Migratory birds such as the pied flycatcher typically have wintering locations in Africa close to others from the same breeding population. A team of European researchers tracked the migration of pied flycatchers from eight different countries, but also performed a crucial intervention: what happens to the birds of Dutch eggs that are being raised by Swedish foster parents? The researchers conclude that genes as well as environment influence where in Africa a bird finds its wintering spot.

Flowering plants, or angiosperms, now dominate Earth’s flora, but biologists thought they truly took off only after dinosaurs died out following an asteroid impact 66 million years ago. UC Berkeley paleobotanists analyzed fossilized seeds and fruits from a ‘botanical Pompeii’ in New Mexico that contradicts this scenario. A mature forest buried under ash 10 million years earlier was dominated by angiosperms with elaborate diaspores that could only have been spread by animals, including early mammals.

Great apes may have been laughing with a similar rhythm to modern humans for at least 15 million years, a University of Warwick study reveals. The finding offers unexpected clues to how human speech evolved.