News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
San Diego looked very different back in the Eocene epoch, from about 56 million to 34 million years ago. The area’s now arid climate was warmer and more humid, its lush subtropical forests teeming with primates and marsupials. Now a recently examined fossil adds another creature to the list: a new species of saber-toothed predator. … Read more
From our long lives to our social skills and even language, zoologist Antone Martinho-Truswell argues that we are more like birds than we think Humans 9 March 2022 By Simon Ings EVOLUTION has created a living world of jaw-dropping diversity. It has also generated what seem like astonishing coincidences. The pangolins of Africa and armadillos … Read more
People have been trying to understand how predators and prey are able to stay balanced within our planet’s ecosystems for at least 2,400 years. The Greek author Herodotus even raised the question in his historical treatise Histories, written around 430 BC. And when Charles Darwin published in 1859 his revolutionary theory of evolution in … Read more
Photosynthesis quite literally changed our world. Plants ‘eating’ sunlight and ‘breathing out’ oxygen transformed Earth’s entire atmosphere into the one we now breathe, and fuel our ecosystems with energy. Now researchers have caught a cunning species of bacteria with stolen photosynthesizing technology. And their molecular, light-eating device is unlike any we’ve ever seen. “The … Read more
Bite into a lemon and you’ll likely experience a clashing rush of sensations: crushing sharpness, mouth-watering tanginess, and pleasant brightness. But despite its assertiveness—and its role as one of the five main taste profiles (along with sweet, salty, savory, and bitter)—scientists don’t know much about how our acidic taste evolved. Enter Rob Dunn. The … Read more
Japanese folk songs evolved in the same way as those sung in English even though there are significant cultural differences in musical tone and scales Humans 3 February 2022 By Jason Arunn Murugesu A woman playing a koto, a traditional Japanese musical instrument Shutterstock/PixHound Japanese folk songs evolved in the same way as English language … Read more
A strain of the antibiotic-resistant bacterium MRSA seems to have colonised the skin of hedgehogs more than 200 years ago – and many other similarly evasive bugs might exist in nature Life 5 January 2022 By Jessica Hamzelou A European hedgehog Coatesy/Shutterstock A strain of the antibiotic-resistant bacterium MRSA seems to have evolved in hedgehogs … Read more
A newly discovered fossil shows that within just 3 million years of their first appearance on Earth, ichthyosaurs had evolved into 17-metre-long giants Life 23 December 2021 By Riley Black An artist’s impression of Cymbospondylus youngorum Stephanie Abramowicz Fossil remains of one of the ocean’s earliest giants have been unearthed in Nevada. Named Cymbospondylus youngorum, … Read more