Our fish ancestors evolved into the first four-legged animals, tetrapods, 380 million years ago. They are the forerunners of all birds, mammals, crustaceans, and batrachians.It was always believed that tertrapods,the first four-legged land animals,are the first organisms on earth to exhibit toes and fingers.
Catherine Boisvert and her group have showed that rudimentary fingers were present in the fish,Panderichthy’s fins using the medical x-rays (CT scans) .The fossil Panderichthys, a “transitional animal” between fish and tetrapod ,appeared to lack finger rudiments in their fins.When they examined genes that are necessary …

Remember Mark Q. Martindale? The evolutionary biologist who surprised us with some astounding results on comb jellies ( Which i have discussed here and here ) ,did it again by adding a new page in the history of anal evolution in metazoans. Acoels ,a bilaterally symmetric triploblastic worms possess a mid-ventral mouth and lack an anus.Morphology and recent molecular phylogenies place the Acoela and the nemertodermatid flatworms as basal branches of the Bilateria. (364)

Apologies for not updating the blog for past few days ,being in final year of p.hd it gets sometimes very difficult to get some time out for blog. Need to finish many experiments in order to get my project in some good shape. Lot of genetic experiments and also invitro stuff are keeping me busy.But will try to write some updates as many interesting things are coming up in the field of evolution and developmental biology. Today we will check some interesting articles and reviews which appeared last week …

Female spiders are voracious predators and consume a wide range of prey, which sometimes includes their mates. A number of hypotheses have been proposed for why females eat males before or after mating. Researchers Shawn Wilder and Ann Rypstra from Miami University in Ohio found, in a study published in the September issue of the American Naturalist, that the answer may be simpler than previously thought. Males are more likely to be eaten if they are much smaller than females, which likely affects how easy they are to catch. In …

Yesterday i mentioned about a paper by Brusatt et.al describing the role luck or chance might have played in survival and dominating of Dinosaurs in Jurassic era. Cindy @ Bug safari writes about how she helped a Giant Swallowtail to regain its flying ability ,which she lost after damaging a part of wing. AYDIN @ Snailstail mention an important point about our interference with natural selection ,but here I think comes the factor of luck,chance or accident in evolution. It was the luck of the insect that she found a …

Regulation of gene expression by transcription factors plays a very important role is proper patterning and growth of embryo.These transcription factors bind to cis regulatory regions of gene and hence control it. Changes or mutations in these binding sites are proved to be vital for evolution of new species.For eg : Changes in the cis regulatory regions (nucleotide sequence where transcription factors ) might create new binding sites or lose binding ability of already existing sites for transcription factors.
Regulation of gene transcription (transcriptional regulation) happens to be most famous form …

Natural selection proposed by Charles Darwin’s was challenged by many in the past and things in the future also might not change.I don’t think we need any more evidence for Natural selection, as we have already huge data confirming its role in evolution.>
This week’s Science contains a paper by Brusatt et al. (2008) discussing the evolution of dinosaurs. They found no evidence that the dinosaurs were evolving more quickly or were becoming better adapted when compared to other vertebrates of that time and the reason for them surviving the test …