Summaries | Headlines

Ancient Etruscans Were Immigrants From Anatolia, Or What Is Now Turkey (June 18, 2007) -- The long-running controversy about the origins of the Etruscan people appears to be very close to being settled once and for all, according to a leading geneticist. He describes strong evidence that ... > full story

CT Scan Reveals Ancient Long-necked Gliding Reptile (June 13, 2007) -- The fossilized bones of a previously unknown, 220 million-year-old long-necked, gliding reptile may remain forever embedded in stone, but thanks to an industrial-size CT scanner at Penn State's ... > full story

Scientists Propose The Kind Of Chemistry That Led To Life (June 11, 2007) -- Before life emerged on earth, either a primitive kind of metabolism or an RNA-like duplicating machinery must have set the stage -- so experts believe. But what preceded these pre-life ... > full story

Ancient Rome Rebuilt Digitally (June 11, 2007) -- Rome's Mayor Walter Veltroni will officiate at the first public viewing of "Rome Reborn 1.0," a 10-year project to use advanced technology to digitally rebuild ancient Rome. An international team of ... > full story

Agonized Death Throes Probable Cause Of Open-mouthed, Head-back Pose Of Many Dinosaur Fossils (June 11, 2007) -- Like investigators out of CSI or Cold Case, paleontologists are finding clues to a dinosaur's demise in its peculiar death pose. They argue that the open-mouthed, head-back posture of many dinosaur ... > full story

2008 World Monuments Watch List Of 100 Most Endangered Sites (June 11, 2007) -- Watch List of 100 Most Endangered Sites was recently announcedby the World Monuments Fund This year's list highlights three critical man-made threats: political conflict, unchecked urban and ... > full story

Ancient DNA Traces Woolly Mammoth's Disappearance (June 10, 2007) -- Some ancient-DNA evidence has offered new clues to a very cold case: the disappearance of the last woolly mammoths, one of the most iconic of all Ice Age giants, according to a recent article. DNA ... > full story

Archaeologists Reconstruct Life In The Bronze Age At Site Of Southern Spain (June 9, 2007) -- Researchers from the University of Granada, Spain, excavated for the first time -- in a scientific and systematic way -- a site of these characteristics, where they found the first water well of the ... > full story

'Cultured' Chimpanzees Pass On Novel Traditions (June 8, 2007) -- The local customs that define human cultures in important ways also exist in the ape world, suggests a new study. Indeed, captive chimpanzees, like people, can readily acquire new traditions, and ... > full story

Caribbean Frogs Started With A Single, Ancient Voyage On A Raft From South America (June 7, 2007) -- Nearly all of the 162 land-breeding frog species on Caribbean islands originated from a single species that rafted on a sea voyage from South America about 30-to-50-million years ago, according to a ... > full story

Mystery Of 5,000 Year Old Glacier Mummy Solved (June 7, 2007) -- An Italian-Swiss research team proved the cause of death of the Iceman ("�tzi," 3300 BC) by modern X-ray-based technology. A lesion of a close-to-the-shoulder artery has been found thanks to a CT ... > full story

What Did Dinosaurs Hear? (June 5, 2007) -- What did dinosaurs hear? Probably a lot of low frequency sounds, like the heavy footsteps of another dinosaur, if University of Maryland professor Robert Dooling and his colleagues are right. What ... > full story

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Gene -- Genes are the units of heredity in living organisms. They are encoded in the organism's genetic material (usually DNA or RNA), and control the physical development and behavior of the organism. ... > full article

Bird -- Birds are bipedal, warm-blooded, oviparous vertebrates characterized primarily by feathers, forelimbs modified as wings, and hollow bones. Birds range in size from the tiny hummingbirds to the huge ... > full article

Prokaryote -- Prokaryotes are organisms without a cell nucleus, or indeed any other membrane-bound organelles, in most cases unicellular (in rare cases, multicellular). This set of characteristics is distinct from ... > full article

Homo (genus) -- Homo is the genus that includes modern humans and their close relatives. The genus is estimated to be between 1.5 and 2.5 million years old. All species except Homo sapiens are extinct. Homo ... > full article

Chimpanzee -- Chimpanzee, often shortened to chimp, is the common name for the two extant species in the genus Pan. The better known chimpanzee is Pan troglodytes, the Common Chimpanzee, living primarily in West, ... > full article

Hominidae -- The hominids are the members of the biological family Hominidae (the great apes), which includes humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans. The exact criteria for membership in the Homininae are ... > full article

Extinction -- In biology and ecology, extinction is the cessation of existence of a species or group of taxa, reducing biodiversity. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last ... > full article

Evolution -- In biology, evolution is change in the heritable traits of a population over successive generations, as determined by shifts in the allele frequencies of genes. Over time, this process can result in ... > full article

Natural selection -- Natural selection is the phrase Charles Darwin used in 1859 for the process he proposed to explain the origin of species and their apparent adaptation to their environment. Along with the rules of ... > full article

Genetic drift -- Genetic drift is the term used in population genetics to refer to the statistical drift over time of gene frequencies in a population due to random sampling effects in the formation of successive ... > full article

Microorganism -- A microorganism or microbe is an organism that is so small that it is microscopic (invisible to the naked eye). Microorganisms are often illustrated using single-celled, or unicellular organisms; ... > full article

Archaeopteryx -- Archaeopteryx lithographica is the earliest and most primitive known bird. In the 1990s, the discovery of a number of well-preserved feathered dinosaurs solidified the link between dinosaurs and ... > full article

Fossil -- Fossils are the mineralized or otherwise preserved remains or traces (such as footprints) of animals, plants, and other organisms. The totality of fossils and their placement in fossiliferous ... > full article

Trace fossil -- Trace fossils are those details preserved in rocks that are indirect evidence of life. While we are most familiar with relatively spectacular fossil hard part remains such as shells and bones, trace ... > full article

Precambrian -- The Precambrian is an informal name for the eons of the geologic timescale that came before the current Phanerozoic eon. It spans from the formation of Earth around 4500 Ma (million years ago) to the ... > full article

Cambrian -- The Cambrian is a major division of the geologic timescale that begins about 542 Ma (million years ago) at the end of the Proterozoic eon and ended about 488.3 Ma with the beginning of the Ordovician ... > full article

Paleozoic -- The Paleozoic Era is a major division of the geologic timescale, one of four geologic eras. The Paleozoic includes six geologic periods; from oldest to youngest -- the Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, ... > full article

Mesozoic -- The Mesozoic Era is one of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic eon. The Mesozoic includes three geologic periods: from oldest to youngest, they are the Triassic, the Jurassic and the Cretaceous ... > full article

Cenozoic -- The Cenozoic Era is the most recent of the four classic geological eras. The Cenozoic is divided into two periods, the Palaeogene and Neogene, and they are in turn divided into epochs. The Palaeogene ... > full article

Cretaceous -- The Cretaceous period is one of the major divisions of the geologic timescale, reaching from the end of the Jurassic period, about 146 million years ago (Ma), to the beginning of the Paleocene epoch ... > full article