Wings? Bacteria May Provide a Clue, Say Scientists
New research from an international team of evolutionary biologists, led by the University of Oxford, has used bacteria to show that acquiring duplicate copies of genes can provide a ‘template’…