Origin of Life News

September 24, 2023

Top Headlines

Probing the Deep Genetic Structure of Africa

Sep. 22, 2023 — Using ancestry decomposition techniques an international research team has revealed a deeply divergent ancestry among admixed populations from the Angolan Namib desert. This unique genetic heritage brings the researchers closer to understanding the ...

Dinosaur Feathers Reveal Traces of Ancient Proteins

Sep. 21, 2023 — Palaeontologists have discovered X-ray evidence of proteins in fossil feathers that sheds new light on feather ...

New Recipes for Origin of Life May Point Way to Distant, Inhabited Planets

Sep. 19, 2023 — Life on a faraway planet -- if it's out there -- might not look anything like life on Earth. But there are only so many chemical ingredients in the universe's pantry, and only so many ways to mix them. Scientists have now exploited those limitations ...

Prehistoric Fish Fills 100 Million Year Gap in Evolution of the Skull

Sep. 20, 2023 — X-rays of an ancient jawless fish shows earliest-known example of internal cartilage skull, unlike that of any other known ...

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updated 2:13pm EDT

Tiny Sea Creatures Reveal the Ancient Origins of Neurons

Sep. 19, 2023 — A new study sheds new light on the origins of modern brain cells. Researchers find evidence that specialized secretory cells found in placozoans, tiny sea creatures the size of a grain of sand, have ...

RNA for the First Time Recovered from an Extinct Species

Sep. 19, 2023 — A new study shows the isolation and sequencing of more than a century-old RNA molecules from a Tasmanian tiger specimen preserved at room temperature in a museum collection. This resulted in the ...

Nature's Great Survivors: Flowering Plants Survived the Mass Extinction That Killed the Dinosaurs

Sep. 12, 2023 — A new study by researchers from the University of Bath (UK) and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Mexico) shows that flowering plants ...

Fossil Spines Reveal Deep Sea's Past

Sep. 5, 2023 — Right at the bottom of the deep sea, the first very simple forms of life on earth probably emerged a long time ago. Today, the deep sea is known for its bizarre fauna. Intensive research is being ...

Pioneering Research Sheds Surprising New Light on Evolution of Plant Kingdom

Sep. 5, 2023 — A new study has uncovered intriguing insights into the evolution of plant biology, effectively rewriting the history of how they evolved over the ...

Tiny Mineral Inclusions Picture the Chemical Exchange Between Earth's Mantle and Atmosphere

Aug. 31, 2023 — Using synchrotron techniques, scientists have unveiled important information on The Great Oxidation Event by studying apatite inclusions in zircon ...

Mutation Rates in Whales Are Much Higher Than Previously Reported

Aug. 31, 2023 — An international team of marine scientists has studied the DNA of family groups from four different whale species to estimate their mutation rates. Using the newly determined rates, the group found ...

Noncoding DNA Explains a Majority of the Heritability of Dairy Cattle Traits, Like Milk Production and Fertility

Aug. 23, 2023 — Regulatory genes -- genes that control how other genes are used -- are responsible for 69% of the heritability of dairy cattle traits such as milk ...

The Modern Sea Spider Had Started to Diversify by the Jurassic, Study Finds

Aug. 17, 2023 — An extremely rare collection of 160-million-year-old sea spider fossils from Southern France are closely related to living species, unlike older fossils of their ...

Decoding How Molecules 'Talk' to Each Other to Develop New Nanotechnologies

Aug. 15, 2023 — Scientists recreate and compare molecular languages at the origin of life -- opening new doors for the development of novel ...

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Headlines

Fossil Feces Infested With Parasites from Over 200 Million Years Ago

Aug. 9, 2023 — Fossilized feces preserve evidence of ancient parasites that infected an aquatic predator over 200 million years ago, according to a new ...

New Research Links Early Europeans' Cultural and Genetic Development Over Several Thousand Years

Aug. 9, 2023 — A new DNA study has nuanced the picture of how different groups intermingled during the European Stone Age, but also how certain groups of people were actually isolated. Researchers produced new ...

