Male dinosaurs may not have had a caring side after all. Five years ago a study of theropod dinosaur nests and fossils concluded that it was the male of the species that incubated the eggs. Now a new analysis of the same data suggests there are problems with that conclusion. Image: Georg Schwalbach (GS1311)
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Long before humans appeared on Earth, the plate tectonics of the East African Rift may have been shaping our ancestors’ evolution. The rift, which passes through Tanzania, is famous for being the site of early hominin fossil discoveries. It has now yielded the earliest ape and Old World monkey. Image: Mauricio Antón
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Our australopith ancestors heard their world differently from modern humans. A combination of ape-like and human-like features in rare middle ear bones from two southern African hominins indicate some australopiths lacked sensitivity to the midrange frequencies that modern humans use for speech. Image: Menage a Moi
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Early in the 20th century most researchers believed we evolved in Eurasia rather than Africa. Surprisingly, they may have been partially correct. Recently, some prominent researchers have come round to the idea that hominins may have left their African cradle much earlier than we thought and undergone critical evolutionary transitions further north. Image: Cea.
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In some ways, the depths of the Earth’s crust are the final frontier for biologists. In these isolated ecosystems lurk organisms that defy many established biological rules. There are microbes that metabolise so slowly they may be millions of years old; bacteria that survive without benefiting from the sun’s energy; and animals that do what no animal should – live their entire lives without oxygen. Image: matthewvenn
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