A digital reconstruction of a million-year-old skull suggests humans may have diverged from our ancient ancestors 400,000 years earlier than thought and in Asia, not Africa, a study found. The ...

Linda Shearwin receives funding from the Australian Research Council. Frank Grützner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit ...

New analysis of a 100-million-year-old fossil embedded in a rocky cove in Australia suggests echidnas may have evolved from swimming ancestors. That's basically unheard of: While there are many ...

One hundred years ago a young teacher, John T. Scopes, went on trial in Dayton, Tenn., for violating a recently enacted state law that forbade the state’s educators “to teach any theory that denies ...

A nearly gapless genome sequence of the echidna, an egg-laying mammal with multiple sex chromosomes, helps researchers to track genomic reorganization events that gave rise to a highly unusual sex ...

Discover interesting facts about how evolution works, the different patterns that can emerge from evolution, how quickly organisms can evolve, and whether evolution is a random or ordered process When ...

Have you ever pondered the bewildering array of creatures that inhabit our planet? From scaly reptiles to feathered birds and furry beasts, each one piques our curiosity. One such group that stands ...

The Australian platypus is one of Earth’s most unusual creatures — but there was a time when it might not have stood out in a crowd. In roughly 100-million-year-old rocks in Australia, scientists have ...

Outliers among mammals, monotremes lay eggs instead of giving birth to live young. Only two types of monotremes, the platypus and echidna, still exist, but more monotreme species were around about 100 ...

In the opal fields of northern New South Wales, nestled within the dusty discards of an opal mine, a treasure more ancient and intriguing than the gemstones themselves was discovered. Here, scientists ...

A team of Australian scientists have unearthed the evidence of an ‘Age of Monotremes’ at the Australian Museum (AM), Museums Victoria (MV) and Australian Opal Centre. The researchers believe these ...