Within every muscle of every living species with a backbone, a protein called myosin tugs on a partner protein to generate a ...

A fish thought to be evolution’s time capsule just surprised scientists. A detailed dissection of the coelacanth — a 400-million-year-old species often called a “living fossil” — revealed that key ...

Analysis of fossils discovered in Illinois reveals a previously unknown growth pattern and opens a new scientific debate.

New research is redefining the morphological and functional existence of anatomical "neck" regions to better include ...

Whole-genome duplications are rare evolutionary events in which all the chromosomes and genes of a species are doubled. This supplies new genetic material to the gene pool and can provide an ...

Researchers report that ancient viruses may be to thank for myelin -- and, by extension, our large, complex brains. The team found that a retrovirus-derived genetic element or 'retrotransposon' is ...

The coelacanth is known as a "living fossil" because its anatomy has changed little in the last 65 million years. Despite being one of the most studied fish in history, it continues to reveal new ...

There is considerable interest in understanding how vision and image-forming eyes evolved, and scientists tend to take it for granted that most vertebrates have two eyes. Writing in Nature, Lei et al.

I first read Lulu Miller's Why Fish Don't Exist in 2024. Interspersed with her personal exploration of finding purpose, Miller describes the story of David Starr Jordan, who named and described over 2 ...

Whole skeleton of Dipterus, an extinct lungfish from the middle Devonian period. Specimen (UMMP 16140) from the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology. ANN ARBOR—If you're reading this sentence ...