Inbreeding Neanderthals Interbred with Denisovans

DNA sequencing of an ancient toe has revealed long-term inbreeding amongst a Siberian-based Neanderthal population.  The sequencing results also reveal Neanderthals, and a sister group, Denisovans, met and reproduced in the Late Pleistocene between 12,000 and 126,000 years ago.

Scientists discover second, secret DNA code

Scientists have now discovered a second DNA code that suggests the body uses the same alphabet to speak two different languages.  The newfound genetic code was written right on top of the DNA code scientists had already cracked. Rather than concerning itself with proteins, this one instructs the cells on how genes are controlled.

First documented tool use by reptiles

Though the use of objects as hunting lures is very rare in nature, a study says at least two species of crocodiles and alligators use twigs and sticks to lure birds.

Scientists decode oldest DNA of extinct human

Researchers say they have decoded a key part of the DNA for a 400,000-year-old extinct human related to a species of ancestral humans called Denisovans.

Colours help chameleons avoid conflict

Male chameleons use bright and fast-changing colours to give opponents a two-stage warning against fighting them for territory or females.

3,000 year old wine cellar found

Archaeologists have unearthed what they say may be the oldest and largest wine cellar in the Near East, containing 40 jars. Each would have held 50 litres of strong, sweet wine — wine flavoured with mint, honey and a dash of psychotropic resins.

Scientists identify brain area integral to bird intelligence

A brain region known as the nidopallium caudolaterale may be responsible for some of birds’ strategic, intelligent behaviour.

Strong evidence of jet at Milky Way centre

Astronomers have found strong evidence that the huge black hole at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy is shooting out a jet of high-energy particles.

Find said to confirm time of Buddha’s life

Archaeologists say they have dug up evidence of a sixth-century-B.C. structure at the Buddha’s birthplace — the first archaeological material linking his life to a specific century.

Neanderthal living space

Neanderthals organized their living spaces in ways that today’s people would recognize as familiar, scientists say. The finding suggests new similarities between modern humans and Neanderthals, our close evolutionary cousins who died out an estimated 30,000 years ago.

New species of giant clam identified

A colourful new species of giant clam, thought to have been another well-known species, has been discovered on reefs in Western Australia and the Solomon Islands.

Environmental factors found to alter gene expression

Lab mice trained to fear a particular smell can transfer the impulse to their unborn sons and grandsons through a mechanism in their sperm, a study reveals.  The research claims to provide evidence for the concept of animals "inheriting" a memory of their ancestors' traumas, and responding as if they had lived the events themselves.  It is the latest find in the study of epigenetics, in which environmental factors are said to cause genes to start behaving differently without any change to their underlying DNA encoding.

See also

Learn­ed experiences can be transferred through genetic structures — not by changes to genes themselves, but rather, to how they’re “marked” by other molecules.

Chasmosaurus: a horned, plant-eating a relative of Triceratops

A newly unearthed fossil of a baby dinosaur is so complete that it appears to hop out of the rock in which it was entombed. The dinosaur is now believed to be among the best preserved dinosaurs in the world and it is the first known baby Chasmosaurus belli fossil.

Invading mantid lures natives to their deaths

Native male New Zealand praying mantises are lured to their death by the irresistible scent of invading females.  The native males are more attracted to the invading South African species than they are to females of their own kind.

Fossilised sap points to low oxygen past

Amber may not preserve ancient DNA, but a new study has shown it can provide insights into the composition of the atmosphere.  The results suggest dinosaurs inhaled air with far less oxygen than we breathe today and may cause a rethink into how they became so big.

“Freakish” asteroid

Astronomers have found a “weird and freakish object” resembling a spinning lawn sprinkler in the asteroid belt.  Normal asteroids appear simply as tiny points of light. This bizarre one has six comet-like tails of dust radiating from it like spokes on a wheel.

Dogs descended from European wolves

A new comparison of DNA from modern canines and ancient fossils suggests that today's pets are descended from now-extinct populations of wolves in Europe.

T. rex's oldest known cousin: Lythronax argestes

A new species of tyrannosaur has been unearthed in Utah, with skull bones showing an 80 million-year-old beast that is the oldest known cousin of the legendary T. rex. The meat-eating Lythronax argestes, which means "king of gore," had wide-set eyes that helped it track prey and a load of teeth packed into a more slender snout than T. rex.

Penguin split more recent than thought

Today's penguin species, from the massive emperor penguin through to the tiny blue penguin, all originated from an ancestor that lived just 20 million years ago.

Kraken theory resurfaces with new 'evidence'

A recent fossil find is renewing interest in the search for the ancient giant cephalopod known as the kraken.

