The right size; why some creatures survive and others are extinctHellman, HalSalant, Sam
So how did this happen? Our mammal friend the whale gives us the perfect example of an atavism, a trait from a distant evolutionary ancestor that has reappeared in a modern-day organism. Millions and millions of years ago, the ancestors of whales walked on land. Over time, they went from...
Sharks are incredible creatures that don’t need bones to swim and survive. Instead, they rely on specialized cartilage structures which provide them with the strength and protection they need to thrive in their aquatic environment. Not only does this make them more maneuverable and durable than ...
Did early Mars have an ocean? It's hard to know anything for certain about the early history of Mars, but educated guesses can be made thanks to the fact that Mars doesn't have plate tectonics. In fact, whileMars and Earth have a few things in common, this isn't one of them. On ...
Weeks later, with someone who knew her as well as I did, and with no idea of what I could possibly begin to say, a provisional apophatic eulogy was drafted, going something like this: Anna Reinelt was someone who wanted to leave the world a better place than she found it, and she ...
By not doing enough to fight global warming, we’re trashing the planet. Innovation may save us, but it will not be pretty.
Did non-avian dinosaurs have feathers? If yes, describe potential functions of feathers in nonavian dinosaurs. If no, describe why feathers would have evolved in the lineage leading to extant birds. Do birds have anything in common with dinosaurs? A friend says that dinosaurs all went extinct ...
ancient Madagascar weren’t the ones that made it, but species that might not have seemed all that remarkable at first glance did. Even though paleontology often focuses on and celebrates the extreme, sometimes the more average-looking creatures are the ones able to leap out of extinction’s ...
Many of those it did catch must have poured out of its open mouth when Forbes reeled it in. His azoic zone, then, was a plausible but wild extrapolation from pioneering but feeble data. [#paragraph5]As it turned out, the existence of the azoic zone had been disproved even before Forbes...
did not always display physical symptoms of the disease, though they tested positive for Bd. Those populations could still wind up dead, or they may have a natural defense against the disease. And that’s part of the reason Vredenburg is urging continued study of the disease’...