The Show Place

Chemists at Ohio State University have probed an unusual high-energy state produced in single nucleotides -- the building blocks of DNA and RNA -- when they absorb ultraviolet (UV) light.

Reliably dated fossils are critical to understanding the course of human evolution. A human skull discovered over fifty years ago near the town of Hofmeyr, in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, is one such fossil.

The maneuverability of a bat in flight makes even Harry Potter's quidditch performance look downright clumsy. While many people may be content to simply watch these aerial acrobats in wonder, Kenneth Breuer and Sharon Swartz are determined to understand the detailed aerodynamics of bat flight – and ultimately the evolutionary path that created it.

Fast flying, fruit-feeding tropical nymphalids with particularly large radiations in the neotropical and Afrotropical regions.

After the skeletal remains of an 18,000-year-old, "Hobbit"-sized human were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003, some scientists thought that the specimen must have been a pygmy or a microcephalic—a human with an abnormally small skull.

Not so, said Dean Falk, a world-renowned paleoneurologist and chair of Florida State University's anthropology department,

It's a mystery why the speed and complexity of evolution appear to increase with time. For example, the fossil record indicates that single-celled life first appeared about 3.5 billion years ago, and it then took about 2.5 billion more years for multi-cellular life to evolve. That leaves just a billion years or so for the evolution of the diverse menagerie of plants, mammals, insects, birds and other species that populate the earth.

Most snakes are born with poisonous bites they use for defense. But what can non-poisonous snakes do to ward off predators?

What if they could borrow a dose of poison by eating toxic toads, then recycling the toxins?

A University of Calgary archaeologist has found the first prehistoric evidence of chimpanzee technology, adding credence to the theory that some of humanity’s behavioural hallmarks were actually inherited by both humans and great apes from a common ancestor.

Large squid lights up for attack

Big deep-sea squid emit blinding flashes of light as they attack their prey, research shows.

Taningia danae 's spectacular light show was revealed in video footage taken in deep waters off Chichijima Island in the North Pacific.

Japanese scientists believe the creatures use the bright flashes to disorientate potential victims.

Writing in a Royal Society journal, they say the squid are far from the sluggish, inactive beasts once thought.