ScienceDaily: Fossils & Ruins News

Some copepods, diminutive crustaceans with an outsized place in the aquatic food web, can evolve fast enough to survive in the face of rapid climate change, according to new research that addresses a longstanding question in the field of genetics.

New research reveals that, rather than being influenced only by environmental conditions, deep subsurface microbial communities can transform because of geological movements. The findings advance our understanding of subsurface microorganisms, which comprise up to half of all living material on the planet.

For the first time, researchers successfully sequenced the genome of ancient human fossils from the Late Pleistocene in southern China. The data suggests that the mysterious hominin belonged to an extinct maternal branch of modern humans that might have contributed to the origin of Native Americans.

The world's coastal glaciers are melting faster than ever. New research gives scientists a way to unravel the causes of glacial retreat, and in turn, reveal how much can be attributed to human-caused climate change. Attributing the human role for coastal glaciers -- which melt directly into the sea -- could pave the way to better predictions about sea level rise.