Properly deciphering the branching pathways of evolution could unlock the history of every component of natural biology.

Birds are the most diverse land vertebrate on the planet, and now scientists have constructed a complete evolutionary tree of the 11,000 or so known species. This data came from hundreds of studies ...

If we look across the whole of the mammal branch of the tree of life, we find there are many groups of mammals that have evolved testicles of all different sizes. In almost all these separate cases, ...

The oldest fossilised remains of complex animals appear suddenly in the fossil record, and as if from nowhere, in rocks that ...

Anyone who has watched a rooster stalking around a farmyard might agree that there is something very dinosaur-like about birds. That may come as no surprise, given that birds are dinosaurs. But in ...

Scientists organize millions of proteins by shape, as predicted by AI, revealing 700,000 new families and some shapes unique to humans.

Almost every plant we eat has a flower, and flowering plants populate every corner of the planet. But many questions remain about how and when this vast group emerged throughout the history of life on ...

The order Primates consists of not only our closest relatives on earth, the seven great apes, but also over 450 species of monkeys, lemurs, lorises, and galagos. Primates are fantastically diverse, ...

An updated evolutionary model shows that living systems evolve in a split-and-hit-the-gas dynamic, where new lineages appear in sudden bursts rather than during a long marathon of gradual changes.

If you're wondering whether birds are reptiles, know this: The reptile family tree is more varied and diverse than you might realize. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an ...