Charles Darwin News

July 14, 2024

Top Headlines

Insight Into One of Life's Earliest Ancestors Revealed in New Study

July 12, 2024 — Researchers have shed light on Earth's earliest ecosystem, showing that within a few hundred million years of planetary formation, life on Earth was already ...

AI-Powered Study Explores Under-Studied Female Evolution

July 1, 2024 — Pioneering AI-powered research on butterflies has probed the under-studied evolution of females and adds to a debate between Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel ...

Researchers Find Genetic Stability in a Long-Term Panamanian Hybrid Zone of Manakin Birds

June 26, 2024 — We often think of species as separate and distinct, but sometimes they can interbreed and create hybrids. When this happens consistently in a specific area, it forms what's known as a hybrid zone. ...

Last Surviving Woolly Mammoths Were Inbred but Not Doomed to Extinction

June 27, 2024 — The last population of woolly mammoths was isolated on Wrangel Island off the coast of Siberia 10,000 years ago, when sea levels rose and cut the mountainous island off from the mainland. A new genomic analysis reveals that the isolated mammoths, ...

Latest Headlines

updated 11:13pm EDT

Newly Discovered Dinosaur Boasts Big, Blade-Like Horns

June 20, 2024 — A new dinosaur has been identified and named. The dinosaur's name, Lokiceratops rangiformis, translates roughly to 'Loki's horned face that looks like a ...

Interaction With Insects Accelerates Plant Evolution

June 19, 2024 — Researchers have discovered that plants benefit from a greater variety of interactions with pollinators and herbivores. Plants that are pollinated by insects and have to defend themselves against ...

Origins of Cumulative Culture in Human Evolution

June 17, 2024 — Cumulative culture -- the accumulation of technological modifications and improvements over generations -- allowed humans to adapt to a diversity of environments and challenges. But, it is unclear ...

Tiny New Zealand Bird Delivers a Lesson in Birdsong Evolution

June 14, 2024 — Scientists are rethinking the evolution of vocal learning in birds. New Zealand's smallest bird, the rifleman or titipounamu, may have a rudimentary version of the talent possessed by parrots, ...

Paleontology: New Fossil Fish Genus Discovered

June 13, 2024 — Paleontologists have identified a new genus of fossil goby, revealing evolutionary secrets of a lineage that stretches back millions of ...

What the Geologic Record Reveals About How Oceans Were Oxygenated 2.3 Billion Years Ago

June 12, 2024 — Geochemists used thallium isotopes to track the rise and fall of free oxygen on Earth between 2.5 and 2.2 billion years ago, the process that enabled ...

Novel Genetic Clock Discovers Oldest Known Marine Plant

June 10, 2024 — An international research team has discovered the oldest known marine plant using a novel genetic clock. This 1400-year-old seagrass clone from the Baltic Sea dates back to the Migration Period. The ...

'Missing' Early Sea Sponges Discovered

June 5, 2024 — Geobiologists reported a 550 million-year-old sea sponge that had been missing from the fossil record. The discovery sheds new light on a conundrum that has stumped zoologists and paleontologists for ...

Bringing Back an Ancient Bird

May 28, 2024 — Using ancient DNA extracted from the toe bone of a museum specimen, biologists have sequenced the genome of an extinct, flightless bird called the little bush moa, shedding light into an unknown ...

Food Drove the Evolution of Giraffes' Long Neck

June 3, 2024 — A study explores body proportions of Masai giraffes, lending insight into why giraffes have such long necks and how this trait might have ...

Earlier Headlines

How Sharks Survived a Major Spike in Earth's Temperature

June 3, 2024 — The sharks we know today as the open ocean's top predators evolved from stubby bottom dwellers during a dramatic episode of global warming millions of years ...

Tracing the Evolution of Ferns' Surprisingly Sweet Defense Strategy

May 30, 2024 — Plants and the animals that eat them have evolved together in fascinating ways, creating a dynamic interplay of survival strategies. Many plants have developed physical and chemical defenses to fend ...

A Unified Account of Darwinism's Varieties

May 28, 2024 — A new article examines the question of what Darwinism is and how its nonscientific uses relate to the scientific theory of evolution. The authors observe that while some people claim Darwinism's ...

