Science Stories Archive
Archived Stories - Evolution and Extinction
(09/2008) The origins of when flowers managed to harness insects' pollinating power has long been murky. But the new study is the first to pinpoint...
(08/2008) Florida Museum of Natural History and University of Texas at Austin scientists have shed light on what Charles Darwin called the "abominable mystery" of early plant evolution...
(06/2008) Tourists who comb Florida's sandy beaches for exotic shells are probably unaware that they're also picking through bits of geologic history. Incalculable numbers of fossilized marine invertebrates pepper the Sunshine State...
(05/2008) The unusual discovery of well-preserved fossils in a water-filled sinkhole called a blue hole revealed the bones of landlubbing crocodiles and tortoises that did not survive human encroachment...
(03/2008) David Steadman, a paleo-ornithologist at the Florida Museum, has an ambitious goal to find the oldest hummingbird fossils in North America, and says the perfect spot to search may be within an hour's drive from Gainesville...
(11/2007) Last season, nearly 220 complete skeletons were excavated from Haile 7G – some encased in plaster jackets, and some wrapped in protective tissues – and transported to the Museum’s Vertebrate Paleontology division, where they will...
(05/2007) The Herbarium at the Florida Museum of Natural History is run jointly by the Museum and the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. Including the associated fossil plant collection, it houses about 500,000 vascular plants, moss and lichen...
(04/2007) The roots of the primate family tree are now more clearly defined in the fossil record, and about 10 million years older than thought, according to Florida Museum of Natural History vertebrate paleontologist Jonathan Bloch and...
(03/2007) About 3.3 million years ago, lice found on gorillas began to infest humans, Reed said. That they took up residence in the pubic region may have coincided with humans’ loss of hair on the rest of their bodies...
(03/2007) Florida Museum of Natural History Paleobotany Curator Steve Manchester has concluded a three-year National Science Foundation project comparing 50-million-year old fossil forests of Europe, Asia and North America, aimed at unraveling ancient patterns...
(01/2007) Evidence from a study led by the Florida Museum of Natural History confirms that the carnivorous, seven-foot-tall "terror bird" likely arrived in North America from South America several million years before a land bridge connected the two continents...
(05/2006) Every so often scientists discover a plant or animal that was thought to be extinct. A dramatic example is the Coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae), a prehistoric-looking fish found off the coast of Madagascar in 1938. It had been presumed that this type of primitive...
(12/2005) Prehistoric big game hunters and not the last ice age are the likely culprits in the extinction of giant ground sloths and other North American great mammals such as mammoths, mastodons and saber-toothed tigers...
(10/2005) “Into Africa” rather than “Out of Africa” could well be the better description of how certain mammals originated and spread across the world...
(08/2005) The old gray mare, she ain’t what she used to be, says a Florida Museum of Natural History researcher whose findings show that the evolution of horses had more twists and turns than previously thought...
(01/2005) New genetic research of human lice supports the evolutionary theory of direct contact between modern and archaic humans, according to a study lead by a Florida Museum of Natural History researcher...
(08/2004) Drawn by turquoise waters and sun-drenched white sand beaches, hoards of tourists annually flock to Bahia Honda State Park, a small 524-acre island in the Lower Florida Keys...
(05/2004) A group of scientists has created the first comprehensive evolutionary reconstruction of the many families of flowering plants, an achievement that could aid in the search for plant-based cures for diseases and improve agricultural crops...