ScienceDaily: Top Science News

The cerebellum -- a part of the brain once recognized mainly for its role in coordinating movement -- underwent evolutionary changes that may have contributed to human culture, language and tool use, according to a new study.

Sea turtles are known for relying on magnetic signatures to find their way across thousands of miles to the very beaches where they hatched. Now, researchers have some of the first solid evidence that sharks also rely on magnetic fields for their long-distance forays across the sea.

A new study provides the earliest evidence to date of ancient humans significantly altering entire ecosystems with flames. The study combines archaeological evidence -- dense clusters of stone artifacts dating as far back as 92,000 years ago -- with paleoenvironmental data on the northern shores of Lake Malawi in eastern Africa to document that early humans were ecosystem engineers.

Unlike humans, who map the world in units of distance, bats map the world in units of time. What this means is that the bat perceives an insect as being at a distance of nine milliseconds, and not one and a half meters, as was previously thought.