ScienceDaily: Fossils & Ruins News

Evolution has long been viewed as a rather random process, with the traits of species shaped by chance mutations and environmental events -- and therefore largely unpredictable. But an international team of scientists has found that a particular plant lineage independently evolved three similar leaf types over and over again in mountainous regions scattered throughout the neotropics.

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.'

A new study describes a fossil species that closely resembles the four-legged fishapod Tiktaalik but has features that made it more suited to life in the water than its adventurous cousin.

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.

The mountain fortress of Rabana-Merquly in modern Iraqi Kurdistan was one of the major regional centers of the Parthian Empire, which extended over parts of Iran and Mesopotamia approximately 2,000 years ago. The researchers studied the remains of the fortress.

The study of the genomes of our closest relatives, the Neanderthals and Denisovans, has opened up new research paths that can broaden our understanding of the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens. A new study has made an estimation of the time when some of the genetic variants that characterize our species emerged. It does so by analyzing mutations that are very frequent in modern human populations, but not in these other species of archaic humans.