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Dry rice farming was the force behind chicken domestication.
June 2022
Science Daily
New evidence about when, where, and how chickens were domesticated
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Ocearch Global Shark Tracker Now you can join researchers in GPS tracking of sharks in real time.
See sharks that have pinged in the last 24 hours.
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And in News: Kaya the harbor seal encounters a butterfly |
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 Study finds parrots can practice acts of kindness.March 2020 Science Magazine Parrots are the first birds observed showing kindness to others. Read Full Story
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 A warming planet threatens fish.March 2019 National Geographic The impacts warming waters are having on important fish species. Read Full Story
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 Animals have some interesting ways to store food.
October 2018 National Geographic Not just nuts:The surprising stuff animals hoard for winter Read Full Story
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 Birds Keep Insect Populations Under Control.July 9, 2018 Science Daily Birds eat 400 - 500 million tons of insects annually! Read Full Story
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 Unchecked carbon emissions are pushing species to extinction.
March 14, 2018 WWF Half of plant and animal species at risk from climate change in world’s most important natural places Read Full Story
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 Artificial intelligence is helping to crack the code of dolphin language.
December 8, 2017 IFLScience! AI Might Have Identified Six New Types Of Dolphin Clicks. Read Full Story
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 Australia has some of the most beautiful birds on the planet. June 17, 2016 The Guardian A shortlist of 50 birds which includes some truly spectacular ones. Read Full Story |
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 Octopus-Inspired Adhesive Uncovers Secret to Cephalopod StickinessJune 17, 2016 IFLscience.com An impressive trick in octopus stickiness. Read Full Story |
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 Why Turtles Evolved Shells:It Wasn't For ProtectionJuly 14, 2016 theatlantic.com Turtle shells evolved for digging. Read Full Story |
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 Key gene enables plants to conquer landMay 19, 2016 www.eurekalert.org Research identifies a gene that assisted the transition of plants from water to land 500 million years ago. Read Full Story |
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 Crows count on number neuronsJune 8, 2015 www.sciencedaily.com Crow brains evolved for counting. Read Full Story |
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 Scientists reconstruct evolutionary history of whale hearing with rare museum collectionMarch 11, 2015 www.sciencedaily.com Tracing the development of hearing in whales. Read Full Story |
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 Reshaping the horse through millennia: Sequencing reveals genes selected by humans in domesticationDecember 15, 2014 www.sciencedaily.com Human domestication shaped the horse. Read Full Story |
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 Seeing Dinosaur Feathers in a New LightOct. 30, 2014 www.sciencedaily.com Evolution of feathers made dinosaurs colorful. Read Full Story |
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 Plants may use newly discovered molecular language to communicate.August 14, 2014 www.sciencedaily.com Scientific discovery of a potentially new form of plant communication. Read Full Story |
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 New Fossil Suggests More Complex Evolution for Feathers and FlightJuly 2nd, 2014 blogs.discovermagazine.com A new look at how both feathers and flight may have evolved among theropod dinosaurs -aka- the ancestors of modern birds. Read Full Story |
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 Flowers' Polarization Help Bees Find FoodJune 5th, 2014 www.sciencedaily.com Bees use their ability to 'see' polarized light when foraging for food, researchers have discovered. This is the first time bees have been found to use this ability for something other than navigation. Read Full Story |
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 Ancient Whale Fossils Reveal Early Origin of EcolocationWed. March 12, 2014 www.livescience.com An ancient whale used sound beams to navigate and stalk prey 28 million years ago, an analysis of a new fossil suggests. Read Full Story |
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 One-Quarter of Sharks and Rays at Risk of ExtinctionTue. Jan. 21, 2014 www.livescience.com A quarter of the world's sharks and rays are at risk of extinction, according to a new assessment by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Read Full Story |
 Clues to how plants evolved to cope with coldDec. 22, 2013 Science Daily Researchers have found new clues to how plants evolved to withstand wintry weather. In a study to appear in the December 22 issue of the journal Nature, the team constructed an evolutionary tree of more than 32,000 species of flowering plants – the largest time-scaled evolutionary tree to date. Read Full Story |
