ScienceDaily: Plants & Animals News

Fossil footprints found in an Australian coal mine around 50 years ago have long been thought to be that of a large 'raptor-like' predatory dinosaur, but scientists have in fact discovered they were instead left by a timid long-necked herbivore.

Most animals sync their body clocks to the daily rhythm of the sun, but what happens during the polar winter when the sun never rises above the horizon? According to a new study, arctic krill can detect tiny changes in light intensity during polar winter days, allowing them to maintain their daily biological rhythms.

Enzymes are biological catalysts that facilitate biochemical transformations. An international team of bioinformatics researchers has developed a new process for predicting Michaelis constants, which determine reaction kinetics.

A new study has added numerous previously uncharacterized viral genomes and genes to the ever-increasing worldwide pool of human gut viromes. The study will prove helpful in investigating the role of the gut virome in human health and disease.

A dogma-challenging discovery reveals that highly adapted bacterial communities in the sinuses of people with cystic fibrosis become more fragmented and experience mutations that erode their genomes. So rather than targeting red herring mutations, researchers suggest paying attention to patterns of genomic adaptation versus erosion, which might better indicate a viable path towards the more effective therapeutics for cystic fibrosis.

According to a study pertaining to more than a hundred animal species, environmental change brought about by humans has the greatest impact on the animals' activity in exploring their environment.