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Category: Evolution

Archaic humans might actually be the same species as modern humans, study suggests

Archaic humans might actually be the same species as modern humans, study suggests

Science Alert reports: Our species is defined by a long list of cultural and genetic traits that set us apart from our ancient counterparts. New research suggests at least some key distinctions date back earlier than previously estimated, hinting that modern and archaic humans – including our close, extinct relatives – have more in common than we ever thought. “Our results point to a scenario where Modern and Archaic should be regarded as populations of an otherwise common human species,…

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Scientists re-create the microbial dance that sparked complex life

Scientists re-create the microbial dance that sparked complex life

Molly Herring writes: Far from being solo operators, most single-celled microbes are in complex relationships. In the ocean, the soil and your gut, they might battle and eat each other, exchange DNA, compete for nutrients, or feed on one another’s by-products. Sometimes they get even more intimate: One cell might slip inside another and make itself comfortable. If the conditions are just right, it might stay and be welcomed, sparking a relationship that could last for generations — or billions…

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How primate eye tracking reveals new insights into the evolution of language

How primate eye tracking reveals new insights into the evolution of language

Mariya Surmacheva/Shutterstock By Vanessa Wilson, University of Hull The human environment is a very social one. Family, friends, colleagues, strangers – they all provide a continuous stream of information that we need to track and make sense of. Who is dating whom? Who is in a fight with whom? While our capacity for dealing with such a large social network is impressive, it’s not something especially unique to humans. Other primates do it too. We – humans and other primates…

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Hiker discovers first trace of entire prehistoric ecosystem in Italian Alps

Hiker discovers first trace of entire prehistoric ecosystem in Italian Alps

The Guardian reports: A hiker in the northern Italian Alps has stumbled across the first trace of what scientists believe to be an entire prehistoric ecosystem, including the well-preserved footprints of reptiles and amphibians, brought to light by the melting of snow and ice induced by the climate crisis. The discovery in the Valtellina Orobie mountain range in Lombardy dates back 280 million years to the Permian period, the age immediately prior to dinosaurs, scientists say. Claudia Steffensen, from Lovero,…

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What makes human culture unique?

What makes human culture unique?

Arizona State University News: Why is human culture — the shared body of knowledge passed down across generations — so much more powerful than animal cultures? “What’s special about our species?” is a question scientists have wrestled with for centuries, and now a scientist at Arizona State University has a new hypothesis that could change the way we perceive ourselves and the world around us. “Ten years ago, it was basically accepted that it was the ability of human culture…

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Rain may have helped form the first cells, kick-starting life as we know it

Rain may have helped form the first cells, kick-starting life as we know it

How did early cells keep themselves distinct while allowing for some amount of exchange? UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering/Peter Allen, Second Bay Studios, CC BY-ND By Aman Agrawal, University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering Billions of years of evolution have made modern cells incredibly complex. Inside cells are small compartments called organelles that perform specific functions essential for the cell’s survival and operation. For instance, the nucleus stores genetic material, and mitochondria produce energy. Another essential part…

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Humanity’s newest brain gains are most at risk from ageing

Humanity’s newest brain gains are most at risk from ageing

Nature reports:In the more than six million years since people and chimpanzees split from their common ancestor, human brains have rapidly amassed tissue that helps decision-making and self-control. But the same regions are also the most at risk of deterioration during ageing, finds a study that compared images of chimp brains with scans of human brains. Previous studies have shown that regions of the human brain that are the last to mature, such as parts of the frontal lobe, are…

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Quadrillions of ants have created a strange and turbulent global society that shadows our own

Quadrillions of ants have created a strange and turbulent global society that shadows our own

John Whitfield writes: It is a familiar story: a small group of animals living in a wooded grassland begin, against all odds, to populate Earth. At first, they occupy a specific ecological place in the landscape, kept in check by other species. Then something changes. The animals find a way to travel to new places. They learn to cope with unpredictability. They adapt to new kinds of food and shelter. They are clever. And they are aggressive. In the new…

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Why intelligence exists only in the eye of the beholder

