When they first evolved from lizards more than 100 million years ago, snakes were ecological bit players slithering around the fringes of ecosystems dominated by dinosaurs. But today there are around ...

We humans have long viewed ourselves as the pinnacle of evolution. People label other species as “primitive” or “ancient” and use terms like “higher” and “lower” animals. ‘Man’ is at the very top ...

Tree thinking is a pedagogical approach that emphasises the interpretation and construction of phylogenetic trees to elucidate evolutionary relationships. In the context of evolutionary biology ...

New research headed by scientists at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) has demonstrated how the three-dimensional shape of a protein can be used to resolve deep, ancient evolutionary ...

Just as bird watchers may use binoculars to add to their species lists, scientists interested in bird evolution may use computational tools to clarify avian lineages. Indeed, such tools have enabled ...

Birds are the most diverse land vertebrate on the planet, and now scientists have constructed a complete evolutionary tree of the 11,000 or so known species. This data came from hundreds of studies ...

Imagine zooming out on a giant family tree that includes every bird you have ever seen. Ostriches sprint across open plains, ...

Centromeres play virtually the same central role across the entire tree of life: They ensure the faithful segregation of ...

We humans have long viewed ourselves as the pinnacle of evolution. People label other species as “primitive” or “ancient” and use terms like “higher” and “lower” animals. This anthropocentric ...