A small, bird-like North American dinosaur incubated its eggs in a similar way to brooding birds – bolstering the evolutionary link between birds and dinosaurs, researchers at the University of Calgary and Montana State University study have found.

Evolution skeptics argue that some biological structures, like the brain or the eye, are simply too complex for natural selection to explain. Biologists have proposed various ways that so-called 'irreducibly complex' structures could emerge incrementally over time, bit by bit. But a new study proposes an alternative route.

A team of South African and international scientists from the Evolutionary Studies Institute (ESI) at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) and 15 other global institutions, are publishing six papers and an introduction by Prof. Lee Berger, the lead author and project leader, in the prestigious journal Science tomorrow, Friday, 12 April 2013.

An unusual fossil fish that has fins behind its anus could have implications for human evolution according to a scientist at The University of Manchester.

Hunter-gatherers living in glacial conditions produced pots for cooking fish, according to the findings of a pioneering new study led by the University of York which reports the earliest direct evidence for the use of ceramic vessels.

The great age of the embryos is unusual because almost all known dinosaur embryos are from the Cretaceous Period. The Cretaceous ended some 125 million years after the bones at the Lufeng site were buried and fossilized.

The Neolithic mummy Ötzi (approximately 3300 BC) displays an astoundingly large number of oral diseases and dentition problems that are still widespread today. As Prof. Frank Rühli, head of the study, explains, Ötzi suffered from heavy dental abrasions, had several carious lesions – some severe – and had mechanical trauma to one of his front teeth which was probably due to an accident.

Some of the largest female birds in the world were almost twice as big as their male mates. Research carried out by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) shows that this amazing size difference in giant moa was not due to any specific environmental factors, but evolved simply as a result of scaling-up of smaller differences in male and female body size shown by their smaller-bodied ancestors.

Scientists at The University of Manchester have found evidence of the genetic basis of the evolutionary arms-race between parasitoids and their aphid hosts.

Stanford scientists have discovered that some purple sea urchins living along the coast of California and Oregon have the surprising ability to rapidly evolve in acidic ocean water – a capacity that may come in handy as climate change increases ocean acidity. This capacity depends on high levels of genetic variation that allow urchins' healthy growth in water with high carbon dioxide levels.