Hundreds of fossils uncovered in southern China's province of Yunnan reveal that at least some of the life-forms scientists had thought arose in the Cambrian period were alive and thriving millions of years earlier, in an era known as the Ediacaran period.
The bodies of the crabs displayed male reproductive structures, while other parts showcased female features, including gonopores, said K.S. Anoop Das.
In this tree of life, The Straits Times examines each Pokemon character's closest proxies in the real world, uncovering the scientific concepts hidden in their designs. Beyond the original species, we delve into creatures from different dimensions and eras that were introduced in later versions of the game.
In a recent study published in the zoology journal Crustaceana, scientists working in Silent Valley National Park reported a new variety of the crab that exhibits both male and female traits. Our new crab friends, of the species Vela carli, are freshwater dwellers that hang out in the streams of the Western Ghats in India.
The vast majority of animal species on this planet lay eggs, most insects, most fish, most amphibians, most reptiles, all birds, and even a few mammals lay eggs to reproduce. And if you go back far enough, you can see that our ancestors laid eggs for millions of years too.
We think that in this early deuterostome, the median eye contained both ciliary and rhabdomeric cells. As a result, both cellular lineages were incorporated into a single, ancient, cyclopean eye, which later evolved into the vertebrate eyes.
In a naturalistic rendition of David vs. Goliath, a 28-pound Reeves's muntjac named Tata, a small deer species native to Asia, took on Maruśka, a 1.7-ton female rhinoceros, in a fierce head-to-head at the Wroclaw Zoo in Poland. A video that's gone viral on social media shows the miniature deer fiercely standing its ground and charging at the far more massive rhino, clashing into its horn-tipped snout with tiny antlers.
The mirror spider can rapidly shift a patchwork of minuscule reflective plates underneath its abdomen's outer surface, altering the pattern of mirrorlike flashes. This uncommon display comes from common building blocks: Similar tilelike arrangements of plates and soft joints appear throughout the tree of life, from turtle shells to tropical fruit peels. Researchers have now compiled 100 examples of this pattern across animals, plants, microbes and viruses, which they describe in PNAS Nexus.
Biodiversity loss is continuing at an unprecedented rate, with species becoming extinct at between 100 and 1,000 times the average pre-human, or 'background', rate. Human activities are the main cause. Although there are hundreds of local, regional and international initiatives to conserve and sustainably use species and ecosystems, many conservation scientists worry that measures such as interventions to conserve individual species or incentives to create protected areas are not supported by strong evidence from research.
Wooden objects carrying the marks of carving and use could be the oldest wooden tools ever found. Researchers dated the artefacts, found in what is now Greece, to 430,000 years ago - and suggest they might have been made by early Neanderthals or their ancestors, Homo heidelbergensis. A separate study describes 480,000-old flint-knapping tools made from antler and elephant bone, from what is now the United Kingdom.
The lava heron also has a much thicker bill than other closely related herons - an adaptation linked to feeding among sharp volcanic rocks and hard-shelled prey. "What we learned was something that hadn't been reported before," Mendales said. The discovery underscores how much remains unknown, even in iconic places like the Galápagos, said John Dumbacher, the Academy's curator of birds and mammals and Mendales' thesis adviser.
But as he swept his flashlight through the dark waters, something unexpected emerged. Inching through the beam of light, an alien creature crawled across the surface of the sand, resembling an inch-long cluster of ghostly leaves fringed with silvery filigree and capped with a pair of antennae-like stalks. It immediately caught my eye, said Gosliner, Invertebrate Zoology Curator for the California Academy of Sciences. I've been diving there for 30 years and this one immediately struck me as different.
