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Categories: Biology: Developmental, Paleontology: Fossils

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Fifteen years of archaeological work in the Tam Pa Ling cave in northeastern Laos has yielded a reliable chronology of early human occupation of the site. The team's excavations through the layers of sediments and bones that gradually washed into the cave and were left untouched for tens of thousands of years reveals that humans lived in the area for at least 70,000 years -- and likely even longer.

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Researchers have outlined the structure and function of a protein complex which is required to repair damaged DNA and protect against cancer.

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Scientists have uncovered a new quality control system that removes damaged cells from early developing embryos.

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Researchers have used an unprecedented stem cell zoo to compare six different mammalian species and their developmental time.

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In the age of dinosaurs, many marine reptiles had extremely long necks compared to reptiles today. While it was clearly a successful evolutionary strategy, paleontologists have long suspected that their long-necked bodies made them vulnerable to predators. Now, after almost 200 years of continued research, direct fossil evidence confirms this scenario for the first time in the most graphic way imaginable.

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Genome Architecture Mapping captures complex, multi-way interactions in the genome. This is different than the workhorse technique of 3D genomics, which sees mostly two-way contacts, finds a new study.

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A 3D model of a 407-million-year-old plant fossil has overturned thinking on the evolution of leaves. The research has also led to fresh insights about spectacular patterns found in plants.

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Scientists discover shattered chromosomal fragments are tethered together during cell division before being rearranged; destroying the tether may help prevent cancerous mutations.

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A team or researchers reports the first Aging Fly Cell Atlas (AFCA), a detailed characterization of the aging process in 163 distinct cell types in the laboratory fruit fly. Their in-depth analysis revealed that different cell types in the body age differently, each cell type following a process involving cell type-specific patterns. AFCA provides a valuable resource for researchers in the fruit fly and aging communities as a reference to study aging and age-related diseases and to evaluate the success of anti-aging strategies.

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Lacking bones, brains, and even a complete gut, the body plans of simple animals like sea anemones appear to have little in common with humans and their vertebrate kin. Nevertheless, new research shows that appearances can be deceiving, and that a common genetic toolkit can be deployed in different ways to drive embryological development to produce very different adult body plans. It is well established that sea anemones, corals, and their jellyfish relatives shared a common ancestor with humans that plied the Earth's ancient oceans over 600 million years ago. A new study from the Gibson Lab, published in Current Biology on June 13, 2023, illuminates the genetic basis for body plan development in the starlet sea anemone, Nematostella vectensis. This new knowledge paints a vivid picture of how some of the earliest animals on earth progressed from egg to embryo to adult.

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The first side-necked turtle ever to be found in the UK has been discovered by an amateur fossil collector and palaeontologists.

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The earliest reptiles, birds and mammals may have borne live young, researchers have revealed.

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Researchers have shed light on the life of the ancient reptile Rhynchosaur, which walked the earth between 250-225 million years ago, before being replaced by the dinosaurs.

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For the first time, cells involved with the communication between stress responses in the brain and inflammation in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract have been identified in animal models. Glial cells, which support neurons, communicate stress signals from the central nervous system (CNS) to the semi-autonomous nervous system within the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, called the enteric nervous system (ENS). These psychological stress signals can cause inflammation and exacerbate symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

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A groundbreaking new paper focuses on the size and abundance of living and fossil African large mammals, shedding light on the ecological dynamics behind the decline of these iconic creatures. The findings challenge previous assumptions about the causes of megafaunal extinctions in Africa and provide new insights into the restructuring of ecosystems over millions of years.

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Working with live squid hatchlings, scientists find the animals can tune their proteome on the fly in response to changes in ocean temperature via the unique process of RNA recoding. The findings inspire new questions about basic protein function.

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The Daitari greenstone belt shares a similar geologic make-up when compared to the greenstones exposed in the Barberton and Nondweni areas of South Africa and those from the Pilbara Craton of north-western Australia.

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Octopuses don't thermoregulate, so their powerful brains are exposed to -- and potentially threatened by -- changes in temperature. Researchers report that two-spot octopuses adapt to seasonal temperature shifts by producing different neural proteins under warm versus cool conditions. The octopuses achieve this by editing their RNA, the messenger molecule between DNA and proteins. This rewiring likely protects their brains, and the researchers suspect that this unusual strategy is used widely amongst octopuses and squid.

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Newly discovered biomarker signatures point to a whole range of previously unknown organisms that dominated complex life on Earth about a billion years ago. They differed from complex eukaryotic life as we know it, such as animals, plants and algae in their cell structure and likely metabolism, which was adapted to a world that had far less oxygen in the atmosphere than today.

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A study of the relationship between the growth rate of tropical trees and the frequency of genetic mutations they accumulate suggests that older, long-lived trees play a greater role in generating and maintaining genetic diversity than short-lived trees.