Aim: At broad geographical scales, species richness is a product of three basic processes: speciation, extinction and migration. However, determining which of these processes predominates is a major ...

Biologists have released a large and robust DNA matrix that has representation for all mammalian families. The matrix -- the culmination of about five years of painstaking research -- has ...

Researchers will reconstruct the process of evolution, determine relationships between species and build phylogenetic trees with greater accuracy thanks to new method for identifying extremely short ...

A study explores loss and recovery of mammal phylogenetic diversity (PD) during the current mass extinction. PD, the amount of unique evolutionary history in the tree of life, is considered a better ...

Resolving the timing and pattern of early placental mammal evolution has been confounded by conflict among divergence date estimates from interpretation of the fossil record and frommolecular-clock ...

In the world of phylogenetics, there's team sponge and team comb jelly. Which creature roots the animal tree of life—the simple sponge or the more complex comb jelly—has stirred fierce debate among ...

An asteroid strike 66 million years ago wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs and devastated the Earth’s forests, but tree-dwelling ancestors of primates may have survived it, according to a new study ...

Genomes are key to unlocking life's evolutionary history. The presence and absence of certain genetic sequences and mutations ...

Biologists will be able to reconstruct the process of evolution, determine relationships between species and build phylogenetic trees with greater accuracy thanks to a new method for identifying ...