Siberia fills the heads of scientists with dreams of resurrection. For millions of years, its tundra has gradually turned to permafrost, entombing animals and other organisms in ice. Some of their remains are exquisitely well preserved — so well, in fact, that some scientists have nibbled on the meat of woolly mammoths.

Some researchers even hope to find viable mammoth cells that they can use to clone the animals back from extinction. And in 2012, Russian scientists reported coaxing a seed buried in the permafrost for 32,000 years to sprout into a flower.

Continue reading “Out of Siberian Ice, a Virus Revived” →

Forcing male flies into monogamy has a startling effect: After a few dozen generations, the flies become worse at learning.

This discovery, published on Wednesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, isn’t a biological excuse for men who have strayed from their significant other. Instead, it’s a tantalizing clue about why intelligence evolved.

The new study was carried out by Brian Hollis and Tadeusz J. Kawecki, biologists at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. They investigated a fly species called Drosophila melanogaster that normally has a very un-monogamous way of life.

Continue reading “Stupider With Monogamy” →

Sam Bowring is officially a geologist at M.I.T. Unofficially, he’s a homicide detective trying to solve the ultimate cold case. Dr. Bowring wants to understand how an estimated 96 percent of all species on Earth became extinct at the end of the Permian Period 252 million years ago. It was the biggest of the five mass extinctions recorded in the fossil record. But because this killing happened so long ago, the culprit has evaded discovery for decades.

Dr. Bowring and his colleagues have now gotten an important break in the case. They’ve made the most precise measurement yet of how long it took for all those species to become extinct. 

Continue reading “Seeking a Break in a 252 Million-Year-Old Mass Killing” →