Head lice reveal contact between modern and ancient humans
...years. It is unlikely, the authors argue, that two ancient louse lineages could embark on such different evolutionary histories on the back (or head) of a single host. More likely, the New World louse evolved on an archaic form of humans and subsequently transferred to a modern version. The split between...Old bones unearth new date for giant deer's last stand
...entists scoured the continent to collect dozens of ancient bones and teeth which, when radiocarbon dated, revealed that the Eurasian giant deer survived to 7,000 years ago, much later than previously thought. Giant deer first appeared about 400,000 years and roamed much of the Eurasian continent alongside t...Component of volcanic gas may have played a significant role in the origins of life on Earth
...mps of cyanobacteria that grew in abundance in the ancient world over 3.5 billion years ago in what is now we...the origins of life has suggested the notion of an ancient RNA world--one in which RNA genes stored genetic information (something done by DNA today), carried ...Health, food, new technologies featured during ACS meeting Oct. 17-20 in Peoria, Ill.
...ts at the University of Illinois in Urbana say the ancient sweetener may be a healthier alternative than corn syrup due to its higher level of antioxidants, compounds which are believed to fight cancer, heart disease, stroke and other diseases. Honey, which contains a number of antioxidant components that ac...Ancient Chinese folk remedy packs anti-cancer punch
...ighting compounds derived from a substance used in ancient Chinese medicine will be developed for potential u... the wormwood plant and used throughout Asia since ancient times to treat malaria. Although the compounds are promising, potential medical applications are ...Arctic mystery no longer: Dinosaurs walked Canada's great north
...it. "The fact that I may bring new perspectives on ancient life is what keeps me going," he says. Larsson, who teaches biology and is curator of vertebrate palaeontology at McGill's Redpath Museum, is most interested in discovering unknown species. Of particular interest are archosaurian reptiles, (crocodile...For inferring the biological tree of life, simple is better
...cts on the body. In 2003, Thornton resurrected the ancient gene for the first steroid hormone receptor - which last existed more than 600 million years ago - in the laboratory and expressed it in cultured cells to understand its function, work that was published in the journal Science. He also is an expert i...Ancient sea spider fossils discovered in volcanic ash
...o near Herefordshire, UK has yielded fossils of an ancient sea spider, or pycnogonid, one of the most unusual...of Biospheric Studies . "Volcanic ash that trapped ancient sea life in this location rapidly encased the creatures making a concrete-like cast of the bodies. T...Mystery unwrapped: Texas A&M team uncovers mummy secrets
...4 Some Texas A&M University researchers examining ancient Egyptian mummies may have unwrapped literally some of the mysteries that embalmers used to preserve bodies more than 3,000 years ago. Mahlon "Chuck" Kennicutt II, MoonKoo Kim and Yaorong Qian of Texas A&M's College of Geosciences, along with co...Darwin's greatest challenge tackled: the mystery of eye evolution
... unexpected evolutionary origin they come from an ancient population of light-sensitive cells that were initially located in the brain. "It is not surprising that cells of human eyes come from the brain. We still have light-sensitive cells in our brains today which detect light and influence our daily rhyth...Gut microbes can open gates in fat cells
...resistant. The response of Fiaf to microbes is an ancient one. The research team's studies of germ-free zebrafish have documented a similar suppression of Fiaf when these fish are exposed to gut microbes. "Fiaf is one of many host factors that we are finding to be influenced by gut microbes," Gordon says. "...Are museum collections of ancient life representative?
...al public look to museums for the best examples of ancient life the biggest dinosaur, the nicest fossils of plants and bugs. Increasingly, researchers are looking to museum collections to answer questions about what lived on earth millions of years ago and how life evolved. Digging up stream beds, river ban...... Virginia Tech. But what kind of adult would these ancient embryos have hatched into? In 2000, Xiao's team reported the discovery of a coral-like animal that might be a candidate for parenthood (Xiao, S., Yuan, X., and Knoll, A.H., 2000, "Eumetazoan fossils in terminal Proterozoic phosphorites?" Proceedings ...Scientists pioneer biotech techniques to halt infestation of history, art treasures in tropics
...ost to other causes). Particularly vulnerable are ancient religious wooden sculptures which, if not properly preserved, can eventually crumble "like a saltine cracker," says Ms. Rivero. The symposium Nov. 4-5 has attracted more than 100 registered curators and students and may lead to the creation of a post...Crucial evolutionary link points to origins of modern cells
...hat the endomembrane system developed because some ancient bacterial cells had the ability to sharply curve their membranes, allowing them to form internal membrane structures as well as to engulf other organisms. The findings reported by Rout and colleagues suggest that an ancestor of an NPC component, call...Sea change: Skeletons of ancient corals different from today's
...ly wanted to test how modern corals respond to the ancient levels of magnesium and calcium because these chem...ould observe their growth and calcification in the ancient seawaters." The corals were grown under special lights called "PowerCompacts" which simulated ...Ancient marine invasion sheds light on diversity
... collection area was a half meter piece of exposed ancient sea floor. Fossils were collected from areas that were originally deep sea floor, deep subtidal sea floor, shallow subtidal sea floor and protected lagoon sea floor. The fossils represent six time slices, each of about a million years, however, for ...Ancient creature fossilized by the bacteria that ate it
...e that was preserved in a very unusual way: by the ancient bacteria that devoured it. And only yards away, th...ence that a particular type of bacteria has a very ancient history on Earth. Loren Babcock, professor of geological sciences at Ohio State, and his colleagu...Ancient fossil offers new clues to brown bears past
...one of the known genetic populations of modern and ancient brown bears. This was possible because of a previo...borative study by Matheus and the Oxford lab using ancient DNA to uncover the population structure of ancient brown bears in Beringia. "One thing that earlie...Genome of ancient fish could reveal evolutionary mysteries, Stanford scientists say
...ersity School of Medicine who hope to sequence the ancient genome to learn how animals evolved to live on land. The 5-foot, 130-pound fish in question, called the coelacanth, ekes out an existence in cool, deep-water caves off the Comoro Islands in the Indian Ocean and northern Indonesia. Its lobed fins, ske...