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BBC Nature - Argentinosaurus videos, news and facts. Deep Life. Forget E.T.

Deep Life

It’s time to meet the intraterrestrials. Explorations hundreds of meters into the seafloor are helping scientists study organisms living there. Instruments lowered into the holes create ongoing observation stations, called CORKs. Tony Randazzo/AAReps Inc. This basalt rock, pulled up during an expedition to a seamount off Hawaii’s coast, is coated in iron oxides — a sign of microbial activity. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Unusual 'tulip' creature discovered. A bizarre creature that lived in the ocean more than 500-million years ago has emerged from the famous Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rockies.

Unusual 'tulip' creature discovered

Officially named Siphusauctum gregarium, fossils reveal a tulip-shaped creature that is about the length of a dinner knife (approximately 20 centimetres) and has a unique filter feeding system. Siphusauctum has a long stem, with a calyx -- a bulbous cup-like structure -- near the top that encloses an unusual filter feeding system and a gut. The animal is thought to have fed by filtering particles from water actively pumped into its calyx through small holes. The stem ends with a small disc which anchored the animal to the seafloor. Multicellular Life Evolves in Laboratory. An evolutionary transition that took several billion years to occur in nature has happened in a laboratory, and it needed just 60 days.

Multicellular Life Evolves in Laboratory

Under artificial pressure to become larger, single-celled yeast became multicellular creatures. That crucial step is responsible for life’s progression beyond algae and bacteria, and while the latest work doesn’t duplicate prehistoric transitions, it could help reveal the principles guiding them. “This is actually simple. 10 Fascinating New Species Discovered in 2011. Igitur-archive.library.uu.nl/bio/2002-0103-104949/savilljtb184-97.pdf.

Experiments explain why almost all multicellular organisms begin life as a single cell. Evolution of Amino Acid Frequencies in Proteins Over Deep Time: Inferred Order of Introduction of Amino Acids into the Genetic Code. Introduction An insight into how proteomic amino acid composition has changed over vast evolutionary time is required for a thorough understanding of the process of protein evolution.

Evolution of Amino Acid Frequencies in Proteins Over Deep Time: Inferred Order of Introduction of Amino Acids into the Genetic Code

Knowledge of the amino acid composition of early proteomes can reveal which of the amino acids have increased and which have decreased in frequency with evolution. Such information could provide clues to the order in which amino acids were introduced into the genetic code and thus into primitive proteins, as suggested previously on the basis of a different approach (Brooks and Fresco 2002<$REFLINK> ). The recent increase in the number of whole genome sequences has made the analysis of the corresponding inferred proteomes possible. Here, we extend these earlier proteomic characterizations by estimating the amino acid composition of proteins in an ancestral genome. Water's quantum weirdness makes life possible - life - 25 October 2011. WATER'S life-giving properties exist on a knife-edge.

Water's quantum weirdness makes life possible - life - 25 October 2011

It turns out that life as we know it relies on a fortuitous, but incredibly delicate, balance of quantum forces. Water is one of the planet's weirdest liquids, and many of its most bizarre features make it life-giving. For example, its higher density as a liquid than as a solid means ice floats on water, allowing fish to survive under partially frozen rivers and lakes. And unlike many liquids, it takes a lot of heat to warm water up even a little, a quality that allows mammals to regulate their body temperature. But computer simulations show that quantum mechanics nearly robbed water of these life-giving features. Yet in simulations that include quantum effects, hydrogen bond lengths keep changing thanks to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which says no molecule can have a definite position with respect to the others. Now, Salmon's team has done this.

THE WORLD GEOGRAPHY. Dino-era Mammal the "Jurassic Mother" of Us All? A tiny, shrew-like creature of the dinosaur era might have been, in a sense, the mother of us all. Named the "Jurassic mother from China" (Juramaia sinensis), the newfound fossil species is the earliest known ancestor of placental mammals—animals, such as humans, that give birth to relatively mature, live young—according to a new study. Neanderthal sex boosted immunity in modern humans. 26 August 2011Last updated at 12:15 By Matt McGrath Science reporter, BBC World Service Human leucocyte antigen (mauve) is expressed on the outside of white blood cells Sexual relations between ancient humans and their evolutionary cousins are critical for our modern immune systems, researchers report in Science journal.

Neanderthal sex boosted immunity in modern humans

Mating with Neanderthals and another ancient group called Denisovans introduced genes that help us cope with viruses to this day, they conclude. The downside of sex with Neanderthals. Interbreeding with Neanderthals (above) and Denisovans may have brought short-term health benefits but long-term problems.

The downside of sex with Neanderthals

Photograph: Chris Howes/Alamy. Daily Rotten Forum Experience. Glass Beach. Oldest known fossils prove life began more than 3.4bn years ago - Science, News.

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Revealing the Link - Welcome. Encyclopedia of Life. Natural History Magazine. View from Satellite. Video. Understanding Evolution. The bacteria that changed the world - May, 2017 The make-up of Earth's atmosphere, once the domain of Earth science textbooks, has become an increasingly "hot" news topic in recent decades, as we struggle to curb global warming by limiting the carbon dioxide that human activity produces.

Understanding Evolution

While the changes that humanity has wrought on the planet are dramatic, this isn’t the first time that one species has changed Earth’s atmosphere. Three billion years ago, there was no free oxygen in the atmosphere at all. Life was anaerobic, meaning that it did not need oxygen to live and grow. Strange Animal Models of Human Evolution.