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Categories: Anthropology: Early Humans, Paleontology: Early Mammals and Birds

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     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

What links a finger bone and some fossil teeth found in a cave in the remote Altai Mountains of Siberia to a single tooth found in a cave in the limestone landscapes of tropical Laos? The answer to this question has been established by an international team of researchers from Laos, Europe, the US and Australia. The human tooth was chanced upon during an archaeological survey in a remote area of Laos. The scientists have shown it originated from the same ancient human population first recognised in Denisova Cave (dubbed the Denisovans), in the Altai Mountains of Siberia (Russia).

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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.

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Researchers have examined the mass extinction of large animals over the past tens of thousands of years and found that extinct species had, on average, much smaller brains than species that survived.

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Human-related extinctions of the largest herbivores and carnivores are disrupting what appears to be a fundamental feature of past and present ecosystems, says a new study.

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Crows and ravens have great flying ability, which allows them to gain access to new places more easily. While these skills were key to their success, new research also shows that big bodies and big brains played an important role in helping crows and ravens survive in the new climates they occupied.

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Palaeontologists have discovered remarkable new evidence that pterosaurs, the flying relatives of dinosaurs, were able to control the color of their feathers using melanin pigments.

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The first large-scale study of its kind has uncovered more than 4,000 years' worth of distinctive foraging behavior in a species once driven to the brink of extinction.

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A new study combining records of climate change during the last 3.5 million years with fossil evidence of mammals in Africa reveals that times of erratic climate change are not followed by major upheavals in evolution.

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One of the most contentious questions in evolutionary biology is, how did the Amazon become so rich in species? A new study focused on birds examines how the movements of rivers in the Amazon have contributed to that area's exceptional biological diversity. The researchers found that as small river systems change over time, they spur the evolution of new species. The findings also reveal previously unknown bird species in the Amazon that are only found in small areas next to these dynamic river systems, putting them at high risk.

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Prehistoric mammals bulked up, rather than develop bigger brains, to boost their survival chances once dinosaurs had become extinct, research suggests.

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Much of a centuries-old debate over where and how new bird species form has now been resolved. Researchers have provided evidence that birds in mountainous areas -- where the vast majority of the planet's species live -- have left lowland habitats for higher and higher mountain elevations throughout their evolution. Millions of years of climatic fluctuations have contributed to pushing bird species upslope -- as is probably happening now.

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Dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago, mammoths 4,000 years ago, and the Christmas Island Rat 119 years ago. Since becoming a popular concept in the 1990s, de-extinction efforts have focused on grand animals with mythical stature, but now a team of paleogeneticists has turned their attention to Rattus macleari, and their findings provide insights into the limitations of de-extinction across all species.

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A new study provides vital clues on when killer whales began feeding on other marine mammals.

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Paleontologists from La Brea Tar Pits develop a whole herd of scientifically accurate extinct animals to use in AR and VR.

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Abrupt shifts in the evolution of animals -- short periods of time when an organism rapidly changes size or form -- have long been a challenge for theorists including Darwin. Now a newly published research paper supports the idea that even these abrupt changes are underpinned by a gradual directional process of successive incremental changes, as Darwin's theory of evolution assumes.

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New research uncovers the negative link between flight-worthiness and fight-worthiness in birds. Evolutionary pressure demanded that birds could either fly or arm themselves -- but not both. Furthermore, the new research suggests that developing wings and not bony spurs involved both sexual and natural selection. This insight helps us better understand how the enormous diversity of life and earth came to be.

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A team of geologists and palaeontologists has discovered that, some 50 million years ago, there was a low-lying continent separating Europe from Asia that they have named Balkanatolia. At the time, it was inhabited by an endemic fauna that was very different from those of Europe and Asia. Geographical changes 40 to 34 million years ago connected this continent to its two neighbors, paving the way for the replacement of European mammals by Asian mammals.

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Two new species of fossil birds that lived alongside the dinosaurs have ben discovered near the Great Wall of China. One of the new species had a sensitive, movable bony appendage at the tip of its lower jaw that it might have used to find food.

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Scientists have discovered the first evidence of a unique respiratory infection in the fossilized remains of a dinosaur that lived nearly 150 million years ago. Researchers examined the remains of an immature diplodocid -- a long-necked herbivorous sauropod dinosaur, like 'Brontosaurus' - dating back to the Late Jurassic Period of the Mesozoic Era. The dinosaur nicknamed 'Dolly,' discovered in southwest Montana, had evidence of an infection in the area of its neck vertebrae.

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During the Ice Age, giant mammals such as mammoths, sabre-toothed cats and woolly rhinoceroses once roamed Northern Europe and America. The cold oceans of the northern hemisphere were also home to giants like Steller's sea cow, which grew up to eight meters long and weighed up to ten tons, and has been extinct for around 250 years. Now an international research team has succeeded in deciphering the genome of this ice-age species from fossil bones. They also found an answer to the question of what the genome of this extinct species of sea cow reveals about present-day skin diseases.