The Field Museum
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Study finds remarkable diversity of lichen species in Florida state park
— 28 Mar 2011 17:07 | BiologyIf you seek America's most diverse, densely packed human population, head for New York's Manhattan, but if it's lichens you fancy instead of people, then Southwestern Florida is your…
New bird emphasises the critical need to conserve the remaining dry forests of Madagascar
— 24 Feb 2011 20:53 | BiologyIn a recent issue of the scientific journal Zootaxa, researchers from Madagascar and the United States described a new species of forest-dwelling rail. The new bird was named Mentocrex…
New scholarly paper reveals 100 new species of lichenised fungi
— 15 Feb 2011 16:27 | BiologyIn an unprecedented coming-out party, 100 newly discovered species are revealed to the world in a single scholarly paper coordinated by Field Museum scientists…
Meat-eating dinosaurs not so carnivorous after all
— 3 Jan 2011 17:05 | Geology and palaeontologyTyrannosaurus rex may have been a flesh-eating terror but many of his closest relatives were more content with vegetarian fare, a new analysis by Field Museum scientists has found.…
New statistical model moves human evolution back 3 million years
— 6 Nov 2010 15:57 | Geology and palaeontologyEvolutionary divergence of humans from chimpanzees likely occurred some 8 million years ago rather than the 5 million year estimate widely accepted by scientists, a new statistical…
Oxygen fuels the fires of time
— 3 Aug 2010 11:42 | Geology and palaeontologyVariations in the Earth's atmospheric oxygen levels are thought to be closely linked to the evolution of life, with strong feedbacks between uni- and multicellular life and oxygen.…
Antarctica served as climatic refuge in Earth's greatest extinction event
— 3 Dec 2009 09:54 | Geology and palaeontologyThe largest known mass extinction in Earth's history, about 252 million years ago at the end of the Permian Period, may have been caused by global warming. A new fossil species suggests…
Bacterial gut symbionts are tightly linked with the evolution of herbivory in ants
— 2 Dec 2009 11:46 | BiologyBroadly speaking, ants have two different feeding strategies. A large proportion of all species are 'carnivorous,' meaning that they are generalist predators feeding on other small…
Field Museum scientist describes first vertebrate to live in trees
— 29 Jul 2009 16:28 | Geology and palaeontologyIn the Late Palaeozoic (260 million years ago), long before dinosaurs dominated the Earth, ancient precursors to mammals took to the trees to feed on leaves and live high above predators…
Work of Field Museum scientist addresses question of chance in evolution
— 10 Jun 2009 06:16 | BiologyAs Darwin observed, natural selection leading to adaptation of individuals and populations is occurring gradually and all the time. But over very long spans of time, the major channels…