“Unnatural” Selection
Humans driveevolutionof conch size
Marzo 21, 2014
Thousands of years of hunting has turned a substantial meal into a bite-sized snack.
Thousands of years of hunting has turned a substantial meal into a bite-sized snack.
20-million-year-old fossil seeds shed light on origins of plant biodiversity in Panama.
Fossil reefs from around the Caribbean show how biologically rich these ecosystems once were — and provide goalposts for conservationists hoping to restore them.
Individual tree species, not forest communities, respond to changes in phosphorus levels.
About 66 million years ago, a radical change on the Earth filled tropical forests with flowers. A new catalog of fossil pollen grains may hold an explanation.
Smithsonian scientists who documented massive mortality of corals and reef organisms meticulously studied one of the apparent causes: oxygen deficiency. A Smithsonian paleobiologist asks if the recent fossil record shows signs of similar hypoxia events.
Perhaps old species, like some older people, gradually lose their ability to deal with changes in their environment. Aaron O’Dea and colleagues show that when the Caribbean was cut off from the Pacific by the rise of the Panama land bridge, evolutionarily old species took longer to expand into new habitats than evolutionarily younger species did.
Long-distance migrations are common for large whales, but when in their evolutionary past did they begin to migrate and why? Fossil whale barnacles may have the answers
The Smithsonian’s first marine lab on Panama’s Caribbean coast invites visitors and researchers to experience the diversity of marine ecosystems within a protected space.
By taking on characteristics from another, younger stage in its life-cycle, this fossil crab was probably able to adapt to new conditions.