Giant toothed platypus roamed Australia

A giant platypus with powerful teeth roamed the rivers of northern Australia between 5 and 15 million years ago.  Dubbed 'Platypus Godzilla', the creature was twice the size of a modern platypus and had teeth to chew crayfish, frogs and small turtles.  Palaeontologists say the fossil is forcing a re-think about the evolution of the species, and warn it could indicate the smaller modern platypus is on track to extinction.

Bees avoid hard choices to cut their losses

When the bees were given the choice of opting out, they did so more often when the task got harder, and their performance at these more difficult tasks improved.  Similar experiments have found that dogs, dolphins and rats all do this.

Com­mon an­ces­tor of mod­ern hu­ma­ns and Ne­an­der­thals still unknown

None of the creatures usually proposed as a common ancestor is a good match. These human forms include fossils dubbed Homo heidelbergensis, Homo erectus and Homo antecessor.  The lines that led to Neanderthals and modern humans branched apart nearly a million years ago, much earlier than studies based on molecular evidence have suggested.

Meerkat females rewarded for killing rivals’ pups

Meerkat females at the top of their group’s pecking order will kill rivals’ babies and go on to receive wet nurse services from the victimized mothers. The same service is sometimes extracted from recently “exiled” meerkats who have returned, suggesting it’s a sort of “rent” paid to stay in the community.

Marmoset monkeys chat politely

Humans aren’t the only species that knows how to carry on polite conversation. Marmoset monkeys, too, will engage one another for up to 30 minutes at a time in vocal turn-taking.

Elephants understand human pointing

Elephants spontaneously get the gist of human pointing and can use it as a cue for finding food. That’s all the more impressive given that many great apes don’t understand human caretakers’ pointing gestures.

Findings could simplify human lineage

Several ancestral forms of humans were really one species, not separate ones as previously thought, according to new research. These earliest members of the Homo genus included the species Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, and Homo erectus. The findings are based on an analysis of a complete skull of a hominid, or human-like creature, from Dmanisi, Georgia, dated to about 1.8 million years ago.

“Free-floating planet” photographed for first time

Astronomers say they’ve photographed a free-floating planet, a type of body theorised for years to exist but never imaged directly. But other new findings are also blurring the boundaries between such planets, and stars.

Kep­ler-78b

Kepler-78b is a planet that shouldn’t exist: this scorching lava world, scientists say, circles its star every 8½ hours at a distance of less than a million miles — one of the tightest known orbits. According to current theories of planet formation, it could­n’t have formed so close to its star, nor could it have moved there.

Bees use 'biological autopilot' to land

Bees get a perfect touchdown by detecting how fast their landing site 'zooms in' as they approach, new research has found.

Snakes shaped the primate brain

Primate vision is the result of an evolutionary battle with snakes, a study of monkeys suggests.  The study provides key experimental evidence in support of the hypothesis that the threat of snakes strongly influenced the evolution of the primate brain.

Genes extinguish Aboriginal fire theory

For thousands of years, Australia's Aboriginal people have used fire to hunt and to manage the landscape. Some scientists have argued that when people first arrived in Australia they set a large number of these fires, which reshaped the country's ecosystems.  A new study examines this hypothesis by analysing the genetic fingerprints of more than 1400 trees from the Callitris genus, fire-sensitive conifers found across the continent.

Interbreeding With Denisovans

Ancient humans known as Denisovans only interbred with modern humans after they both crossed the Wallace Line. This may explain why DNA from these ancient humans is only found in people from some parts of Southeast Asia, Papua New Guinea and in Australian Aborigines. Evidence of the now-extinct human relative was first found in a Siberian cave three years ago. Since then, genetic studies have revealed they interbred with modern humans. But while traces of Denisovan DNA have been found in Southeast Asia, they have not been found in mainland Asian populations, which is closer to where the original fossils were found.

Traces of blood survive 46 million years

Organic molecules from blood can survive in fossils for nearly 50 million years. The molecules have been found in the last meal of a mosquito that died 46 million years ago.

First “cloud map” of planet beyond our so­lar system

Astronomers using data from NASA’s Kepler and Spitzer space telescopes have created what they call the first cloud map of a planet beyond our solar system. It’s a sizzling, Jupiter-like world known as Kepler-7b.

Could bouncing droplets help us sort out the nature of reality?

The strange, beautiful behaviour of tiny liquid droplets may be related to the seemingly nonsensical laws describing nature at the smallest scales.

“Pristine” gas from birth of universe detected

Astronomers have detected streams of “pristine” hydrogen gas left over directly from the birth of the universe.

Transition between the two stages of neutron star observed

Astronomers have found a neutron star that can switch from being a rotating radio wave beacon to a weight-gaining x-ray emitter, in a relatively short space of time. The finding may explain an intermediate phase in the life of these powerful objects.

“Maternal instincts” seen in group of colourful beetles

Eight species within a subfamily of leaf beetles known as broad-shouldered leaf beetles, or Chrysomelinae shows signs of maternal instincts and active care. Mothers “actively defend offspring” as well as the eggs.

