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Dinilysia’s inner ear suggests it was a burrowing species, implications for the evolution of snakes
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Modern snake skull, with inner ear shown in orange. Photo Credit: Hongyu Yi Modern snakes probably originated as habitat specialists, but it is controversial unclear whether they were ancestrally terrestrial burrowers or marine swimmers. In a new paper Yi and Norell (2015) use x-ray virtual models of the inner ear to predict the habit of…
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Eggshell Porosity Provides Insight on Evolution of Nesting in Dinosaurs
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A dinosaur nest. Photo credit: Kohei Tanaka Extinct archosaurs’ eggshell porosity may be used as a proxy for predicting covered or exposed nest types, according to a study published November 25, 2015 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Kohei Tanaka from the University of Calgary and colleagues. Knowledge about dinosaur nests may provide insight…
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The evolution of venom, a new perspective
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This is an Anderson’s Pitviper (Trimeresurus andersoni), a venomous snake in the Andaman Islands of India. Photo Credit: Dr. Kartik Sunagar In a new study published in PLOS Genetics, scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have revealed new discoveries about the evolution of venom. The research points to a ‘two-speed’ evolution of animal venom, showing…
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The origin of large body size and herbivory in giant Canary Island lacertids
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Gallotia galloti. Photographer’s Credit: Petermann 2005, via Wikimedia Commons The Island Rule on body size claims big animals evolve smaller body sizes due to the limited resource of food and limited habitat; while smaller animals that have no natural enemies in islands evolve larger body sizes. Andrej Čerňanský and colleagues discovered a fossil related to the genus…
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Amphibians, Reptiles, & Natural History
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