“Unnatural” Selection
Humans driveevolutionof conch size
March 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.
To better explain how deer populations have declined throughout tropical America, one researcher delves into a collection of 2,500 deer bones at the Smithsonian archaeology lab in Panama.
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.
At one of the oldest Maya sites, STRI staff archaeologist, Ashley Sharpe, discovered dog bones from the Guatemalan highlands deep within two pyramids.
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.
Designed to share a hands-on-science experience, the new, brightly-painted van will make it possible for kids and adults to participate in the excitement of the discovery process in cities and towns across Panama.
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.
An oft-cited publication said a pre-Colombian archaeological site in Panama showed signs of extreme violence. A new review of the evidence strongly suggests that the interpretation was wrong.