Skulls gone wild: How and why some frogs evolved extreme heads
Many frogs look like a water balloon with legs, but don’t be fooled. Beneath slick skin, some species sport spines,…Read More
Bulb size matters: Uncovering the evolution of the plant kingdom’s doomsday preppers
Botanist Cody Coyotee Howard compares bulbs to living bunkers. With an underground stockpile of resources, bulbs can hunker down during…Read More
Scientists sequence 1,100 plants, illuminating 1 billion years of evolution
Plants are evolutionary champions, dominating Earth’s ecosystems for more than a billion years and making the planet habitable for countless…Read More
Butterflies and plants evolved in sync, but moth ‘ears’ predated bats
Butterflies and moths rank among the most diverse groups in the animal kingdom, with nearly 160,000 known species, ranging from…Read More
Florida Museum scientists zoom in on DNA to save thorny skates
With toothlike spines and barbs, thorny skates are just as sharp as their name suggests. But these shark relatives are…Read More
Plant lineage points to different evolutionary playbook for temperate species
An ancient, cosmopolitan lineage of plants is shaking up scientists’ understanding of how quickly species evolve in temperate ecosystems and…Read More
How megalodon’s teeth evolved into the ‘ultimate cutting tools’
Megalodon, the largest shark that ever lived, is known only from its gigantic bladelike teeth, which can be more than…Read More
Plants’ drought alert system has unlikely evolutionary origin: underwater algae
Plants’ water-to-land leap marks one of the most important milestones in the evolution of life on Earth. But how plants…Read More
Oldest-known ancestor of modern primates may have come from North America, not Asia
About 56 million years ago, on an Earth so warm that palm trees graced the Arctic Circle, a mouse-sized primate…Read More
The walking dead: Fossils on the move can distort patterns of mass extinctions
Using the fossil record to accurately estimate the timing and pace of past mass extinctions is no easy task, and…Read More