Why intelligence exists only in the eye of the beholder

Abigail Desmond and Michael Haslam write: What has intelligence? Slime moulds, ants, fifth-graders, shrimp, neurons, ChatGPT, fish shoals, border collies, crowds, birds, you and me? All of the above? Some? Or, at the risk of sounding transgressive: maybe none? The question is a perennial one, often dusted off in the face of a previously unknown animal behaviour, or new computing devices that are trained to do human things and then do those things well. We might intuitively feel our way…

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Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an ‘emergency brake’

Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an ‘emergency brake’

Dan Samorodnitsky writes: Researchers recently reported the discovery of a natural protein, named Balon, that can bring a cell’s production of new proteins to a screeching halt. Balon was found in bacteria that hibernate in Arctic permafrost, but it also seems to be made by many other organisms and may be an overlooked mechanism for dormancy throughout the tree of life. For most life forms, the ability to shut oneself off is a vital part of staying alive. Harsh conditions…

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Human culture is changing too fast for evolution to catch up – here’s how it may affect you

Human culture is changing too fast for evolution to catch up – here’s how it may affect you

frank60/Shutterstock By Jose Yong, Northumbria University, Newcastle Research is showing that many of our contemporary problems, such as the rising prevalence of mental health issues, are emerging from rapid technological advancement and modernisation. A theory that can help explain why we respond poorly to modern conditions, despite the choices, safety and other benefits they bring, is evolutionary mismatch. Mismatch happens when an evolved adaptation, either physical or psychological, becomes misaligned with the environment. Take moths and some species of nocturnal…

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How the story of human evolution continues to branch out

How the story of human evolution continues to branch out

Razib Khan writes: Over the last 20 years, genomics, ancient DNA, and paleoanthropology have joined forces to completely overhaul our understanding of the origin of our species. The true diversity and complexity of human evolution over the last few hundred millennia surpasses even the most unhinged imaginings we might have hazarded just a short generation ago. But greater clarity has left us with a messier and less elegant narrative. Our species’ status, it turns out, is “complicated.” In the year…

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Viruses finally reveal their complex social life

Viruses finally reveal their complex social life

Carl Zimmer writes: Ever since viruses came to light in the late 1800s, scientists have set them apart from the rest of life. Viruses were far smaller than cells, and inside their protein shells they carried little more than genes. They could not grow, copy their own genes or do much of anything. Researchers assumed that each virus was a solitary particle drifting alone through the world, able to replicate only if it happened to bump into the right cell…

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The French aristocrat who understood evolution 100 years before Darwin – and even worried about climate change

The French aristocrat who understood evolution 100 years before Darwin – and even worried about climate change

Donna Ferguson writes: Shortly after Charles Darwin published his magnum opus, The Origin of Species, in 1859 he started reading a little-known 100-year-old work by a wealthy French aristocrat. Its contents were quite a surprise. “Whole pages [of his book] are laughably like mine,” Darwin wrote to a friend. “It is surprising how candid it makes one to see one’s view in another man’s words.” In later editions of The Origin of Species, Darwin acknowledged Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon,…

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Ancient viruses helped speedy nerves evolve

Ancient viruses helped speedy nerves evolve

Science News reports: Ancient viruses have really gotten on our nerves, but in the best of ways. One particular retrovirus — embedded in the DNA of jawed vertebrates — helps turn on production of a protein needed to insulate nerve fibers, researchers report February 15 in Cell. Such insulation, called myelin, may have helped make speedy thoughts and complex brains possible. The retrovirus trick was so handy, in fact, that it showed up many times in the evolution of vertebrates…

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‘Monumental’ experiment suggests how life on Earth may have started

‘Monumental’ experiment suggests how life on Earth may have started

The Washington Post reports: A much-debated theory holds that 4 billion years ago, give or take, long before the appearance of dinosaurs or even bacteria, the primordial soup contained only the possibility of life. Then a molecule called RNA took a dramatic step into the future: It made a copy of itself. Then the copy made a copy, and over the course of many millions of years, RNA begot DNA and proteins, all of which came together to form a…

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