Scientists Uncover a Multibillion-Year Epic Written Into the Chemistry of Life

May 28, 2024 — Life evolved from simple geochemical processes present on the early Earth. However, the details of this transformation remain a mystery. In this study, researchers modeled the emergence of metabolic ...

How Killifish Embryos Use Suspended Animation to Survive Over 8 Months of Drought

May 28, 2024 — The African turquoise killifish lives in ephemeral ponds in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. To survive the annual dry season, the fish's embryos enter a state of extreme suspended animation or ...

On Repeat: Biologists Observe Recurring Evolutionary Changes, Over Time, in Stick Insects

May 24, 2024 — An evolutionary biologist reports evidence of repeatable evolution in populations of stick ...

Entomologist Sheds Light on 250-Year-Old Mystery of the German Cockroach

May 24, 2024 — Entomologists have solved the 250-year-old origin puzzle of the most prevalent indoor urban pest insect on the planet: the German cockroach. The team's research findings, representing the ...

Exploring Diversity in Cell Division

May 22, 2024 — Animals and fungi predominantly use two different modes of cell division -- called open and closed mitosis, respectively. A new study has shown that different species of Ichthyosporea -- marine ...

Researchers Discover Hidden Step in Dinosaur Feather Evolution

May 21, 2024 — Scientists discover 'zoned development' in dinosaur skin, with zones of reptile-style scales and zones of bird-like skin with feathers. A new dinosaur skin fossil has been found to be ...

Diverse Headgear in Hoofed Mammals Evolved from Common Ancestor

May 20, 2024 — From the small ossicones on a giraffe to the gigantic antlers of a male moose -- which can grow as wide as a car -- the headgear of ruminant hooved mammals is extremely diverse, and new research ...

How Did Sabre-Toothed Tigers Acquire Their Long Upper Canine Teeth?

May 16, 2024 — In a groundbreaking study an international team of scientists has investigated the evolutionary patterns behind the development of sabre teeth, with some unexpected results along the ...

Revised Dating of the Liujiang Skeleton Renews Understanding of Human Occupation of China

May 1, 2024 — Researchers have provided new age estimates and revised provenance information for the Liujiang human fossils, shedding light on the presence of Homo sapiens in the region. Using advanced dating ...

How Evolving Landscapes Impacted First Peoples' Early Migration Patterns Into Australia

Apr. 30, 2024 — Scientists have applied a dynamic model of the landscape to patterns of human migration into Sahul, the combined continent of Australia, Tasmania and New ...

More Plants on the Menu of Ancient Hunter-Gatherers

Apr. 29, 2024 — It has long been thought that meat played an important role in the diet of hunter-gatherers before the Neolithic transition. However, due to the scarcity of well-preserved human remains from ...

Scientists Unveil Genetics Behind Development of Gliding

Apr. 24, 2024 — Researchers explain the genomic and developmental basis of the patagium, the thin skin membrane that allows some mammalian species to soar through the ...

Bioluminescence First Evolved in Animals at Least 540 Million Years Ago

Apr. 23, 2024 — Bioluminescence first evolved in animals at least 540 million years ago in a group of marine invertebrates called octocorals, according to the results of a new study. The study focuses on an ancient ...

RNA's Hidden Potential: New Study Unveils Its Role in Early Life and Future Bioengineering

Apr. 18, 2024 — The origin of life continues to remain a matter of debate. The ribonucleic acid (RNA) world hypothesis proposes that 'ribozymes' which store genetic information and possess catalytic ...

Genetic Variant Identified That Shaped the Human Skull Base

Apr. 17, 2024 — Researchers have identified a variant in the gene TBX1 as key in the development of the unique morphology at the base of the skull. TBX1 is present at higher levels in humans than in closely related ...

Interspecies Competition Led to Even More Forms of Ancient Human -- Defying Evolutionary Trends in Vertebrates

Apr. 17, 2024 — Competition between species played a major role in the rise and fall of hominins -- and produced a 'bizarre' evolutionary pattern for the Homo lineage -- according to a new study that ...

Seed Ferns: Plants Experimented With Complex Leaf Vein Networks 201 Million Years Ago

Apr. 16, 2024 — According to a research team led by palaeontologists, the net-like leaf veining typical for today's flowering plants developed much earlier than previously thought, but died out again several ...