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Categories: Anthropology: Early Humans, Offbeat: Plants and Animals

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Armadillos have long been considered to be the only living mammals that produce protective bony plates. But a new study unexpectedly shows that African spiny mice produce the same structures beneath the skin of their tails, which until now had gone largely undetected.

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Researchers have engineered bacteria to synthesize an amino acid that contains a rare functional group that others have shown to have implications in the regulation of our immune system. The researchers also taught a single bacterial strain to create the amino acid and place it at specific sites within target proteins. These findings provide a foundation for developing unique vaccines and immunotherapies in the future.

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A robotic bee that can fly fully in all directions has been developed. With four wings made out of carbon fiber and mylar as well as four light-weight actuators to control each wing, the Bee++ prototype is the first to fly stably in all directions. That includes the tricky twisting motion known as yaw, with the Bee++ fully achieving the six degrees of free movement that a typical flying insect displays.

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A tiger-sized saber-toothed creature called Inostrancevia has previously only been found in Russia. But scientists have discovered its fossils in South Africa, suggesting that it migrated 7,000 miles across the supercontinent Pangaea during the world's worst mass extinction 252 million years ago. Heading to South Africa allowed it to fill a gap in a faraway ecosystem that had lost its top predators.

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Researchers reveal the molecular and cellular underpinnings behind the parasitic fungus, Entomophthora muscae's (E. muscae), ability to manipulate the behavior of fruit flies.

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Written sources from Mesopotamia suggest that kissing in relation to sex was practiced by the peoples of the ancient Middle East 4,500 years ago.

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Scientists have discovered a new species of mosasaur, a sea-dwelling lizard from the age of the dinosaurs, with strange, ridged teeth unlike those of any known reptile. Along with other recent finds from Africa, it suggests that mosasaurs and other marine reptiles were evolving rapidly up until 66 million years ago, when they were wiped out by an asteroid along with the dinosaurs and around 90% of all species on Earth.

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Scales, spines, feathers and hair are examples of vertebrate skin appendages, which constitute a remarkably diverse group of micro-organs. Despite their natural multitude of forms, these appendages share early developmental processes at the embryonic stage. Researchers have discovered how to permanently transform the scales that normally cover the feet of chickens into feathers, by specifically modifying the expression of certain genes.

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A species of tiny, colorful jumping spider employs two lines of defense to avoid being eaten: camouflaging with plants and walking like an ant. Researchers report that this combination of camouflage and movement mimicry helps the spiders evade spider-eating spiders but does not deter hungry praying mantises.

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In testing the genetic material of current populations in Africa and comparing against existing fossil evidence of early Homo sapiens populations there, researchers have uncovered a new model of human evolution -- overturning previous beliefs that a single African population gave rise to all humans.

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Under certain circumstances, a rare tropical plant develops into a carnivore. A research team has now deciphered the mechanism responsible for this.

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Individual fish in schools scatter in unison when a predator is in their midst. Such precisely coordinated group movements and immobility during threats have long been observed in insects and mammals. Now, a brain pathway has been discovered that enables individual animals to rapidly coordinate a unified response, with no rehearsal required.

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Scientists have precisely identified base pairs of the human genome that remained consistent over millions of years of mammalian evolution, and which play a crucial role in human disease. The team analyzed the genomes of 240 mammals, including humans and identified base pairs that were 'constrained' -- meaning they remained generally consistent -- across mammal species over the course of evolution. The most constrained base pairs in mammals were over seven times more likely to be causal for human disease and complex trait, and over 11 times more likely when researchers looked at the most constrained base pairs in primates alone.

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A new paper rewrites the history of the darkest, most bizarre event in the history of palaeontology.

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A new study finds that early human species adapted to mosaic landscapes and diverse food resources, which would have increased our ancestor's resilience to past shifts in climate.

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There have been heated debates over the size of Jurassic animals. The speculation was set to continue, but now a chance discovery in an Oxfordshire museum has led to palaeontologists publishing a paper on a Jurassic species potentially reaching a whopping 14.4 meters -- twice the size of a killer whale.

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Surveying the body sizes of Earth's living organisms, researchers found that the planet's biomass -- the material that makes up all living organisms -- is concentrated in organisms at either end of the size spectrum.

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A fossil arthropod entombed in 100-million-year-old Burmese amber has been identified as a new genus and species of froghopper, known today as an insect with prodigious leaping ability in adulthood following a nymphal stage spent covered in a frothy fluid.

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Fecal microbiota transplants are the most effective and affordable treatment for recurrent infections with Clostridioides difficile, an opportunistic bacterium and the most common cause of hospital-acquired intestinal infections. However, attempts to treat chronic noncommunicable diseases such as ulcerative colitis and metabolic syndrome via fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) have yielded mixed results.

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They're well known for their industrious work, but now a species of ant on Kangaroo Island is also showing that it is skilled at 'playing dead', a behavior that researchers believe is a recorded world first.