Posts Tagged ‘Russel T Sajeev’

Populations Survive Despite Many Deleterious Mutations: Evolutionary Model of Muller’s Ratchet Explored

From protozoans to mammals, evolution has created more and more complex structures and better-adapted organisms. This is all the more astonishing as most genetic mutations are deleterious. Especially in small asexual populations that do not recombine their genes, unfavourable mutations can accumulate. This process is known as Muller’s ratchet in evolutionary biology. The ratchet, proposed […]

Volcanoes Deliver Two Flavors of Water

Seawater circulation pumps hydrogen and boron into the oceanic plates that make up the seafloor, and some of this seawater remains trapped as the plates descend into the mantle at areas called subduction zones. By analyzing samples of submarine volcanic glass near one of these areas, scientists found unexpected changes in isotopes of hydrogen and […]

How dinosaurs measure up with laser imaging

Karl Bates and his colleagues in the palaeontology and biomechanics research group have reconstructed the bodies of five dinosaurs, two T. rex (Stan at the Manchester Museum and the Museum of the Rockies cast MOR555), an Acrocanthosaurus atokensis, a Strutiomimum sedens and an Edmontosaurus annectens. The team, whose findings are published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE today (19th February […]

Nautilus survives 500 million years — until humans fancy it

No matter how well adapted an animal may be, it can spell evolutionary doom to have feathers or even shells that become coveted by human beings. Take the nautilus, a creature that pulled easily through the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. It now hangs on the brink of extinction thanks to the misfortune […]

Albertonykus borealis: America’s Smallest Dinosaur

An unusual breed of dinosaur that was the size of a chicken, ran on two legs and scoured the ancient forest floor for termites is the smallest dinosaur species found in North America, according to a University of Calgary researcher who analyzed bones found during the excavation of an ancient bone bed near Red Deer, […]

Scientific understanding of T. rex revised by a decade of new research and discovery

We’ve all heard this story: the Late Cretaceous of Asia and North America-about 65 million years ago-was dominated by several large-headed, bipedal predatory dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex and Tarbosaurus that had tiny arms. But a decade of new fossil discoveries that have more than doubled the number of known tyrannosaur species has changed this tale. Older and smaller tyrannosaurs […]

Ammonites Found Mini Oases at Ancient Methane Seeps

Research led by scientists at the American Museum of Natural History shows that ammonites-an extinct type of shelled mollusk that’s closely related to modern-day nautiluses and squids-made homes in the unique environments surrounding methane seeps in the seaway that once covered America’s Great Plains. The findings, published online this week in the journalGeology, provide new […]

Animal life existed 30 million years earlier than previously known.

University of Alberta scientists say they’ve proven animal life existed 30 million years earlier than previously known. Geologists Ernesto Pecoits and Natalie Aubet found fossilized tracks in Uruguay they believe was left behind by a slug-like creature at least 585 million years ago. Kurt Konhauser, a geomicrobiologist at the university, co-authored the study published Thursday […]