My picks from ScienceDaily

Flying Lemurs Are The Closest Relatives Of Primates:

While the human species is unquestionably a member of the Primate group, the identity of the next closest group to primates within the entire class of living mammals has been hotly debated. Now, new molecular and genomic data gathered by a team including Webb Miller, a professor of biology and computer science and engineering at the Penn State University, has shown that the colugos -- nicknamed the flying lemurs -- is the closest group to the primates.

Anne-Marie has more.

Fossil Record Reveals Elusive Jellyfish More Than 500 Million Years Old:

Using recently discovered "fossil snapshots" found in rocks more than 500 million years old, three University of Kansas researchers have described the oldest definitive jellyfish ever found.

How Old Tree Rings And Ancient Wood Are Helping Rewrite History:

Cornell archaeologists are rewriting history with the help of tree rings from 900-year-old trees, wood found on ancient buildings and through analysis of the isotopes (especially radiocarbon dating) and chemistry they can find in that wood.

Burrowing Mammals Dig For A Living, But How Do They Do That?:

Next time you see a mole digging in tree-root-filled soil in search of supper, take a moment to ponder the mammal's humerus bones. When seen in the lab, they are nothing like the long upper arm bones of any other mammal, says Samantha Hopkins, a paleontologist at the University of Oregon.

Hanging Around With Lemurs, The Planet's Most Primitive Primates:

Nayuta Yamashita's office is in the Alan Hancock Foundation Building, right in the heart of USC's campus. But her lab, in the truest sense, is halfway around the world.

Tangled Web Of The Insect, Plant And Parasite Arms Race:

New insights into the evolutionary relationship between plant-dwelling insects and their parasites are revealed in the online open access journal BMC Biology. Researchers shed light on how sawflies evolved to escape their parasites and gain themselves an 'enemy-free space' for millions of years.

More like this

The restored lower jaw of Afradapis. From the Nature paper. This past May a 47 million year old fossil primate named Darwinius masillae, better known as "Ida", burst onto the public scene. The lemur-like creature was proclaimed to be the "missing link" and the "ancestor of us all", but the…
The exceptionally preserved skeleton of Darwinius, known popularly as "Ida." From PLoS One. Almost ten months ago an international team of researchers introduced the world to an exquisitely-preserved primate from the 47 million year old oil shales of Messel, Germany. Dubbed Darwinius masillae,…
A simplified evolutionary tree of primate relationships showing the placement of Darwinius in relationship to other groups. From Williams et al., 2010. The study of human origins can be a paradoxical thing. We know that we evolved from ancestral apes (and, in fact, are just one peculiar kind of…
Today's photo is of a Lesser Tree Shrew (Tupaia minor), sitting still for a split second allowing me to get a somewhat blurry shot. I wasn't initially thinking of putting this one up today, but I thought it would be a topical choice given a new study in Scienceout this week that suggests Colugos (…