Seismic Images Show Dinosaur-killing Meteor Made Bigger Splash:
The most detailed three-dimensional seismic images yet of the Chicxulub crater, a mostly submerged and buried impact crater on the Mexico coast, may modify a theory explaining the extinction of 70 percent of life on Earth 65 million years ago.
Jacky Dragons Are Born When The Temperature Is Right For Their Sex:
An Iowa State University researcher spent four years in Australia studying reptiles. Dan Warner, a researcher in the ecology, evolution and organismal biology department, has been working with the jacky dragon, a lizard found in Australia, to discover if egg incubation temperature and sex affects the viability of the lizards.
Adaptive Functional Evolution Of Leptin In Cold-adaptive Pika Family:
Researchers at the Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences have put forward the viewpoint for the first time that adaptive functional evolution may occur in the leptin protein of the pika (Ochotona) family, a typical cold-adaptive mammal. They speculated that the cold, rather than hypoxia, may be the primary environmental factor that drives the adaptive evolution of pika leptin.
Forests Could Benefit When Fall Color Comes Late:
Do those fall colors seem to show up later and later--if at all? Scientists say we can blame increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for prolonging the growing season of the trees. And that may actually be good news for forestry industries.
Changing Fashions Govern Mating Success In Lark Buntings, Study Finds:
A study of how female lark buntings choose their mates, published in Science, adds a surprising new twist to the evolutionary theory of sexual selection. Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, discovered that female lark buntings show strong preferences for certain traits in the males, but those preferences change from year to year.
Life Science
