From Aristotle to Darwin, inaccurate and biased narratives in science not only reproduce these biases in future generations but also perpetuate the discrimination they are used to justify.
Mammals have evolved flight more often than birds. By studying the genes of the sugar glider, biologists have found a ‘molecular toolkit’ for flight membranes that’s been in us all along.
Unravelling the mystery of how life in Antarctica survived past ice ages involved sampling some of the oldest museum records. When combined with a dating database, a familiar story is revealed.
Antarctic minke whales are elusive and hard to track – but a new study of their behaviour offers clues to their evolution and the limits of their filter-feeding behaviour.
Laure Metz, Aix-Marseille Université (AMU); Jason E. Lewis, Stony Brook University (The State University of New York), and Ludovic Slimak, Université Toulouse – Jean Jaurès
In 2022 we detailed the discovery of 1,500 stone points in France’s Madrin cave. Experiments now show that they could were used as arrowheads, pushing back evidence of archery in Eurasia by 40,000 years.
New research provides insights into the evolution and ecology of Australian bees. The capricious masked bee employs female nest guards in a cooperative social structure. Meanwhile, fussy feeders abound.
A local legend of a mysterious bird with big eyes grew into the discovery of the Príncipe scops owl. A biologist on the team tells the story of finding and cataloging this new species.
By learning what parts of the brain are crucial for imagination to work, neuroscientists can look back over hundreds of millions of years of evolution to figure out when it first emerged.
Fossil evidence of how the earliest life on Earth came to be is hard to come by. But scientists have come up with a few theories based on the microbes, viruses and prions existing today.