New fossil evidence challenges the story of mammalian birth
Peer-Reviewed Publication
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 30-Oct-2026 23:16 ET (31-Oct-2026 03:16 GMT/UTC)
For many years, cynodonts – animals that were a transitional link between early synapsids, a group of animals among which true mammals evolved, and the first true mammals – were believed to have laid eggs. Now, for the first time, a new study has found evidence to the contrary. Using a neonatal line, which is only rarely conserved in the fossil record, and comparisons of newborn-adult body weight ratios, a team in Argentina concluded that Chiniquodon theotonicus gave birth to live young. This pushes the timeline of this evolutionary adaptation back by up to 95 million years, said the team, and offers new avenues to reconstruct ecological aspects of the Triassic world.
Most individuals encounter their health primarily through an annual health screening, which provides a limited snapshot of one’s health status. A new study by the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore (NUS Medicine), is challenging the way we think about health and longevity, by seeking to understand what occurs between those assessments, focusing on function rather than static markers, tracking how physiology changes moment to moment.
Led by Professor Dean Ho, Director of the Institute for Digital Medicine (WisDM) at NUS Medicine, the study took an unusual and highly personalised approach: Prof Ho became the sole subject of the study.
New research which shows that taking the stairs could help you live longer.
A major new study reveals that climbing the stairs significantly reduces the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease.
Over the course of the study, people who regularly climb stairs were 39 per cent less likely to die from heart-related problems and 24 per cent less likely to die from any cause - compared with people who don't climb stairs as often.
The study also reveals that people who climbed the stairs were less likely to suffer major cardiovascular conditions such as a heart attack, stroke and heart failure.
Being an elite athlete, at least as a mouse, does not shorten lifespan or limit how many children you can have. This is the finding of a study 30 years in the making, and it runs counter to accepted evolutionary theory.
Animal cognition in the wild: researchers tested how two closely-related cichlids living side-by-side in Lake Tanganyika make decisions in simple and complex scenarios.
Decision-making differs: while both species have similar preferences in simple tasks, they diverge in their decision-making strategies when faced with more complex choices.
Evolutionary implications: the study highlights the flexibility and complexity of decision-making processes in animals and how these evolved.
Scorching heat waves, severe cold snaps, and other extreme weather events are limiting where species can exist — and affecting biodiversity estimates — for more than 500 North American bird species, according to a new, Yale-led study.
The issue is particularly acute in the Great Plains and southwestern regions of the United States, where species ranges and total species counts are significantly overestimated when variable and extreme weather are not considered, the study says.
The findings were published in the journal Global Change Biology.
“We all know extreme weather is on the rise with climate change,” said Jeremy Cohen, the study’s lead author. He is an associate research scientist in Yale’s Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, a member of the lab of co-author and Yale professor Walter Jetz, and part of the Yale Center for Biodiversity and Global Change. “This is the first study to look at how increasingly variable and extreme weather affects avian biodiversity at a continental scale.”
An analysis of Reddit posts about the maternal Tdap vaccine made by pregnant women reveals expectant mothers turning to Reddit to seek advice and reassurance—with fewer outright instances of vaccine hesitation/refusal than has generally been observed for other types of vaccines, according to a study published on August 12, 2026 in the open access journal PLOS Global Public Health by Soojung Jo from Purdue University, United States, and colleagues.