News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
The current reference human genome is based on a handful of people but the new Pangenome project will incorporate DNA from hundreds of people all around the world Humans 16 March 2022 By Michael Marshall DNA sequence data Shutterstock / Gio.tto The human genome is being sequenced again – but better. A new project to … Read more
A new species of giant tortoise has been discovered in the Galapagos after DNA testing found animals living on one island had not yet been recorded, Ecuador’s environment ministry said. Researchers compared the genetic material of tortoises currently living on San Cristobal with bones and shells collected in 1906 from a cave in the … Read more
A study of the extinct Christmas Island rat suggests we cannot bring back the woolly mammoth and other lost species without important differences Life 9 March 2022 By Michael Le Page An illustration of the Christmas Island rat Joseph Smit/Public Domain It is impossible to bring extinct animals back to life exactly as they were, … Read more
Your pet’s dinner may contain endangered shark – even if the ingredients on the label don’t explicitly include “shark”, a recent analysis of commercially produced pet foods has found. Pet foods often describe their ocean-sourced ingredients with generic terms such as “fish”, “white fish”, “white bait”, or “ocean fish” and researchers wondered if genetic … 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
A newly discovered fossilized stegosaur found in China is the most ancient ever found in Asia, and could be the oldest in the world. Treading the Earth some 170 million years ago, during the Middle Jurassic Bajocian age, the beastie was also small for a stegosaur, measuring just 2.8 meters (just over 9 feet) from … Read more
SARS-CoV-2 is not picky about its host. Since the virus first started spreading among humans, it has jumped from our species to pets, livestock, and even wild animals. Cats appear to be particularly susceptible to contracting COVID, although they often don’t show symptoms, and it’s unlikely that they can pass the virus back to us. Even … Read more
A towering colossus and predatory beast, the comically tiny-armed Tyrannosaurus rex is perhaps the most iconic of all prehistoric predators. Its place in the popular imagination is mirrored in academia, with researchers investigating everything from how it walked, to how it mated, to how many there even were. Despite abundant research into the genus Tyrannosaurus, all adult … Read more
After analysing the teeth and thigh bones of 38 T. rex fossils, some researchers propose reclassifying them as three different species, but others are unconvinced Life 1 March 2022 By Colin Barras Sue, the Tyrannosaurus skeleton at the Field Museum in Chicago EQRoy / Alamy The “tyrant lizard king” – Tyrannosaurus rex – might have … Read more
When it comes to longevity and surviving extended amounts of time without food, the Argas brumpti species of African tick is hard to beat, newly published research shows. Observed close-up in the lab over the course of 45 years by entomologist Julian Shepherd from Binghamton University in New York, some of these ticks have survived as … Read more