Until a recent discovery, theories about the origins and evolutionary relationships of snakes barely had a leg to stand on.
Genetic studies suggest that snakes are related to monitor lizards and iguanas, while their anatomy points to amphisbaenians (”worm lizards”), a group of burrowing lizards with snake-like bodies. The debate has been unresolved–until now. The recent discovery by researchers from the University of Toronto Mississauga and the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, Germany of a tiny, 47 million-year-old fossil of a lizard called Cryptolacerta hassiaca provides the first anatomical evidence that the …

The classification of animals and plants is done based on the physical characteristics. The order of classification follows this pattern: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species.
As one can see the largest groups are the kingdoms. All living things on our planet can be divided in 5 kingdoms. Most animals belong to the kingdom Animalia, and most plants belong to the kingdom Plantae. The other 3 kingdoms are Protista which contains one-celled animals like protozoan, whereas Monera include simple plants and animals like bacteria and blue-green algae, and …

Two developmental biologists Nicholas Gompel and Benjamin Prudhomme from the Institute of Developmental Biology of Marseilles-Luminy in France, and their colleagues  have unraveled the origin and evolution of helmets in treehoppers, This means these hemipterans have achieved what no other insect was able to in more than 300 million years of evolution : a third pair of wing in first segment of thorax which is modified in helmet by tinkering the developmental cues required for dorsal appendage formation.

In a paper published in Nature by Japanese researcher Masaki Kamakura demonstrates that one protein in royal jelly is the active ingredient that causes a larva becomes a queen bee, which makes the queen bee grow larger than the worker bees and also allows them to live longer.
Initially, experts suspect the age difference and the size of bee queens with worker bees are due to genetic factors. But kamakuri’s work done in Japan shows Royal jelly could be a major player in bringing the difference between Queen and worker bees. …

Developmental biology is the study of the process by which organisms grow and develop. Modern developmental biology studies the genetic control of cell growth, differentiation and “morphogenesis”, which is the process that gives rise to tissues, organs and anatomy.
One of the important goal for developmental biologists is to understand how humans develop from a single celled embryo to highly complex multi celled adult and also to find cures to different diseases we encounter during our life span.This is all possible when one can understand the mechanisms underlying various aspects of …

Paleontologists led by Jianni Liu discovered a new animal ( which they describe as Walking cactus) during a 2006 excavation in southwestern China’s Yunnan Province. “Diania cactiformis – Walking cactus” was a 6cm long spiny animal lived during Cambrian age had a worm-like body with ten pairs of armored and likely jointed legs, resembling a cactus plant. The authors published their detail findings related to Diania cactiformis in recent issue of Nature journal.
This animal , a member of Lobopodia, a now-extinct group of animals resembling worms with legs, which may …

After working with Drosophila melanogaster for nearly about 10 years , I decided to work with another insect model organism for my post doc, which will help me to gain more insights into evo devo among Insects. Tribolium Castaneum also known as “Red Flour beetle” happens to be most famous insect model organism after fruit fly Drosophila. All the details related to insect development mostly come from the studies on Drosophila and many believe it to be universal and similar mechanisms might be taking place in other insect orders.