Life Sciences and Chemistry

Fossil plants form new branch in flower family tree.

Fossils recently plucked from rocks in China are the first representatives of a hitherto unknown group of flowering plants, say their discoverers Ge Sun of Jilin University and colleagues 1 .

They also add to growing evidence that flowering plants, which now dominate the land, originally emerged from the water.

The researchers call the group Archaefructaceae. Its members probably flourished in lake

A University of Ulster researcher has discovered a new population of cave dwelling crocodiles, never before seen outside their Saharan habitat.

PhD student Tara Shine discovered the cave dwelling crocodiles while living in the remote African country of Mauritania as part of a two and a half year volunteer project.

Previously unknown, except by local tribespeople, the crocodiles live in burrows and caves throughout the dry season and periods of drought – a phenomenon never

The scientists from I.P. Pavlov Institute of Physiology, Russian Academy of Sciences, have investigated the intellectual abilities of chimpanzees in comparison with the children from a nursery school in Koltushy near St. Petersburg. They asked both to build the pyramids of cubes of different size. The children with the retention of speech development aged from 2 to 7 and two chimpanzees, female (aged 7) and male (aged 11) ones, took part in the experiment. The children and the apes were shown a pyra

An international team of researchers leaded by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona have found experimental evidence that the various manifestations of fear in animals are influenced by a specific place or region within the genome. The results, published in the latest edition of Genome Research, were obtained with rats, but the scientists suspect that this research will facilitate an understanding of genetic characteristics and conditioning factors related to fear in humans.

Demonstrating t

Biotech human breast milk growing but not bottled.

Genetically modified (GM) rice carrying a protein from human breast milk could be used to enhance infant formula, researchers hope. But at present, the protein would not gain approval for use in the United States.

Nutritionists agree that breast milk is best for a baby; infant formula is not as nourishing as the real thing. So for mothers unable to breast-feed, the biotech industry is engineering crops or animals to make huma

Fossil find hints at life of one of our earliest mammalian forebears.

A mouse-sized fossil from 125 million years ago is the earliest known member of the mammal group that includes humans, say researchers.

The animal is a primitive example of today’s dominant mammals. “It’s at the very root of this diverse and incredibly important group,” says palaeontologist Zhe-Xi Luo of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh 1 .

The mammal, Eomaia sc