Researchers conducted a first-of-its-kind study designed to investigate brain connectivity in 130 mammalian species. The intriguing results, contradicting widespread conjectures, revealed that brain connectivity levels are equal in all mammals, …read more Source:: Science
Tag: mammals
Human activity threatens vertebrate evolutionary history
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•A new study maps for the first time the evolutionary history of the world’s terrestrial vertebrates: amphibians, birds, mammals and reptiles. It explores how areas with large concentrations of evolutionarily …read more Source:: Science
Jurassic fossil shows how early mammals could swallow like their modern descendants
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•The 165-million-year-old fossil of Microdocodon gracilis, a tiny, shrew-like animal, shows the earliest example of modern hyoid bones in mammal evolution. …read more Source:: Science
Evolutionary backing found in analysis of mammalian vertebrae
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•Differences in numbers of vertebrae are most extreme in mammals which do not rely on running and leaping, such as those adapted to suspensory locomotion like apes and sloths, a …read more Source:: Science
Clues from a Somalian cavefish about modern mammals’ dark past
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•After millions of years living in darkness, a species of blind cavefish has lost an ancient system of DNA repair. That DNA repair system, found in organisms including bacteria, fungi, …read more Source:: Science
Marine mammals lack functional gene to defend against popular pesticide
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•As marine mammals evolved to make water their primary habitat, they lost the ability to make a protein that defends humans and other land-dwelling mammals from the neurotoxic effects of …read more Source:: Science
Why are whales so big?
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•Examining body sizes of ancient and modern aquatic mammals and their terrestrial counterparts reveals that life in water restricts mammals to a narrow range of body sizes — big enough …read more Source:: Science
Mammals and birds could have best shot at surviving climate change
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•New research that analyzed more than 270 million years of data on animals shows that mammals and birds – both warm-blooded animals – may have a better chance of evolving …read more Source:: Science
Humans take up too much space — and it’s affecting how mammals move
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•Human beings take up a lot of real estate — around 50-70 percent of the Earth’s land surface. And our increasing footprint affects how mammals of all sizes, from all …read more Source:: Science
West African dolphin now listed as one of Africa’s rarest mammals
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•A group of scientists now considers a little-known dolphin that only lives along the Atlantic coasts of Western Africa to be among the continent’s most endangered mammals, a list that …read more Source:: Science