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Categories: Engineering: Biometric, Paleontology: Early Mammals and Birds

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From 50,000 years to 6,000 years ago, many of the world's largest animals, including such iconic grassland grazers as the woolly mammoth, giant bison, and ancient horses, went extinct. The loss of these grazing species triggered a dramatic increase in fire activity in the world's grasslands, according to a new study.

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Experts have developed a unique method for retrieving high resolution images of fingermarks from curved objects like bullet casings that offers greater detail and accuracy than traditional forensic methods.

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New research shows that humans had a significant role in the extinction of woolly mammoths in Eurasia, occurring thousands of years later than previously thought. An international team of scientists has revealed a 20,000-year pathway to extinction for the woolly mammoth.

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Human-caused bird extinctions are driving losses of functional diversity on islands worldwide, and the gaps they leave behind are not being filled by introduced (alien) species, finds a new study.

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The flying reptiles known as pterosaurs are the closest relatives of dinosaurs and were the first vertebrates to evolve powered flight. However, many details of pterosaur flight anatomy and performance are still unclear. According to a new study pterosaurs evolved a muscular wing-body junction to reduce drag and improve flight performance.

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To counter hacking, researchers have developed a new system based on the concept of 'zero-knowledge proofs', the security of which is based on the physical principle of relativity: information cannot travel faster than the speed of light. Thus, one of the fundamental principles of modern physics allows for secure data transfer.

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New examinations of skeletons and animal embryos have allowed researchers to discover how mammals developed protruding, flexible noses. This study contributes to uncovering the origin of mammals' strong sense of smell and creates the potential for new animal models, like chickens or frogs, that are often used in lab experiments to investigate facial development disorders such as cleft palate.

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Researchers trace the first tusks back to ancient mammal relatives that lived before the dinosaurs and shed light on the evolution of mammalian tusks by first defining what makes a tusk a tusk.

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Researchers report that the way a tissue's cells are arranged can serve as a fingerprint for the tissue's 'phase' -- whether it is more like a solid, liquid, or gas. For example, tumors that are more solid may be relatively stable, whereas more fluid-like growths could be more prone to mutate and metastasize.

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Humans did not cause woolly mammoths to go extinct -- climate change did. For five million years, woolly mammoths roamed the earth until they vanished for good nearly 4,000 years ago -- and scientists have finally proved why. The hairy cousins of today's elephants lived alongside early humans and were a regular staple of their diet -- their skeletons were used to build shelters, harpoons were carved from their giant tusks, artwork featuring them is daubed on cave walls, and 30,000 years ago, the oldest known musical instrument, a flute, was made out of a mammoth bone.

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Researchers found that complex teeth, a hallmark of mammals, also evolved several times in reptiles, prompting the evolutionary success of plant-eating lizards. However, contrary to mammals their tooth evolution was not unidirectional.

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Although there has been evidence of our species living in rainforest regions in Southeast Asia from at least 70,000 years ago, the poor preservation of organic material in these regions limits how much we know about their diet and ecological adaptations to these habitats. An international team of scientists has now applied a new method to investigate the diet of fossil humans: the analysis of stable zinc isotopes from tooth enamel. This method proves particularly helpful to learn whether prehistoric humans and animals were primarily eating meat or plants.

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Uses of facial images and facial recognition technologies -- to unlock a phone or in airport security -- are becoming increasingly common in everyday life. But how do people feel about using such data in healthcare and biomedical research?

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When an asteroid struck 66 million years ago and wiped out dinosaurs not related to birds and three-quarters of life on Earth, early ancestors of primates and marsupials were among the only tree-dwelling (arboreal) mammals that survived, according to a new study.

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Two thirds of all mammals vanished from Africa and the Arabian Peninsula around 30 million years ago, when the climate on Earth changed from swampy to icy. But we are only finding out about this mass extinction now. Researchers examined hundreds of fossils from multiple sites in Africa, built evolutionary trees, and pinpointed each species' first and last known appearances. The climate shift 'was a real reset button.'

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The first 3D reconstructions of extinct Cretaceous birds reveal a reptilian tooth replacement pattern.

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As early as 18,000 years ago, humans in New Guinea may have collected cassowary eggs near maturity and then raised the birds to adulthood, according to an international team of scientists, who used eggshells to determine the developmental stage of the ancient embryos/chicks when the eggs cracked.

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When researchers first started to look at animal bones from Contrebandiers Cave, Morocco, they wanted to learn about the diet and environment of early human ancestors who lived there between 120,000 and 90,000 years ago. But they soon realized that the bones they had found weren't just meal scraps. They'd been shaped into tools, apparently for use in working leather and fur.

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Peacock tails are just one example of how evolution walks a line between favoring traits that make it easier to survive, and traits that make it easier to find a mate. In a new study, scientists have found evidence of this age-old conundrum in the form of a fossil bird from the Early Cretaceous with a pair of elaborate tail feathers longer than its body.

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A novel chip automates the reaction cascades occurring between molecules inside DNA to carry out complex mathematical calculations.