Animal Life news stories

‘Molecular clock’ methodology combines evidence on the genetic differences between living species and fossil constraints on the age of their shared ancestors, to establish an evolutionary timescale that sees through gaps in the fossil record.

The planet’s most successful species is also its most socially intelligent and complex. What set us on this course? What jumpstarted mankind’s divergence from primates?

The giant space rock that wiped out the dinosaurs may have set off a chain of cataclysmic volcanic eruptions on land and undersea, claims a new study that is already dividing scientists.

About 65,000 years ago, a large carnivore — perhaps a cave hyena — chomped down on the face of a (likely dead) Neanderthal. Then, that carnivore partially digested two of the hominin’s teeth before regurgitating them.

UK researchers believe they were already in decline before the killer asteroid hit because they had occupied every habitat on Earth.

In a hugely detailed and comprehensive new study, researchers have painted a picture of how around a tenth of Earth’s surface suddenly became covered in roaring fires at a point some 12,800 years ago.

When the world is an ashen wasteland, there’s a good chance naked mole rats will still be around to keep the cockroaches company.

Scientists have found a new dinosaur species in Egypt, a discovery that promises new insights into Late Cretaceous dinosaur evolution in Africa.

What could have caused the chronological patterning of artifacts – human activity and/or past climate change? These questions are the focus of a new study published today.

For the first time, research has uncovered the origins of the earliest domestic turkeys in ancient Mexico.

This is not news to Aboriginal groups, who have reported about Firehawks in oral traditions for millennia.

The Inupiat are an indigenous community from North Slope Alaska, whose lifestyle and culture is dependent on subsistence harvest of marine mammals. The Inupiat have a rich spiritual life that centres around the gift of the whale to the community.

The eggs were found by workers who were excavating the ground for the construction of a school in Jiangxi province.

We know that plants can learn, and make decisions, and we now have a new level of insight into the decision-making process plants go through when put under pressure.