An international team led by Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, BGI, and other institutes has completed the genomic sequence of watermelon (Citrullus lanatus) and the resequencing of 20 watermelon accessions. The genomic data presented in this study will shape future efforts on watermelon genetics and evolutionary research, and also provide an invaluable resource for other plants research and crop genetic improvement. The results were published online in Nature Genetics. (299)

Archaeopteryx is considered by many to be the first bird, being of about 150 million years of age. Archaeopteryx was discovered in 1861, two years after Charles Darwin published ” On the Origin of Species”,ever-since it has become a textbook example for transitional fossil
In the 150th anniversary of its discovery, the position of Archaeopteryx as the earliest-known bird has been weakened thanks to the discovery of increasing numbers of feathered, bird-like dinosaurs over the past decade and a half. These claims are now further strengthened by a new fossil discovery …

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 …

Chine unearthed another gem in the form of a four winged dinosaur , Anchiornis huxleyi. Its dated to the Late Jurassic period, 151-161 million years ago making it oldest winged species, the 150-million-year-old Archaeopteryx lithographica, found more than a century ago in Germany. Hence this new discovery of the oldest known bird, provides more hard evidence that birds evolved from dinosaurs.
Chinese scientists discovered five remarkable new feathered dinosaur fossils from two separate areas, named the Tiaojishan and Daohugou formations. Comparison of the Tiaojishan and Daohugou fossils suggests that they …

The latest issue of science journal reports a new discovery, a 9-foot dinosaur fossil from northeastern China by Paul Sereno and colleagues.This new fossil is named “Raptorex kriegsteini” , displays all the features of giant Tyrannosaurus rex and it predates the T. rex by tens of millions of years.
Paul Sereno from the University of Chicago and National Geographic explorer-in-residence, along with colleagues, studied the new, small-bodied fossil, naming it Raptorex kriegsteini, and estimated that it was a young adult when it died. They examined the skull, teeth, nose, spine, shoulders, …

Looking for a plant which can survive in any climate and soil ? Then species belonging to Ginkgo should be the answer ! Ginkgo species are known to be present on this planet since 270 millions years. Yes , that means they are around even before Dinosaurs (which flourished in Jurassic period 213 million years ago). The genus diversified and spread throughout the middle Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, but became much rarer thereafter. As we reached the end of the Pliocene, (The period in the geologic timescale that extends from …

Xiaoya Maa, Xianguang Hou and Jan Bergstrom have reported new material of the lobopodian Luolishania longicruris from the Lower Cambrian Chengjiang Lagerstatte, southwest China. As many of you might known that Chengjiang Maotianshan Shales in China is home to thousands of exceptionally preserved soft-bodied fossils and hence regarded as fossil paradise .The discovery of Chengjiang biota by Hou Xian-guang in 1984 offered us a very clear means of observing Cambrian explosion ,which is considered as rapid burst of complex life forms around 530 million years ago.The great antiquity and the …