Common genes form new family tree for animals
...lines of descent that first diverged from a common ancestor at least 540million years ago, and that gave rise ...er. The upshot, she said, is that an ancientcommon ancestor conferred these genes on animals that subsequently evolved indramatically different directions. "Bef...Molecular biologists prune branches from the animal family tree
...tial tocontrol development implies that the common ancestor may well have been a fairlysophisticated animal," Carroll says. The reconstruction of the evolutionary tree has far-reaching implications,the researchers observe. For example, investigators may need to reexamine theirchoices of model species for bas...Team of 200 scientists presents new research that reveals full 'tree of life' for plants
...reen plants nowon land are descended and that this ancestor spawned every green plant now aliveon earth. The ...d that mosses were derivedfrom a different aquatic ancestor than were flowers or ferns. Now we've learnedthat at all levels of the green plant family tree, plan...Primate genus sheds light on great ape and human origins, as reported in Science
... complex evolutionary tree around the time whenthe ancestor to humans and great apes arose, and reveals that o...pithecus wickeri , is more closely related to that ancestor thanpreviously thought. The ape family tree has dwindled to a few remaining twigs today, but during ......mmals. "Our findings suggest that the ancestor of vertebrate retroviruses mayhave had an early metazoan origin," said Bowen. While the discovery of the possible ancient origin for vertebrateretroviruses is significant, the paper in Genome Research goes even farther,proposing a new LTR ret...Primitive primate makes the case for Asian anthropoid origins
...found in Myanmar lend support to the idea that the ancestor of allmonkeys and apes lived in Asia instead of Africa. The new species, dubbed Bahinia pondaungensis in the 15 October issue of Science , may alsoshed light on what kind of primate was the likely predecessor to this monkey/apegroup. Researchers fr...New evidence pushes back age of sex-determining chromosomes
...-determining X andY chromosomes indicates that the ancestor of human sex chromosomes first arosefrom an identical pair of standard chromosomes approximately 240 to 320 millionyears ago, shortly after the divergence of the evolutionary lines leading tomammals and birds. "The first events that created the sex ...Shedding light on the origin of primate color vision
...ught that color vision first evolved in the common ancestor of higher primates about 35-40 million years ago. The new research pushes the origin of color vision in primates back to about 55 million years ago. Wen-Hsiung Li, Ph.D., professor of ecology & evolution at the University and his postdoctoral fell...Formosan termite may be top concern of entomologists of the new millenium, according to report
...ne can easily imagine "Lucy," the proposed ancient ancestor of humans swatting at mosquitoes on a hot day in East Africa several million years ago. Since then, it's gotten worse, if anything. Fleas carried the bubonic plague across Europe, and millions died. Mosquitoes have caused outbreaks of disease across ...New fossil snake with legs, reported in Science
...plays a pivotal role in a scenario that places the ancestor of snakes in the sea. In support of Pachyrhachis ' position at the base of the serpent family tree, some paleontologists have noted features in its skull that they believe single it out as a transitional link between mosasaurs--gigantic swimming liz...Jews are the genetic brothers of Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese
...egion. Consequently, Jews and Arabs share a common ancestor and are more closely related to one another than to non-Jews from other areas of the world. The study also revealed that despite the complex history of Jewish migration in the Diaspora (the time since 556 B.C. when Jews migrated out of Palestine)......marsupials and other mammals descend from a common ancestor where a father's young had to compete -- and the mother tried to stop them....Ancient feathered animal challenges dinosaur-bird link
...er known to have feathers, which may have been the ancestor of birds but clearly was not a dinosaur -- a disco...conclusively prove that this animal was indeed the ancestor of flying birds, Ruben said, it's clearly consistent with that possibility. "We can identify certa...Hummingbird studies raise questions about birdsong evolution
...purpose. Alternately, there may have been a common ancestor with the ability to learn song, andonly a few of the descendants retained this ability along with the specialized brain regions. Jarvis said that all the evidence supports the former explanation (that vocal learningdeveloped independently three ...Scientists unravel ancient evolutionary history of photosynthesis
...acteria are the most closely related to the common ancestor of the oxygen-producing photosynthetic cyanobacteria. Cyanobacteria eventually gave rise to chloroplasts in algae and green plants, and chloroplasts are the small bodies in plant cells that carry out photosynthesis today. The Bauer group's results r...Study provides direct evidence of cannibalism in the Southwest
...r a wide variety of reasons, including starvation, ancestor worship and political terrorism, the scientist wrote. "With presentation of the first direct evidence of cannibalism in the American Southwest in the prehistoric era, we hope that the debate will shift from the question of whether or not cannibalism ......ganisms, this strongly argues that the last common ancestor of vertebrate and invertebrate lineages already had a well-formed eye. The animal eye may only have evolved once, and the bewildering differences in structure would then be due to subsequent evolutionary radiation. Apart from this insight, the work o...Ancient running reptile was bipedal, say Science researchers
...ptiles. Eudibamus does not appear to be a direct ancestor to later reptiles--including some dinosaurs--that adopted a bipedal posture and gait. This may indicate that bipedal adaptations arose several times independently during reptile evolution, said Science co-author Robert R. Reisz of the University o......s show up. Related species descended from a common ancestor have many genes in common, but they occur in diffe...DNA that used to be on chromosome 2 in some common ancestor ends up on chromosome 10, in between two pieces that used to belong to ancestral chromosomes 3 and 5......f the birds living today have a most recent common ancestor that they share," said Clarke, who is in Yales Department of Geology. "This fossil is just outside the group or clade that includes the decendants of that common ancestor. It is the best preserved specimen of a fossil from close to the radiation of a...