Topic: evolutionary history
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Dogs Were Diverse in Size and Shape Long Before Modern Breeds
Ancient dogs exhibited significant physical diversity in size and shape long before modern breeding practices, with Ice Age dogs already showing about half the variation of contemporary breeds. A study comparing 643 canine and wolf skulls from the past 50,000 years revealed that Mesolithic and Ne...
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Ice Age Woolly Mammoth Yields World's Oldest RNA
Scientists have extracted the world's oldest RNA from a 40,000-year-old woolly mammoth named Yuka, revealing unprecedented biological details about Ice Age creatures. The breakthrough involved specialized chemical techniques to isolate fragile RNA fragments, overcoming previous challenges with de...
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Ant-Eating Mammals: A One-Way Dietary Evolution
Obligate myrmecophagy, the exclusive diet of ants and termites, has evolved independently at least twelve times in mammals over the past 66 million years, driven by convergent evolution due to similar ecological pressures. The expansion of ant and termite colonies during the Cenozoic era provided...
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