Researchers have succeeded in reconstructing the evolutionary relationship between a two million year old giant primate and the living orangutan. It is the first time genetic material this old has been retrieved from a fossil in a subtropical area. This allows the researchers to accurately reconstruct animal, including human, evolutionary processes way beyond the limits known today.

In terms of their body plan, Old World monkeys -- a group that includes primates like baboons and macaques -- are generally considered more similar to ancestral species than apes are. But a new study suggests that as far as locomotion goes, apes and Old World monkeys each evolved a way of moving that was different from the ancestral species as they adapted to different niches in their environments.

One of the enduring puzzles of hearing loss is the decline in a person's ability to determine where a sound originates, a key survival faculty that allows animals to pinpoint the location of danger, prey and group members. Researchers are proposing a model based on a more dynamic neural code.

Little is known about the molecular and cellular events that occur during early embryonic development in primate species. Now, scientists have created a method to allow primate embryos to grow in the laboratory longer than ever before, enabling the researchers to obtain molecular details of key developmental processes for the first time. This research, while done in nonhuman primate cells, can have direct implications for early human development.

Research on zoo animals focuses more on 'familiar' species like gorillas and chimpanzees than less well known ones like the waxy monkey frog, scientists say.

In a large storage room in the basement of the former Musée d"Histoires Naturelles in Lyon, France, stands a rare relic of the colonial era: a full-body plaster cast of an 18-year-old Badtjala man from K'gari (Fraser Island), Queensland.

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over Holbox Island, off the Quintana Roo coast of Mexico. The island is separated from mainland Mexico by a shallow lagoon. This false-color image has been processed in a way that highlights vegetation in bright red.

In terms of their body plan, Old World monkeys—a group that includes primates like baboons and macaques—are generally considered more similar to ancestral species than apes are. But a new study that analyzes the first well-preserved femur of Aegyptopithecus zeuxis, a common ancestor of Old World monkeys and apes, suggests that as far as locomotion goes, apes and Old World monkeys each evolved a way of moving that was different from the ancestral species as they adapted to different […]

How did humans learn to walk upright?

A Caltech engineer has unlocked some of the secrets behind turbulence, a much-studied but difficult-to-pin-down phenomenon that mixes fluids when they flow past a solid boundary.