All species on Earth, both living and extinct, are related. We know this because of a biological tool called the tree of life. This "tree" takes the form of a diagram that maps the relationships ...

Researchers rediscover tiny tropical land snails, reclassifying lost species and reshaping the tree of life in Central ...

Birds are the most diverse land vertebrate on the planet, and now scientists have constructed a complete evolutionary tree of the 11,000 or so known species. This data came from hundreds of studies ...

A new study unveils the most comprehensive understanding of the evolutionary history of flowering plants to date. The research analyzed 1.8 billion letters of genetic code from more than 9,500 species ...

Human-induced climate change and environmental degradation is causing entire genera to go extinct at rates 35 times higher than what’s been estimated to have occurred in the past one million years. A ...

The Baobab is one of the strangest-looking trees on Earth, and has been described as an “upside-down tree” and even the “tree of life” due to its nutrient-rich fruit. While six of the eight species of ...

Almost every plant we eat has a flower, and flowering plants populate every corner of the planet. But many questions remain about how and when this vast group emerged throughout the history of life on ...

People typically think about evolution as a linear process where, within a species, the classic adage of "survival of the ...

Why do you have five fingers? Why not ten, or twenty, or one? Why do so many animals have five fingers? Five seems to be the perfect number for most hands. Oddly, the first vertebrates to come onto ...

Diet played a key role in the evolution of the vast beetle family tree Lesley Evans Ogden, Knowable Magazine Caroline Chaboo’s eyes light up when she talks about tortoise beetles. Like gems, they ...

If you liked this story, share it with other people. Of the more than 4,000 known tree species found only in Mesoamerica, nearly half are threatened with extinction, according a new assessment.