The Oldest and Fastest Evolving Moss in the World Might Not Survive Climate Change

Aug. 9, 2023 — A 390-million-year-old moss called Takakia lives in some of Earth's most remote places, including the icy cliffs of the Tibetan Plateau. In a decade-long project, a team of scientists climbed ...

Drops of Seawater Contain Traces of an Ancient World

Aug. 9, 2023 — New research links chemical changes in seawater to volcanic activity and ...

Exploring the Origins of Life

Aug. 4, 2023 — Catalytic molecules can form metabolically active clusters by creating and following concentration gradients -- this is the result of a new study. Their model predicts the self-organization of ...

Nature's Kitchen: How a Chemical Reaction Used by Cooks Helped Create Life on Earth

Aug. 2, 2023 — A chemical process used in the browning of food to give it its distinct smell and taste is probably happening deep in the oceans, where it helped create the conditions necessary for life. Known as ...

Earth's Most Ancient Impact Craters Are Disappearing

Aug. 1, 2023 — Earth's oldest craters could give scientists critical information about the structure of the early Earth and the composition of bodies in the solar system as well as help to interpret crater ...

New Insights Into the Origin of the Indo-European Languages

July 27, 2023 — An international team of linguists and geneticists has achieved a significant breakthrough in our understanding of the origins of Indo-European, a family of languages spoken by nearly half of the ...

Ancient DNA Reveals Diverse Community in 'Lost City of the Incas'

July 26, 2023 — DNA analysis of 34 individuals buried at Machu Picchu revealed that many traveled alone from throughout the Inca ...

Family Trees from the European Neolithic

July 26, 2023 — The Neolithic burial site of Gurgy 'les Noisats' in France revealed two unprecedentedly large family trees which allowed a Franco-German team to explore the social organization of the ...

Life on Earth Didn't Arise as Described in Textbooks

July 18, 2023 — No, oxygen didn't catalyze the swift blossoming of Earth's first multicellular organisms. The result defies a 70-year-old assumption about what caused an explosion of oceanic fauna hundreds ...

Genes for Learning and Memory Are 650 Million Years Old

July 14, 2023 — Scientists have discovered that the genes required for learning, memory, aggression and other complex behaviors originated around 650 million years ...

Butterflies and Moths Share Ancient 'Blocks' of DNA

July 13, 2023 — Butterflies and moths share 'blocks' of DNA dating back more than 200 million years, new research ...

Hidden Details of Egyptian Paintings Revealed by Chemical Imaging

July 12, 2023 — Portable chemical imaging technology can reveal hidden details in ancient Egyptian paintings, according to new ...

Evolutionary Origins of the Pygmy Right Whale

July 10, 2023 — Researchers have finally settled a decades-long dispute about the evolutionary origins of the pygmy right ...

Global Cooling Caused Diversity of Species in Orchids, Confirms Study

July 10, 2023 — Research shows global cooling of the climate 10 million years ago led to an explosion of diversity in terrestrial ...

How Urea May Have Been the Gateway to Life

June 28, 2023 — Urea reacts extremely quickly under the conditions that existed when our planet was newly formed. This new insight furthers our understanding of how life on Earth might have ...

Extinct Warbler's Genome Sequenced from Museum Specimens

June 23, 2023 — The Bachman's warbler, a songbird that was last seen in North America nearly 40 years ago, was a distinct species and not a hybrid of its two living sister species, according a new study in ...

'We're All Asgardians': New Clues About the Origin of Complex Life

June 22, 2023 — According to a new study, eukaryotes -- complex life forms with nuclei in their cells, including all the world's plants, animals, insects and fungi -- trace their roots to a common Asgard ...

Focus on Function Helps Identify the Changes That Made Us Human

June 20, 2023 — Research sheds light on human evolution, and demonstrates an approach for identifying significant differences in how genes are used between closely-related ...

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