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 ...

New research from the University of St Andrews has discovered a crucial piece in the puzzle of how all animals with a spine—including all mammals, fish, reptiles and amphibians—evolved. In a paper ...

In five cases where vertebrates evolved monogamy, the same changes in gene expression occurred each time. In many non-monogamous species, females provide all or most of the offspring care. In ...

A harlequin poison dart frog (Oophaga sylvatica) is pictured at the Tesoros de Colombia (Treasures of Colombia) sustainable farm in Nocaima, Cundinamarca department, Colombia, on July 9, 2024.

A study by a group of researchers at the University of Kentucky in collaboration with scientists in four other countries has been published in Nature. Their study is titled "The hagfish genome and the ...

In DNA, retrotransposons can move around and insert themselves into other parts of genomes with a kind of copy and paste mechanism. Most have lost this ability in humans, but they still make up a ...

700 million years ago, a remarkable creature emerged for the first time. Though it may not have been much to look at by today’s standards, the animal had a front and a back, a top and a bottom. This ...

Charles Darwin proposed that evolution is driven by gradual variations in organisms that have a survival advantage in a changing environment. But University of Maryland evolutionary biologist Karen ...

Early jawless fish were likely to have used bony projections surrounding their mouths to modify the mouth's shape while they collected food. Experts have used CT scanning techniques to build up the ...

If you could travel back roughly 250 million years, you would not see the Earth you know today. Instead, you would arrive at ...