A plant fossil that gathered dust in a museum drawer for a century is the oldest fossil of large plants ever found – and it suggests we need to rethink the plant family tree. Image: treegrow
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Lee Berger is the palaeoanthropologist behind the recent discoveries of not one but two new species of human ancestor. The finds were so remarkable that, by some accounts, they are rewriting the story of human evolution, and Berger, his team and his methods are at the centre of it. Image: pijpers662
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The first early humans to leave Africa did so half a million years earlier than we thought, according to an analysis of simple stone tools and three cow bones with cut marks found in Asia. But not everyone is convinced yet. Image: Cea.
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We may be a step closer to understanding how some meat-eating fungi turned predator. It turns out that the edible oyster mushroom uses a special class of immune system proteins to kill its parasites – and possibly its prey. We carry similar proteins, as do many of our pathogens, and understanding their action could help us fight common diseases. Image: a.bower
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In The Universe Within, evolutionary biologist Neil Shubin shares the findings of some of the great scientific specialists. But he also explains how a generalist’s appreciation of their work is still possible, simply by looking inside the human body. Within each of us is a multitude of memory aids that, when read correctly, help to tell the stories of our species, planet and universe. Image: Trodel
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Philip Currie at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, knows all about squeezing information out of relatively unpromising starting material. He has spent the last 15 years chipping away at an impressively bold hypothesis: that the tyrannosaurs hunted in packs rather than alone, making them even more formidable than we had thought. Image: Kabacchi
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Fifteen minutes of fame doesn’t always translate into big bucks. This was spectacularly true of two meteorites which, though exceptional in size, failed to fetch sky-high prices at auction on Sunday. Bidding for both rocks stalled at around one-third of their valuations, and they were withdrawn from sale at Bonhams auction house in New York. Image: jtaylor14368
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Getting fossilised in tree sap seems an odd way for an aquatic insect to meet its maker. Biologists have been left scratching their heads over how it happened. “Most previous studies have focused on non-aquatic insects, assuming that most resin solidifies at the tree bark,” says Alexander Schmidt of the Museum of Natural History in Berlin, Germany. Image: Rockman of Zymurgy
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