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Evolution

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An artist’s impression of what the amniote may have looked like.

A stubby goanna-like creature walked across a muddy creek, rewriting the timeline of life 350 million years later

A fossil found in Victoria’s High Country has given scientists an astonishing new insight into life’s evolution from water onto land.

  • Liam Mannix

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Jon Snow is reunited with his dire wolf, Ghost, in the Game of Thrones finale.

‘Good lord, this thing is huge’: Pups bred using DNA from extinct dire wolf

Two brothers – Romulus and Remus – and a younger female pup called Khaleesi, after the popular Game of Thrones character, were genetically engineered by a US lab.

  • Christina Larson
Scientist Hugh Goold has completed the final stage of an international effort to create a synthetic yeast genome.

Hugh once delivered cheese to the Queen. Now he’s built the key to synthetic life

The first-ever synthetic multicellular organism is ready to come to life after a Sydney breakthrough 10 years in the making.

  • Angus Dalton
Now where are my car keys?

We’re becoming dumb and dumber – welcome to the idiocracy

The human capacity for mental focus is in decline. I’m feeling it, people.

  • Cherie Gilmour
Putricia bloomed on January 23.

In extraordinary timing, a second corpse flower has bloomed in Sydney

The incredible botanical double-act comes just two and a half weeks after the flower named Putricia became a global sensation. And this one’s stinkier.

  • Angus Dalton
Putricia the corpse flower’s pollen germinating with plant ovary-seeking tubes through a microscope.

Behind the scenes at the Botanic Garden, it’s more zoo than greenhouse

Secret doors, smoke plumes, air locks, a million species and shipwrecked treasures: this world-renowned Sydney establishment could be the most biodiverse spot in the country.

  • Angus Dalton
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After 1.7 million online views and at least in person 27,000 visitors, curtains fell on Putricia’s famous livestream at midnight.

The curtains have closed on Putricia. Here’s what she looks like now

The public can no longer see Sydney’s celebrated corpse flower. But what happens next is extraordinary.

  • Angus Dalton
A chimpanzee at Taronga Zoo in Sydney,

Why your body evolved to penalise you for not exercising – even if you hate it

Why would evolution produce an organism that must spend 150 minutes a week doing things like running on a treadmill to maintain health?

  • Liam Mannix
Some of the footprints of two humans pieces found side by side in Kenya.

Footprints show two human species crossed paths 1.5 million years ago

One had an ape-like big toe, the other a high arch. One was a juvenile, another had a stiff foot.

  • Will Dunham
Left: Professor Mike Archer with the preserved pub that inspired his de-extinction program in 2000. Right: Dr Anna Gillespie recovering a thylacine fossil from a boulder using acetic acid.

Scientists dissolved a boulder in acid – and a thylacine jumped out

The bone-crushing fossilised jaws were one of three Tasmanian tiger ancestors uncovered by palaeontologists, amid a contentious effort to resurrect the marsupial carnivore.

  • Angus Dalton

Original URL: https://www.smh.com.au/topic/evolution-jlm