相关论文: Why sauropods had long necks; and why giraffes hav…
Although the sauropod dinosaurs have been recognised for more than a hundred and sixty years, much remains to be discovered and understood about their functional anatomy and palaeobiology. Older taxa require revision and new taxa await…
The Sauropoda were the largest terrestrial animals ever to have lived on this planet. As their nutritional requirements were so huge, their diet holds sway over the ecology of many Mesozoic herbivores. The diet of the sauropods is limited…
In birds, diverticula of the lungs and air sacs pneumatize specific regions of the postcranial skeleton. Relationships among pulmonary components and skeletal regions they pneumatize allow inferences about pulmonary anatomy in non-avian…
For over 165 million years, dinosaurs reigned on this planet. Their entire existence saw variations in their body size and mass . Understanding the relationship between various attributes such as femur length, breadth; humerus length,…
Darwin introduced the concept of the "living fossil" to describe species belonging to lineages that have experienced little evolutionary change, and suggested that species in more slowly evolving lineages are more prone to extinction (1).…
The bodies of snakes, such as king cobras, are very soft so that it is nearly impossible for them to raise their heads higher than around one meter. By direct measurement, we were only possible to hold the body of a freshly killed cobra…
Expansion of the neocortex is a hallmark of human evolution. However, it remains an open question what adaptive mechanisms facilitated its expansion. Here we show, using gyrencephaly index (GI) and other physiological and life-history data…
The evolution and distribution of species body sizes for terrestrial mammals is well-explained by a macroevolutionary tradeoff between short-term selective advantages and long-term extinction risks from increased species body size,…
Very low levels of genetic diversity have been reported in vertebrates with large genomes, notably salamanders and lungfish [1-3]. Interpreting differences in heterozygosity, which reflects genetic diversity in a population, is complicated…
Salamanders (urodela) have among the largest vertebrate genomes, ranging in size from 10 to over 80 pg. The urodela are divided into ten extant families each with a characteristic range in genome size. Although changes in genome size often…
Satellites of asteroids have been discovered in nearly every known small body population, and a remarkable aspect of the known satellites is the diversity of their properties. They tell a story of vast differences in formation and evolution…
The mechanisms underlying lifespan evolution in organisms have long been mysterious. However, recent studies have demonstrated that organisms evolutionarily gain noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) that carry endogenous profound functions in higher…
We present a study of the evolution of late-type field dwarfs over the last ~ 1.9 Gyr, based on HST ACS observations carried out as part of the GEMS survey. This study is amongst the first to probe the evolution of dwarfs over such a large…
Among all kinds of apes, only gibbons have the slim body as human. Gibbons can move in the forest by cross arm swing, what was the locomotion mode of our arboreal ancestor. Since our ancestor had much heavier body but weaker arms than…
The surface conditions of terrestrial bodies strongly reflect their geological evolutionary processes and vary among various terrestrial bodies. This diversity is attributed to variations in the timescales of boulder formation through…
We mapped all boulders larger than 105 m on the surface of dwarf planet Ceres using images of the Dawn framing camera acquired in the Low Altitude Mapping Orbit (LAMO). We find that boulders on Ceres are more numerous towards high latitudes…
One of the greatest challenges of terrestrial locomotion is resisting gravity. The morphological adaptive features of the limb long-bones of extant elephants, the heaviest living terrestrial animals, have previously been highlighted;…
The orbital parameters of the observed extrasolar planets differ strongly from those of our own solar system. The differences include planets with high masses, small semi-major axis and large eccentricities. We performed numerical…
The nasal cavity is a vital component of the respiratory system that heats and humidifies inhaled air in all vertebrates. Despite this common function, the shapes of nasal cavities vary widely across animals. To understand this variability,…
We have proposed a model to obtain the length of the day and month at any geologic time. The day is found to increase by 0.002 sec/century since the seventeenth century. The lengthening of the day is attributed entirely to the increasing…