 Many genes in dolphins and bats evolved in the same way to allow echolocationSeptember 6, 2013 Science News Despite being separated by millions of years of evolution, dozens of genes in dolphins and bats changed in the same manner to give the species their ability to echolocate. Read Full Story |
 How 'Parrot dinosaur' Switched from four feet to two as it grew June 28, 2013 Science Daily Tracking the growth of dinosaurs and how they changed as they grew is difficult. Using a combination of biomechanical analysis and bone histology, palaeontologists from Beijing, Bristol, and Bonn have shown how one of the best-known dinosaurs switched from four feet to two as it grew. Read Full Story |
 Study of Gene Expression Has Revealed First Steps of Evolution in Gene Regulation in MiceAugust 2, 2013 Science Daily A study of gene expression led by scientists at the EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) and the University of Cambridge has revealed the first steps of evolution in gene regulation in mice. Read Full Story |
 Horse Fossil Yeilds Astonishingly Old GenomeJune 26, 2013 Scientific American Researchers have recovered DNA from a nearly 700,000-year-old horse fossil and assembled a draft of the animal’s genome from it. It is the oldest complete genome to date by a long shot–hundreds of thousands of years older than the previous record holder, which came from an archaic human that lived around 80,000 years ago. Read Full Story |
 Cretaceous period: Facts About Animals, Plants & Climate May 1, 2013 Live Science The Cretaceous Period was the last and longest segment of the Mesozoic Era. It lasted approximately 79 million years, from the minor extinction event that closed the Jurassic Period about 145.5 million years ago to the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction event dated at 65.5 million years ago. Read Full Story |
 Hundreds of Dinosaurs Egg Fossils FoundMarch 13, 2013 Live Science Researchers in northeastern Spain say they've uncovered hundreds of dinosaur egg fossils, including four kinds that had never been found before in the region. The eggs likely were left behind by sauropods millions of years ago. Read Full Story |
 Expensive Organs: Guppies RevealThe Cost Of Big Brains January 3, 2013 Scientific American There’s a lot to be said for smarts—at least we humans, with some of the biggest brains in relation to our bodies in the animal kingdom, certainly seem to think so. Read Full Story |
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 New Whale Shark Study Used Metalomics to Help Understand Shark and Ray HealthNovember 16, 2012 Science Daily New research from Georgia Aquarium and Georgia Institute of Technology provides evidence that a suite of techniques called "metabolomics" can be used to determine the health status of whale sharks (Rhincodon typus), the world's largest fish species. Read Full Story |
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Common Pesticide Implicated Bee Colony Collapse Disorder |
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Evolution - New Scientist - 2/21/12 |
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Darwin’s Degenerates – Evolution’s Finest | Observations - 2/12/12
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| Birds Caught in the Act of Becoming a New Species - 12/8/11
Science Daily A study of South American songbirds completed by the Department of Biology at Queen's University and the Argentine Museum of Natural History, has discovered these birds differ dramatically in colour and song yet show very little genetic differences, indicating they are on the road to becoming a new species. Read Full Story |
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Unraveling the Causes of the Ice Age Megafauna Extinctions - 11/2/11
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| Emergency Action Plan Aims to Help the World's Most Endangered Chimpanzee - 6/30/2011
Scientific American Earlier this month, scientists for the Pan African Sanctuaries Alliance presented new research that predicted the extinction of the Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes ellioti), the world's rarest chimpanzee subspecies, within as little as... Read Full Story |
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| Winners of Mass Extinction: With Predators Gone, Prey Thrive - 5/3/2011
Science Daily In modern ecology, the removal or addition of a predator to an ecosystem can produce dramatic changes in the population of prey species. For the first time, scientists have observed the same dynamics in the fossil record, thanks to a mass extinction that decimated ocean life 360 million years ago. Read Full Story |
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| New Evidence Details Spread of Amphibian-Killing Disease from Mexico Through Central America - 5/2/2011
Science Daily There's a crisis among the world's amphibians -- about 40 percent of amphibian species have dwindled in numbers in just three decades. Now, museum jars stuffed full of amphibians may help scientists decide whether this wave of extinctions was caused by a fungal infection... Read Full Story |
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| Wolves lose, tigers gain, penguins in peril and other updates from the brink - 4/11/2011
Scientific Daily Sometimes there are so many stories about endangered species that not all of them can be covered in depth by this blog. Here are some quick updates on stories previously covered in Extinction Countdown... Read Full Story |
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