A 72 to 66-million-year-old embryo found inside a fossilized dinosaur egg sheds new light on the link between the behavior of modern birds and dinosaurs, according to a new study. The embryo, dubbed ‘Baby Yingliang’, was discovered in the Late Cretaceous rocks of Ganzhou, southern China and belongs to a toothless theropod dinosaur, or oviraptorosaur.…

Caecilians have arrived in Miami. Florida Fish and Wildlife officers captured one of the obscure legless amphibians in the Tamiami Canal, the first example of an introduced caecilian in the U.S. Florida Museum of Natural History scientists used DNA testing to identify the specimen as the Rio Cauca caecilian, Typhlonectes natans, a native of Colombia…

Researchers have demonstrated the ‘spinal motor module hypothesis’ in the primate arm, opening a new pathway for recovery after disease or injury. The human hand has 27 muscles and 18 joints, which our nervous system is able to coordinate for complex movements. However, the number of combinations — or degrees of freedom — is so…

A new study uses different techniques to improve the investigation of fossilized dog feces. «We have been interested in analyzing coprolites for many years. We have attempted to extract DNA and look at the microbiome before, but the tools were not as robust,» said Ripan Malhi (GNDP/GSP/IGOH), a professor of anthropology. «As far as I…

Clover plants grown in Mars-like soils experience significantly more growth when inoculated with symbiotic nitrogen-fixing bacteria than when left uninoculated, researchers report. As Earth’s population grows, researchers are studying the possibility of farming Martian soils, or «regolith.» However, regolith is lacking in some essential plant nutrients, including certain nitrogen-containing molecules that plants require to live.…

An incredibly rare dinosaur embryo discovered perfectly preserved inside its egg has shown scientists new details of the development and appearance of sauropods which lived 80 million years ago. Sauropods were the giant herbivores made famous as being ‘veggie-saurs’ in the 1993 film Jurassic Park. The incredible new find of an intact embryo has shown…

Paleontologists have described for the first time an almost complete skeleton of a juvenile Plateosaurus and discovered that it looked very similar to its parents even at a young age. That could have important implications for how the young animals lived and moved around. The young Plateosaurus, nicknamed ‘Fabian’, was discovered in 2015 at the…

In a study that builds on earlier research that identified macrophages as essential to regeneration in the axolotl, a highly regenerative salamander, a scientist has identified the source of these critical white blood cells as the liver. By giving scientists a place to look for pro-regenerative macrophages in humans, the discovery brings science a step…

A Tyrannosaurus rex could bite hard enough to shatter the bones of its prey. But how it accomplished this feat without breaking its own skull bones has baffled paleontologists. That’s why scientists are arguing that the T. rex’s skull was stiff much like the skulls of hyenas and crocodiles, and not flexible like snakes and…

Scientists have confirmed the species and origin of a colony of wild African vervet monkeys that landed in Dania Beach more than 70 years ago. They escaped from the Dania Chimpanzee Farm in 1948 and settled in a thick mangrove forest near the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in South Florida. The facility acted as a…