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Hot Topic
Origins
Origin & Evolution of Life
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Agonizing Dino Deaths
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| Topic: Origin & Evolution of Life |
06/13/07 |
| The puzzling pose of many fossilized dinosaurs may be due to the agonizing death throes typical of brain damage and asphyxiation. Understanding the causes leading to this posture in fossils could provide information about the Earth's climate when the dinosaurs went extinct. |
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Locking in Life
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| Topic: Origin & Evolution of Life |
06/12/07 |
| Scientists have developed a new model explaining how simple processes may have laid the foundation for life. Based on simple chemical and physical laws, the model shows how interactions between just a few chemicals can lead to novel combinations of molecules of greater complexity. |
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Phosphate Does a Body Good?
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| Topic: Origin & Evolution of Life |
06/11/07 |
| To better understand what caused life to evolve or die out in the past, scientists are studying the chemistry of the fossil record. Jim Elser thinks phosphate may have played a key role in the Cambrian explosion and the mass extinction that preceded it. |
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Life of an Origins Pioneer
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| Topic: Origin & Evolution of Life |
05/26/07 |
| Stanley Miller, whose famous laboratory experiments in 1952 demonstrated how the simple organics considered necessary for the origin of life could have been synthesized on the primitive Earth, has died. |
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Humongous Fungus
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| Topic: Origin & Evolution of Life |
04/26/07 |
| Scientists have solved a mystery surrounding one of the most unique organisms that ever lived. Scientists have debated whether the ancient organism is a plant or a fungus. Now researchers have used chemical evidence from fossils to solve the question once and for all. |
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Rethinking Species
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| Topic: Origin & Evolution of Life |
04/05/07 |
| Microbiologists are rethinking the ways in which they define and classify microbial species. Studying microbes and understanding how they are related to one another throughout evolutionary time is important in determining how life originated on our planet. |
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The Structure of Origins
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| Topic: Origin & Evolution of Life |
03/20/07 |
| Scientists have determined the three-dimensional structure of an RNA enzyme that is crucial in making RNA molecules. The finding may be able to teach us about how life originated from simple molecules. |
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Darwin's Bulldog and the Time Machine
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| Topic: Origin & Evolution of Life |
01/29/07 |
| From Astrobiology Magazine, European Edition comes a story of a now legendary meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Oxford. On 30 June 1860, Darwin´s Bulldog, Thomas Huxley, strode into the meeting and faced a large and eager audience. His opponent for the evening was Bishop Wilberforce of Oxford -- a fervent public speaker who was nicknamed Soapy Sam for his habit of rubbing his hands together as he sermonised. But Wilberforce was about to meet his match. |
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Finding Our Roots
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| Topic: Origin & Evolution of Life |
01/24/07 |
The earliest branches of primate evolution are more ancient by 10 million years than previous estimates, who reconstructed the base of the primate family tree. The team also discovered two 56-million-year-old fossils, including the most primitive primate skeleton ever described.
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The Great Preserver
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| Topic: Origin & Evolution of Life |
01/20/07 |
| What scientists had once identified as the oldest known animal eggs and embryos may have actually been 600-million-year-old giant bacteria. A new analysis of the microfossils may change our understanding of life's development on Earth. |
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