Animal Life news stories

‘Jurassic Pompeii’ yields thousands of ‘squiggly wiggly’ fossils
21st July 2021 | bbc.co.uk | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth

Palaeontologist Tim Ewin is standing in a quarry, recalling the calamity that’s written in the rocks under his mud-caked boots.

Dogs Innately Understand Humans in Ways That Wolves Can’t, Experiment Shows
16th July 2021 | sciencealert.com | Animal Life, Humans

Dogs are born with an innate ability to read human gestures that is not apparent in their closest relative, wolves.

Why local legends about birds matter
15th July 2021 | bbc.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Humans

The stories of enigmatic birds told in indigenous folklore aren’t just fascinating tales, they may be a way to preserve languages and cultures at risk of extinction.

Sharing the menu: sharks take shifts
13th July 2021 cosmosmagazine.com | Animal Life

Large coastal sharks engage in ‘shift work’ to share their resources, according to a new study from Murdoch University’s Harry Butler Institute.

Technology boosts efforts to curb tree loss in Amazon
13th July 2021 | bbc.co.uk | Animal Life, Earth, Tech

Technology can help indigenous communities to significantly curb deforestation, according to a new study. Indigenous people living in the Peruvian Amazon were equipped by conservation groups with satellite data and smartphones.

DNA from dirt can offer new view of ancient life
13th July 2021 | sciencemag.org | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth, Humans

For almost 2 decades, genomes isolated from fossils have galvanized the study of human evolution. Yet despite vast improvements in retrieving and analyzing that DNA, researchers have deciphered whole genomes from just 23 archaic humans, 18 of them Neanderthals. This week, however…

Changes in Earth’s orbit enabled the emergence of complex life
12th July 2021 | eurekalert.org | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth

Scientists at the University of Southampton have discovered that changes in Earth’s orbit may have allowed complex life to emerge and thrive during the most hostile climate episode the planet has ever experienced.

Study challenges claim early human hunters killed off prehistoric elephants
3rd July 2021 | ctvnews.ca | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth, Humans

A new study suggests that prehistoric elephants like the mastodon and woolly mammoth were wiped out by waves of extreme global environmental change, rather than being hunted to extinction by early humans.

The dinosaurs were likely doomed before the asteroid struck
3rd July 2021 | livescience.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth

Dinosaurs were facing a crisis even before the asteroid hit, with extinctions outpacing the emergence of new species — a situation that made them “particularly prone to extinction,” a new study suggests.

Giant rhino fossils in China show new species was ‘taller than giraffe’
22nd June 2021 | bbc.co.uk | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth

A new species of the ancient giant rhino – among the largest mammals to walk on land – has been discovered in north-western China, researchers say.

Will humans ever learn to speak whale?
14th June 2021 | livescience.com | Animal Life, Humans

Sperm whales are among the loudest living animals on the planet, producing creaking, knocking and staccato clicking sounds to communicate with other whales that are a few feet to even a few hundred miles away.

How El Niño climate phenomena helped create humanity
3rd June 2021 | independent.co.uk | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth, Humans

Scientists are proposing a new theory of human evolution. A groundbreaking new analysis of data suggests that key evolutionary changes in prehistory were driven by cyclical changes in tropical climate.

Ancient dog breed DNA helps unravel clues about evolution of man’s best friend
3rd June 2021 phys.org | Ancient, Animal Life, Humans

An international study led by UNSW researchers has mapped one of the most intact and complete dog genomes ever generated.

Prehistoric carvings of red deer found in Scottish neolithic tomb
3rd June 2021 | theguardian.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Humans

Delicate prehistoric carvings of adult red deer, thought to be the oldest of their type in the UK, have been found in a tomb in one of Scotland’s most famous neolithic sites.

Scientists discover a new feature that distinguishes modern humans from Neanderthals
25th May 2021 phys.org | Ancient, Animal Life, Humans

Skoltech scientists and their colleagues from Germany and the United States have analyzed the metabolomes of humans, chimpanzees, and macaques in muscle, kidney, and three different brain regions.

Giant, Now Sunken Islands Could Explain Ancient Migration in The Americas
24th May 2021 | sciencealert.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth

Here’s a mystery: Ancient fossils show animals originating from South America in the Antilles islands off Central America, but how did they get over the sea? The answer is via land masses that have long since sunk from view under the ocean, according to a new study.

News stories covering Animal Science, bacterial life, DNA.