Showing 20 articles starting at article 161

< Previous 20 articles        Next 20 articles >

Categories: Mathematics: Statistics, Paleontology: Early Mammals and Birds

Return to the site home page

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

To investigate whether paleoclimatic temperature shifts are correlated with body size changes, biologists decided to test this hypothesis using tetraodontiform fishes as a model group.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

A new study shows that 87 genes have been affected by deletions or short insertions during the course of the mammoth's evolution. The researchers note that their findings have implications for international efforts to resurrect extinct species, including the woolly mammoth.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Researchers successfully captured CT images of an entire woolly mammoth tusk. Researchers were able to do a full scan of the tusk in its entirety -- or in toto -- using a newer clinical CT scanner. The new technology allows for large-scale imaging without having to do multiple partial scans.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Whether by the spear or the plow, humans have been homogenizing the mammal communities of North America for 10,000-plus years, says a new analysis of 8,831 fossils representing 365 species.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Which group of mammals has the more 'primitive' reproductive strategy -- marsupials, with their short gestation periods, or humans and other placental mammals, which have long gestation periods? For decades, biologists viewed marsupial reproduction as 'more primitive.' But scientists have discovered that a third group of mammals, the long-extinct multituberculates, had a long gestation period like placental mammals. Since multituberculates split off from the rest of the mammalian lineage before placentals and marsupials had even evolved, these findings question the view that marsupials were 'less advanced' than their placental cousins.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

A groundbreaking Bayesian method and new statistical analyses of genomic data from geckos in the Philippines shows that during the ice ages, the timing of gecko diversification gives strong statistical support for the first time to the Pleistocene aggregate island complex (PAIC) model of diversification, or 'species pump.'

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Warm-bloodedness is a key mammal trait, but it's been a mystery when our ancestors evolved it. A new study points to an unlikely source for telling a fossil animal's body temperature: the size of tiny structures in their inner ears. The fluid in our ears becomes runnier at higher temperatures, so animals with warm bodies don't need as big of canals for it to flow through. Turns out, mammal ancestors became warm-blooded nearly 20 million years later than previously thought.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Australia's first fossil vulture has been confirmed more than 100 years after it was first described as an eagle. The discovery highlights the diversity of Australian megafauna and other animals many thousands of years ago in the Pleistocene period.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

According to a new study, the first louse to take up residence on a mammalian host likely started out as a parasite of birds. That host-jumping event tens of millions of years ago began the long association between mammals and lice, setting the stage for their coevolution and offering more opportunities for the lice to spread to other mammals.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

The fossil record tells us about ancient life through the preserved remains of body parts like bones, teeth and turtle shells. But how to study the history of soft tissues and organs, which can decay quickly, leaving little evidence behind? In a new study, scientists use gene expression patterns, called transcriptomics, to investigate the ancient origins of one organ: the placenta, which is vital to pregnancy.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Australian palaeontologists have described a new genus of giant fossil kangaroo from the mountains of central Papua New Guinea. The new description of the fossil kangaroo has found that, rather than being closely related to Australian kangaroos, it most likely belongs to a unique genus of more primitive kangaroo found only in PNG.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Fine-tuning the thermal conductivity of amorphous silicon used in technologies such as solar cells and image sensors should become much easier thanks to the computational topology and machine-learning-assisted discovery of the relationship between nano-scale structures and physical properties.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Using radio transmitters, scientists have gained new insights into the behavior of medium ground finches in the Galapagos Islands. A study reveals daily movement patterns covering an area equivalent to the size of 30 soccer fields.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

New research suggests that determining evolutionary trees of organisms by comparing anatomy rather than gene sequences is misleading. The study shows that we often need to overturn centuries of scholarly work that classified living things according to how they look.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Paleontologists have debated whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded, like modern mammals and birds, or cold-blooded, like modern reptiles. In a new paper, scientists are unveiling a new method for studying dinosaurs' metabolic rates, using clues in their bones.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Scientists settle debate surrounding species that laid eggs exploited by early Australian people around 50,000 years ago. Shell proteins point to Genyornis, which was among the 'mega-fauna' to go extinct a few thousand years after humans arrived on the continent.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Researchers shed light on the way Quetzalcoatlus would have flown, finding that the dinosaur's flying dynamics were actually very different to how it has been depicted in popular culture.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Jars of tiny platypus and echidna specimens, collected in the late 1800s by the scientist William Caldwell, have been discovered in the stores of Cambridge's University Museum of Zoology.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

A quantum system with only 51 charged atoms can take on more than two quadrillion different states. Calculating the system's behavior is child's play for a quantum simulator. But verifying the result is almost impossible, even with today's supercomputers. A research team has now shown how these systems can be verified using equations formulated in the 18th century.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

The famous double slit experiment shows that particles can travel on two paths at the same time -- but only by looking at a lot of particles and analysing the results statistically. Now a two-path-interference experiment has been designed that only has to measure one specific particle to prove that it travelled on two paths.