Search Results for: Platypus
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All kinds of tired
Donkeys sleep about three out of each 24 hours. Certain reef fish spend the night moving their fins as if swimming in their sleep. Some biologists argue that all animals sleep in some form or another. But identifying sleep can get complicated. Insects have brain architecture so different from humans’, for example, that electrophysiological recordings […]
By Susan Milius -
Venom hunters
Scientists probe toxins, revealing the healing powers of biochemical weapons.
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Life
Molecular Evolution
Investigating the genetic books of life reveals new details of 'descent with modification' and the forces driving it.
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Life
Duckbill decoded
With a mix of reptilian, bird and mammalian features, the duck-billed platypus genome looks as strange as the animal.
By Amy Maxmen -
Life
Genes & Cells: Science news of the year, 2008
Science News writers and editors looked back at the past year's stories and selected a handful as the year's most interesting and important in Genes & Cells. Follow hotlinks to the full, original stories.
By Science News -
Science & Society
BOOK REVIEW | The Score: How the Quest for Sex Has Shaped the Modern Man
Review by Tia Ghose.
By Tia Ghose -
Paleontology
Twice upon a Time
New fossil finds suggest that the complex features of mammals originated earlier than previously thought and might even have evolved independently in different mammalian lineages.
By Amy Maxmen -
Math
A frustrating view of complexity
The unifying theme of complex systems, a researcher argues, is frustration.
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Paleontology
Out of the Shadows
An ongoing flurry of fossil finds is triggering a reevaluation of how early mammals and their close kin eked out an existence during the Age of Dinosaurs.
By Sid Perkins -
Paleontology
Killer Bite: Ancient, tiny mammal probably used venom
Paleontologists have unearthed the remains of an ancient, mouse-size mammal that seems to have had a venomous bite.
By Sid Perkins -
Paleontology
Groovy Bones: Mammalian ear structure evolved more than once
Fossils of an ancient egg-laying mammal indicate that the characteristic configuration of the bones in all living mammals' ears arose independently at least twice during the group's evolution.
By Sid Perkins -
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I found the article on Welwitschia enthralling–it made me want to set off for the Namibian desert straightaway! The author mentions that a local name for the plant is “long-haired thing,” but an even more evocative and picturesque one is the Afrikaans tweeblarkanniedood (two-leaf-cannot-die). Darwin was fascinated when he learned of Welwitschia and its extraordinary […]
By Science News