Billions of years of evolution has given rise to us, the millions of species that persist on planet Earth today. Some of us are small, some of us are big, and some of us have huge ears, flat tails, compound eyes, or infrared vision.
Researchers believe they’ve found the oldest known fossilized skin, hidden away in a limestone cave system in Oklahoma. The skin sample dates to the early Permian Period, between 289 million years ago and 286 million years ago.
It looks like flying isn’t the only unusual thing that bats can do compared to other mammals. New research has found a bat species whose males use their large penises like an arm during sex. Rather than have penetrative sex, these bats and their genitals seem to engage in close-contact “kissing”—a method widely seen…
You may think Nebraska and China have little in common, but the two places definitely share one ancient similarity: the presence of a 30-million-year-old primate lineage which headed to North America millions of years before modern human ancestors would evolve.
Move over monotremes and the range of rodents known to glow: over one hundred other furry creatures do, too, new research shows, vastly increasing the number of mammals known to show the spooky trait.
Mammals are halfway through their era on this planet. We’ve existed about 250 million years since mammals evolved on earth and we only have another 250 million left before most of the world is no longer habitable.
Oh, the Hugh manatee. A long-time fixture at the Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium, the 38-year-old manatee named Hugh died under unknown circumstances back in April. This week, new, graphic details about his demise are pitting federal agencies against the Florida aquarium about how best to preserve the vulnerable…