Skeletal remains found by an international team, in a cave about 30 miles northwest of Johannesburg South African cave may yield new clues to human development and answer key questions of the evolution of the human lineage. The team consisting of members from U.S., African, European and Australian universities, named the new species, Australopithecus sediba, in April 2010. They found skeletal remains in a cave of many individuals of Australopithecus sediba possibly belonging to a family group. They all seemed to have died suddenly in the same event about …

Archaeopteryx is considered by many to be the first bird

Palaeontologists have uncovered half-a-billion-year-old fossils demonstrating that primitive animals had excellent vision.
An international team led by scientists from the South Australian Museum and the University of Adelaide found the exquisite fossils, which look like squashed eyes from a recently swatted fly.
This discovery will be published tomorrow (Thursday 30 June 2011) in the prestigious journal Nature.
The lead author is Associate Professor Michael Lee from the South Australian Museum and the University of Adelaide’s School of Earth & Environmental Sciences.
Compound Eyes
Modern insects and crustaceans have “compound eyes” consisting of hundreds or even …

Springer recently announced two new print books in evolutionary biology series . Here is brief information related to these books and information related to buy theses books if interested.
Principles of Evolution
Book Series: The Frontiers Collection
Editor/s: Meyer-Ortmanns, Hildegard; Thurner, Stefan

Introduction and History of RNAi
The phenomenon of RNA interference (RNAi) was discovered for the first time in nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Subsequently RNai mechanism was also found to be conserved in different organisms ranging from plants to Drosophila and Humans. RNAi is a well conserved sequence specific gene silencing mechanism induced by double stranded RNA (ds RNA), resulting in degradation of the targeted mRNA. It plays a pivotal role in regulation of gene expression, participates in defense against viral infections, and keeps jumping genes under control. While RNAi is an endogenous …

Paleontologists have discovered that a group of remarkable ancient sea creatures existed for much longer and grew to much larger sizes than previously thought, thanks to extraordinarily well-preserved fossils discovered in Morocco.
The creatures, known as anomalocaridids, were already thought to be the largest animals of the Cambrian period, known for the “Cambrian Explosion” that saw the sudden appearance of all the major animal groups and the establishment of complex ecosystems about 540 to 500 million years ago. Fossils from this period suggested these marine predators grew to be about two …

Tiktaalik is a 375 million year old fossil discovered in Arctic Canada by a team of researchers led by Neil Shubin