All species alive today, from chimpanzees to bacteria, are cousins that each have equally long lineages, rather than ...

“A 62-million-year-old skeleton of this quality and completeness offers novel insights into mixodectids, including a much clearer picture of their evolutionary relationships,” study co-author and Yale ...

Biologists have long drawn the animal family tree with a hazy base, unsure which creature first split from the common ancestor that gave rise to everything from jellyfish to humans. Now, a new genomic ...

For some mammals, the evolutionary path to gigantism after the dinosaurs’ demise wasn’t always a straight road. Species of extinct, hefty, rhinoceros-like creatures called brontotheres evolved into ...

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. The living mammal family tree is full of diverse species–big ...

Why do you have five fingers? Why not ten, or twenty, or one? Why do so many animals have five fingers? Five seems to be the perfect number for most hands. Oddly, the first vertebrates to come onto ...

A series of whole genome and gene duplication events that go back hundreds of millions of years have laid the foundations for tissue-specific gene expression, according to a new study. The 'copy-paste ...

If we look across the whole of the mammal branch of the tree of life, we find there are many groups of mammals that have ...

Mixodectes pungens lived only a few million years after the dinosaurs went extinct. By Laura Baisas Published Mar 11, 2025 2:30 PM EDT Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, ...