Evolution

The bear was only a few years old and had become comfortable around humans.

A Young Black Bear Was Put Down After Humans Fed It, Took Selfies

The more food bears obtain from humans, the more likely they are to lose their natural fear of us

A dog being hitched to a travois in an 1844 painting by Karl Bodmer.

Ancient Dogs Weren't the Workhorses We Thought They Were

A spinal condition thought to be caused by carrying heavy loads is actually a function of age, a new study finds

A digitally-colorized scanning electron micrograph depiction of a Giardia lamblia protozoan caught in a late stage of cell division, producing a heart-shaped form. Most protozoa, or singled-celled eukaryotes, reproduce asexually, but there is evidence to suggest Giardia lamblia can reproduce sexually as well.

The Evolution of Sex Could Have Provided a Defense Against Cancer Cells

The first sexually reproducing organisms may have found that the energy-intensive enterprise bolstered defenses against malignant cells

None

Beyond Dinosaurs: The Secrets of Earth's Past

From the formation of Earth through the changing climates and creatures of the past, the Smithsonian's new Hall of Fossils explores our planet's Deep Time

Green Monkeys Borrow Their Cousins' Eagle Warning Call When Drones Are Near

Intriguingly, the call is very similar to the one produced by East African vervet monkeys, suggesting that these responses are evolutionarily hard-wired

Do fungi like this Penicillium mold, which produces the the antibiotic penicillin, trace their origins to an ancestor that lived a billion years ago?

Fossil Discovery Pushes Back the Origin of Fungi by Half a Billion Years

Ancient fungus helps rewrite what we know about evolution and the tree of life

Bedbugs, which were previously thought to be about 50 million years old, could be much older, new genetic and fossil evidence suggests.

Bedbugs Scurried the Earth Alongside the Dinosaurs 100 Million Years Ago

Researchers calculate that the pests evolved long before bats, which were thought to be their first hosts

White-throated rail.

How Evolution Brought a Flightless Bird Back From Extinction

Fossil remains offer rare evidence of a phenomenon known as ‘iterative evolution’

Life reconstruction of the bizarre membranous-winged Ambopteryx longibrachium.

Newly Discovered Bat-Like Dinosaur Reveals the Intricacies of Prehistoric Flight

Though <i>Ambopteryx longibrachium</i> was likely a glider, the fossil is helping scientists discover how dinosaurs first took to the skies

Narwhals Have Low Genetic Diversity—and They’re Doing Fine

A new study has traced this puzzling phenomenon to a gradual decline in the whales’ population, followed by a rapid increase around 30,000 years ago

Scallops can have up to 200 eyes, although scientists still don't know exactly how they all work together to help the mollusks see.

What Scallops' Many Eyes Can Teach Us About the Evolution of Vision

Scallop eyes, which function similar to telescopes, are even more complex than scientists previously knew

Bamboo Is Basically 'Fake Meat' for Giant Pandas

A new study shows the bears have a nutritional profile looks more like that of wolves and cats rather than herbivores

Historians Are Looking for Images of the HMS Beagle's Anchors

Researchers are hoping to confirm that they have discovered an anchor from the ship that carried Darwin stuck in the mud of an Australian river

Elusive River Dolphins Caught Chatting Up a Storm

Researchers previously thought the acoustic repertoire of Araguaian river dolphins was relatively limited

The arrestingly modern hominin at the Neanderthal Museum, near Dusseldorf, is the work of renowned paleo-artists Adrie and Alfons Kennis.

What Do We Really Know About Neanderthals?

Revolutionary discoveries in archaeology show that the species long maligned as knuckle-dragging brutes deserve a new place in the human story

Artistic reconstruction of two individuals of Peregocetus, one standing along the rocky shore of nowadays Peru and the other preying upon fish. The presence of a tail fluke remains hypothetical.

How Did Whales Reach the Americas? A Four-Legged Fossil Offers New Clues

Dubbed Peregocetus pacificus, the newly-described species was adapted to life both in and out of the water

Colors in nature can be produced by both pigments that absorb some light and microscopic structures that change the wavelength of light.

How Do Scientists Know What Colors Prehistoric Animals Were?

Fossil expert Maria McNamara explains how paleontologists are starting to investigate the hues of the past

An illustration of what Avimaia schweitzerae and its nest may have looked like.

First-Ever Fossilized Mother Bird Found With Unlaid Egg

The rare 110-million-year-old bits of shell shine light on the reproduction during the age of dinosaurs

The Cambrian Period was a time of remarkable diversification of life when many of the animal groups that exist today first appear in the fossil record.

Fossil Treasure Trove of Ancient Animals Unearthed in China

The fossils from the Cambrian Period include dozens of new species and provide a window into life more than 500 million years ago

Astrobatrachus kurichiyana, also known as the "starry dwarf frog," has only been found on a single hill range in India's Western Ghats.

Newly Discovered Starry Dwarf Frogs Are Lone Species of an Ancient Lineage

The newly discovered ‘oddball frog’ species dwells in India’s Western Ghats, one of the hottest of the biodiversity hotspots

Page 14 of 42