Field Museum plays key role in massive project to map Tree of Life
...and most diverse groups of organisms, with fossils dating back 380 million years and a current diversity of more than 37,500 described species. Without spiders, insect pest populations would soar, and humans would be greatly affected. "We'll sequence the DNA of representative samples of at least 500 spide...Science picksleads, feeds and story seeds (November 2002)
...crecy, 50,000 more frames of spy satellite imagery dating back to the 1960s will soon be available to the public. Bringing these photos in from the "cold" is an ongoing initiative between the USGS, the National Archives and Records Administration and the National Intelligence Mapping Agency. Declassifying...Scientists discover ancient protein and DNA sequences in the same fossil
...teins can exist in fossil bones beyond radiocarbon dating age. Moreover, intriguing data from our laboratories suggest that extending protein sequencing well beyond 55,000 years is a realistic possibility."...Arsenic in Bangladesh drinking wells may be linked to crop irrigation, MIT study finds
...rce of the carbon. Harvey's team used radiocarbon dating to determine the age of the carbon isotopes in the groundwater at various depths. They found that very young and very old carbon were mixed, and concluded that water had carried young organic carbon (probably derived from untreated waste on the surfa...Toy choice among boys, girls a matter of monkey business
...ay relate to traditional male and female functions dating back to the dawn of the species. She says the toys preferred by boys the ball and the car are described as objects with the ability to be used actively and be propelled through space. Though the specific reasons behind the monkeys' preferences have...Antarctic ice seals life's fate
... top of the thick ice cover and froze." Carbon-14 dating showed microbes gathered from ice near the brine to be more than 2,800 years old. Doran said the brine is likely to be at least that old, forming as salts settled down into it while thick ice grew outward from the sealed, freeze-resistant salty lake....Invading weeds escaped old enemies, brought immunity
...ly significant in that it reconciles two theories, dating back to Charles Darwin in 1859, about successful naturalization of invading species. Their findings, the ecologists say, should encourage biological-control strategists to look for weed-control pathogens both in the invading weeds' native and adopte...Genetics may help solve mysteries of human evolution
...hich is involved in human speech and language. The dating indicates that this gene evolved ''sometime between last Tuesday and 200,000 years ago,'' Klein said. He believes this estimate is extremely conservative, and that the gene evolved closer to 50,000 years ago - a date that would support a biological c...New age for Mungo Man, new human history
...rvice, and used multiple methods and four separate dating laboratories to achieve a final consensus. "Dr Nig...oth co-authors on the paper, have advanced current dating techniques and were integral in achieving confidence in the accuracy of our results. They were supp...Squirrels' evolutionary 'family tree' reveals major influence of climate, geology
...here various lineages lived, they also used fossil dating records and "molecular clock" analyses, which predict how DNA sequences change over time. Comparing their findings with geological evidence, they noted "an interesting interplay between global change and the way this particular group of animals diver...New species of earliest-known salamanders found in China
... sites, scientists had complete salamander fossils dating back only to the Tertiary period, which began 65 m...in the local forest preserve or in a rock in China dating back 165 million years, they look alike. In fact, they look alike in great detail the bones in thei...Physics tip sheet #33 March 28, 2003
...s. The studies may also be handy for archeological dating of bricks and ceramics....Speedy elephants use a biomechanical trick to 'run' like Groucho
...ephants descend from one of two apocryphal hunches dating back over 60 years," Famini wrote in an e-mail. Said Hutchinson: "Here we actually have the videotape and data to back it up, whereas with an anecdote, like some big game hunter clocking an elephant with a speedometer on a car, it's just not reliable...50 Arctic lakes show dramatic effects of climate warming
...r with those from the bottom, pre-industrial layer dating back about 200 years. They found that the aquatic habitat of today is much different from that of pre-industrial times. More fossils of the type that live in open water environments were found in the top (most recent) layer of sediment an indication...Hebrew University excavations strengthen dating of archaeological findings to David, Solomon
...stroyed by him at Tel Rehov provides an anchor for dating other sites with similar material culture. This similar culture was found at Hazor and Megiddo in occupation levels which were identified as "Solomonic" in the past. Thus, these results provide a new foundation for the traditional view concerning th...Whale study links genetics and reproductive success
...ns, with life history records of individual whales dating back to 1979. Research is further facilitated by the fact that humpback whales can be identified by a variety of unique markings, such as scratches, dorsal fins and white markings beneath the tail flukes that can be viewed as the animal dives.The rel...Mouse study suggests mammoth evolutionary change
...nalyzed DNA samples taken from 56 museum specimens dating as far back as 1855, along with 52 recently captured mice from local forest preserves and state parks. Wayne Barnes, professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics at the Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine, assisted in analyzin...First soybeans grown in space similar to Earth-grown crops
...a rich tradition of space exploration initiatives, dating to NASA's origination 33 years ago. For example, when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in 1969, his spacesuit included 25 separate layers 23 of those layers were DuPont materials. In 1984, Pioneer corn seeds were on board a Challenger shuttle lau...160,000-year-old fossilized skulls from Ethiopia are oldest modern humans
...ragments from Klasies River Mouth in South Africa, dating from about 100,000 years ago, and Middle Eastern fossils from Qafzeh and Skhul dating from 90,000 to 130,000 years ago. Ethiopia has yielded some modern human fossils, including those fr...Whale populations are too low to resume commercial hunting, geneticists find
... historic estimates on unconfirmed whaling records dating back to the mid-1800s. "It is well known that hunting dramatically reduced all baleen whale populations, yet reliable estimates of former whale abundances are elusive," wrote Palumbi and Harvard graduate student Joe Roman, lead author of the study. "...