Origin of our species: Why humans were once so much more diverse
25 April 2018
The idea that all humans evolved from a small population in East Africa turns out to be wrong. Our beginnings were far stranger and more colourful
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Premium
Ants build a medieval ‘torture rack’ to catch grasshoppers
24 April 2018
A species of tropical ant builds traps on tree trunks that allow them to catch prey almost fifty times their size, by biting their legs and spread-eagling them on the tree surface
Oxygen may have helped complex life arise a billion years early
23 April 2018
Earth’s air suddenly got a lot more oxygen around 1.6 billion years ago and that could have triggered the evolution of large multicellular organisms
Worst mass extinctions may have been caused by rising mountains
23 April 2018
A pair of mass extinctions struck in quick succession just before the dinosaur era, and the birth of a mountain range in South Africa may have been partly to blame
Trees may have a ‘heartbeat’ that is so slow we never noticed it
20 April 2018
Trees repeatedly move their branches up and down during the night, and this may reflect water being pumped along the branches – just like a human pulse
