Ancient dog DNA reveals 11,000 years of canine evolution

The largest-ever study of ancient dog genomes has revealed a lot about our four-legged friends. The analysis of more than two dozen Eurasian dogs suggests that the animals were domesticated and became widespread well before 11,000 years ago. With so many genomes, the researchers could follow ancient dog populations as they moved and mixed and compare these shifts with those in human populations.

The enigmatic species of the Ediacaran

Animal, vegetable or something else entirely? For decades, researchers were baffled by fossils of bizarre living things that dated back to the Ediacaran period — around half a billion years ago. But recent evidence suggests that some of these alien-like species were in fact animals — including ones that had guts, segmented bodies and other sophisticated features. Researchers are using these finds to re-examine a pivotal event in evolutionary history: the Cambrian explosion.

Tyrannosaur hatchlings were chihuahua-sized

Scans of the first known fossils of embryonic tyrannosaurs reveal that they were about the size of a small dog when born. A lower jaw bone and a foot claw, which were found at different sites in western North America, are thought to be from two babies that were 70 and 90 centimetres long. The embryos were not from Tyrannosaurus rex, but an earlier species of related tyrannosaur that has not been identified.