Cartilaginous fishes (sharks, rays, skates, and chimaeras) are the phylogenetically oldest group of living jawed vertebrates. They are also an important outgroup for understanding the evolution of…

Coelacanths are lobe-finned fish, which vary in size but can reach up to 6.4 feet in length and weigh up to 176 pounds. Scientists have inferred that they can live 80 to 100 years. Their closest…

The next time you are struggling to carry your bags home from the supermarket just remember that this could, in fact, be the reason you are able to walk upright on two legs at all! How we have…

‘Living Fossil’ is often a term applied to an animal that has a fossil record very far back in time but no close living relatives. This is a loose definition and taxonomists…

Recently week pictures were released by Taman Safari Indonesia Animal Hospital & Zoo of two Sumatran tiger cubs and a pair of orangutan babies who have been sharing a home over the last month.…

I have been watching way too much CSI. For those who haven’t seen the popular American television show, it is about a team of highly skilled Crime Scene Investigators who use keen observational…

If you’re a palaeontologist you’ve heard this question a thousand times. And if you’re not a palaeontologist you might wonder why you never get the same answer twice. Well you see the annoying part…

Why mitochondrial genes ditch their cushy haploid environs to take up residence in a large and chaotic nucleus has long stumped evolutionary biologists, but Indiana University Bloomington scientists…

Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have determined the three-dimensional structure of an RNA enzyme, or "ribozyme," that carries out a fundamental reaction required to make new…

Your football coach always told you that the low man wins. Seems that ape-like ancestors may have evolved that way for the same reason. Australopiths maintained short legs for 2 million years…