Carbon-nanotube computer could revolutionise electronics

Engineers have made a basic computer using carbon nanotubes, a material they say could launch a new generation of faster, more energy-efficient electronic devices. Carbon nanotubes are semiconductors, materials that conduct electricity in a limited way. Semiconductors are essential to electronic devices because they allow electrical signals to be controlled. Silicon is the semiconductor material used in most electronics now.  Carbon nanotubes are a tough, flexible material composed of carbon atoms arranged geometrically into thin tubes, each thousands of times thinner than a hair.

Milky Way black hole’s last big blast dated to 2 million years ago

A dormant “volcano” — a giant black hole — lies at the heart of our galaxy. Fresh evidence suggests it last erupted two million years ago, astronomers say.  The evidence, they say, comes from a lacy thread of gas, mostly hydrogen, called the Magellanic Stream, trailing our galaxy’s two small companion galaxies, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds.

Termites create their own antibiotics

Termites have developed an ingenious defence against pesticide: They make antibacterial nests out of their own fæces.

Higgs boson could explain facets of dark energy

One of the biggest mysteries in physics is why a mysterious substance called “dark energy,” found to dominate the energy count in the universe, has a smaller value than it’s supposed to have. Scientists estimate that value as one-followed-by-120-zeros times smaller than would be expected based on fundamental physics. The puzzle is often called the cosmological constant problem. Now, two physicists suggest that the recently discovered Higgs boson—an entity considered responsible for giving objects their mass, so they can weigh something — is also behind the cosmological constant problem.

Researchers measure consciousness through brain activity

A new study seems to back up previous proposals that the level of complexity of your brain activity largely determines whether you’re conscious or not.

Orangutans found to plan, communicate future routes

Male orangutans plan their travel route up to a day in advance and communicate it to other orangutans, research indicates. Anthropologists at the University of Zurich found that wild-living orangutans make use of the planning ability to attract females and repel male rivals.

Fossil find solves marine mystery

The identification of the 12-million-year-old fossils pushes the record of sirenia or sea cows, the group of marine mammals that includes dugongs, in the region back seven millions years.

Shades of grey help brain sense surfaces

A new theory of how the brain perceives visual surfaces in the physical world could open pathways to improvements in robotics and bionics.  Dr Tony Vladusich, of the University of South Australia, has developed a mathematical theory of how the brain perceives surface characteristics, such as glossiness, transparency and lightness.

Fossil of most successful mammal unearthed

Remains of the oldest ancestor of the most evolutionarily successful and long-lived mammal lineage have just been unearthed in China. The mammal — one of several creatures known as multituberculates — looked like a cross between a small rat and a chipmunk. It lived 160 million years ago during the Cretaceous era. This particular new species was Rugosodon eurasiaticus, which is the oldest known multituberculate. Its remains were found preserved in lake sediments, suggesting that it lived on the shores.

Qubits teleported at kilobits per second

For the first time, researchers have teleported 10,000 bits of information per second inside a solid state circuit. Although the accomplishment differs from teleporting mass - such as that seen on science fiction shows like Star Trek — the remarkable feat demonstrates what could be possible with a quantum computer.

Bone tools found at Neanderthal site

Sophisticated leather-working tools found in a cave in France offer the first evidence that Neanderthals had more advanced bone tools than early modern humans. The four fragments of hide-softening bone tools known as lissoirs, or smoothers, were found at two neighbouring sites in southern France.

First colour detected for planet outside our system

Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope say they have figured out the colour of a planet outside our solar system for the first time. It’s cobalt blue, though not at all Earth-like, they said, describing a world where surface temperatures are hot enough to melt stone and where it may rain glass — sideways. The planet is HD 189733b, one of the closest worlds out­side our solar system visible crossing the face of its star, 63 light-years away.

Dolphin memory

A new study has found dolphins can remember the call of another dolphin decades later.

Giant viruses raise questions about life

The discovery of two giant new viruses has made scientists ponder the origins of life.  The so-called Pandoraviruses are at least twice the size, both in terms of their physical scale and genome complexity, of the previous record holder Mimivirus.

Snow lines reveal birthplace of planets

Astronomers have identified a ring of frozen carbon monoxide orbiting a newly-formed star, which could provide new clues into how planets first form.

DNA study unlocks microbial dark matter

Scientists have uncovered the genomes of 'microbial dark matter' - microbes previously unexplored by science - using cutting-edge DNA technology. The research provides new insight into bacterial genetics and helps create a more detailed picture of the evolutionary tree of life. Microbial dark matter refers to an enormous number of microbes that can't be grown in the laboratory. Consequently, their biology and genetics have been a mystery to science. Now, a new technology called single cell genome sequencing has allowed scientists in this study to uncover the genomes of 29 groups of these microbes.