EARLY EARTH - INDO DAILY

Oxygen-depleted oceans had key role in mass extinction over 200M years ago

Apr 05, 2015 (SPX)

Changes in the biochemical balance of the ocean were a crucial factor in the end-Triassic mass extinction, during which half of all plant, animal and marine lif...

Discovering missing body parts of ancient fossils

Apr 02, 2015 (SPX)

Certain specimens of the fossil Dickinsonia are incomplete because ancient currents lifted them from the sea floor, a team of researchers led by paleontologists...

Discovery of 2 new species of primitive fishes

Apr 01, 2015 (SPX)

Saurichthys is a predatory fish characterized by a long thin body and a sharply pointed snout with numerous teeth. This distinctive ray-finned fish lived in mar...

Wandering Jupiter accounts for our unusual solar system

Mar 25, 2015 (SPX)

Jupiter may have swept through the early solar system like a wrecking ball, destroying a first generation of inner planets before retreating into its current or...

Crocodile ancestor was top predator before dinosaurs

Mar 23, 2015 (SPX)

A newly discovered crocodilian ancestor may have filled one of North America's top predator roles before dinosaurs arrived on the continent. Carnufex carolinens...

Fierce 'Superflares' from the Sun Zapped an Infant Earth

Mar 22, 2015 (SPX)

Our young sun may have routinely blasted Earth with gobs of energy more powerful than any similar bombardments recorded in human history. Huge bursts of these p...

Iron rain fell on early Earth, new Z machine data supports

Mar 19, 2015 (SPX)

Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories' Z machine have helped untangle a long-standing mystery of astrophysics: why iron is found spattered throughout Eart...

Evolution of the back-to-belly axis

Mar 19, 2015 (SPX)

Most animals have a dorso-ventral (back-to-belly) body axis, which determines for instance the localized position of the central nervous system, dorsal in human...

Researchers rethink how our feathered friends evolved

Mar 19, 2015 (SPX)

A recently published global genome study that used the data-intensive Gordon supercomputer at the San Diego Supercomputer at the University of California, San D...

Big toe's big foot holds evolutionary key

Mar 19, 2015 (SPX)

Our skeletons hold tell-tale signs that show that human bipedalism - walking upright and on two feet - are unique to humans especially when compared to our clos...

Protein sequencing solves Darwinian mystery of 'strange' South American mammals

Mar 19, 2015 (SPX)

Scientists have resolved pieces of a nearly 200-year-old evolutionary puzzle surrounding the group of mammals that Charles Darwin called the "strangest animals ...

Some genes 'foreign' in origin and not from our ancestors

Mar 17, 2015 (SPX)

Many animals, including humans, acquired essential 'foreign' genes from microorganisms co-habiting their environment in ancient times, according to research pub...

Tiny new fossil helps rewrite crab evolution, sheds lights on late Jurassic marine world

Mar 13, 2015 (SPX)

NHM curator co-authors paper on 150-million-year-old fossilized crab larva, found in southern Germany A paper in the journal Nature Communications (March 9, 201...

Discovery demystifies origin of life phenomenon

Mar 12, 2015 (SPX)

The origin of life is still a mystery with many unsolved puzzles. How were molecules created? How did they assemble into large structures? Among the conundrums,...

Same forces as today caused climate changes 1.4 billion years ago

Mar 12, 2015 (SPX)

Natural forces have always caused the climate on Earth to fluctuate. Now researchers have found geological evidence that some of the same forces as today were a...

Getting to the origins of photosynthesis

Mar 12, 2015 (SPX)

One of the most important areas in all of biology is the evolution of photosynthesis. Some species of single celled cyanobacteria, through photosynthesis, forev...

Asian monsoon rains drove mammal evolution

Mar 12, 2015 (SPX)

New findings, published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, could have implications for conserving the species living in the vast area affected by monsoon...

Fossil skull sheds new light on transition from water to land

Mar 12, 2015 (SPX)

The first 3D reconstruction of the skull of a 360 million-year-old near-ancestor of land vertebrates has been created by scientists from the Universities of Bri...

Invertebrate palaeontology: The oldest crab larva yet found

Mar 12, 2015 (SPX)

A study of a recently discovered fossil published by LMU zoologists reveals the specimen to be the oldest known crab larva: The fossil is 150 million years old,...

Animal functional diversity started out poor, became richer over time

Mar 06, 2015 (SPX)

Like a master painter who uses the same brush techniques to continually create original works of art, evolution has produced unique species to fill new or vacat...