Research Highlight |
Featured
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News Feature |
Humanity’s oldest art is flaking away. Can scientists save it?
Ancient humans painted scenes in Indonesian caves more than 45,000 years ago, but their art is disappearing rapidly. Researchers are trying to discover what’s causing the damage and how to stop it — before the murals are gone forever.
- Dyani Lewis
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Article |
A genomic mutational constraint map using variation in 76,156 human genomes
A genomic constraint map for the human genome constructed using data from 76,156 human genomes from the Genome Aggregation Database shows that non-coding constrained regions are enriched for regulatory elements and variants associated with complex diseases and traits.
- Siwei Chen
- , Laurent C. Francioli
- & Konrad J. Karczewski
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News & Views |
How hyenas decide whether to form a lion-fighting mob
Monitoring complex hyena societies in the wild sheds light on factors that predict whether individuals will engage in a risky collective activity.
- Mary Abraham
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Research Highlight |
Earliest known fossil mosquito is a blood-sucking surprise
Insects trapped in amber reveal that male mosquitoes, too, could once extract blood.
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Article
| Open Access
The genetic legacy of the expansion of Bantu-speaking peoples in Africa
We gathered genetic data for 1,763 individuals from 147 populations across 14 African countries, and 12 Late Iron Age individuals, to trace the expansion of Bantu-speaking peoples over the past 6,000 years.
- Cesar A. Fortes-Lima
- , Concetta Burgarella
- & Carina M. Schlebusch
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Research Briefing |
Whole-genome alignment with primates reveals DNA elements conserved in humans
By comparing DNA sequences across hundreds of species of primates and other mammals, an analysis identifies non-coding regulatory elements that are conserved only in primates and that could have important roles in complex traits and diseases in humans.
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News & Views |
The overlooked role of landscape dynamics in steering biodiversity
Scientists have long sought to understand what drives biodiversity changes. A study unifies ideas about marine and terrestrial biodiversity in one explanatory framework, pointing to physical geography as dictating life’s trajectory.
- Alexandre Pohl
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Article |
Cellular development and evolution of the mammalian cerebellum
- Mari Sepp
- , Kevin Leiss
- & Henrik Kaessmann
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Article
| Open Access
Identification of constrained sequence elements across 239 primate genomes
Whole-genome alignment of 239 primate species reveals noncoding regulatory elements that are under selective constraint in primates but not in other placental mammals, that are enriched for variants that affect human gene expression and complex traits in diseases.
- Lukas F. K. Kuderna
- , Jacob C. Ulirsch
- & Kyle Kai-How Farh
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Article
| Open Access
Landscape dynamics and the Phanerozoic diversification of the biosphere
A model of sediment flux from the land to the oceans over the Phanerozoic eon explains differences in the fossil records of marine animal genera and land plant genera.
- Tristan Salles
- , Laurent Husson
- & Beatriz Hadler Boggiani
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Article |
Genetic continuity and change among the Indigenous peoples of California
Genome-wide analyses of ancient DNA from individuals from California and Mexico shed light on the spread of Mexican ancestry to California and how it correlates with linguistic flow.
- Nathan Nakatsuka
- , Brian Holguin
- & David Reich
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News & Views |
Genes are often uninformative for dating species’ origins
The time frame of a species’ origins provides context for evolutionary questions. However, dates from fossils are often inconsistent with estimates from genetic data. Emerging evidence points to a new explanation for this discrepancy.
- Matt Pennell
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News |
These bats are the first mammals found to have non-penetrative mating
A European bat has been captured on film engaging in what appears to be an unusual reproductive strategy.
- Gayathri Vaidyanathan
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Nature Careers Podcast |
Scientific illustration: striking the balance between creativity and accuracy
A misleading image in a medical textbook could have life and death implications, but some disciplines can deploy myth and metaphor to convey their science through art.
- Julie Gould
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Nature Video |
How would a starfish wear trousers? Science has an answer
Gene expression reveals the story behind starfishes’ strange five-armed body plans
- Shamini Bundell
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News & Views |
A radical evolutionary makeover gave echinoderms their unusual body plan
Echinoderms such as starfish are unusual for their five-fold body symmetry. Maps of gene-expression patterns show how this body plan was acquired, and that the genes specifying head structures do the heavy lifting.
- Thurston Lacalli
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Article
| Open Access
Fossil evidence for a pharyngeal origin of the vertebrate pectoral girdle
Computed tomography analysis of the braincase of the Early Devonian placoderm fish Kolymaspis sibirica suggests a skeletal gill support was involved in the origin of the shoulder girdle and provides new evidence reconciling historic theories about the evolution of paired fins.
- Martin D. Brazeau
- , Marco Castiello
- & Matt Friedman
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Article |
Molecular evidence of anteroposterior patterning in adult echinoderms
RNA tomography and in situ hybridization in echinoderms suggest a new ambulacral-anterior model to relate echinoderm pentaradial symmetry to the ancestral bilateral symmetry.
- L. Formery
- , P. Peluso
- & C. J. Lowe
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News |
Blood-sucking fish had flesh-eating ancestors
Two ‘superbly preserved’ fossil lampreys from the Jurassic period help piece together the past of the unusual jawless fish.
- Xiaoying You
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News |
Did dust from the Chicxulub asteroid impact kill the dinosaurs?
Fine particles kicked up by the collision could have blocked out the Sun for years, resulting in global cooling and disastrous consequences for ecosystems.
- Katharine Sanderson
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Book Review |
Consciousness: what it is, where it comes from — and whether machines can have it
To understand where artificial intelligence might be heading, we must first understand what consciousness, the self and free will mean in ourselves.
- Liad Mudrik
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News |
Menopausal chimpanzees deepen the mystery of why women stop reproducing
Some chimpanzees have been found to experience menopause. But are they the exception or the rule?
- Dyani Lewis
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Book Review |
The plant poisons that shape our daily lives
An exploration of nature’s toxins reveals complex relationships between humans and the plant chemicals we use as foods, medicines and mind-altering drugs.
- Emily Monosson
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Research Highlight |
Fossilized skull shows that early bats had modern sonar
Remains suggest that ancient bats used the same form of echolocation as species flying the skies now.
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Article |
The episodic resurgence of highly pathogenic avian influenza H5 virus
Recent resurgences of highly pathogenic avian influenza H5 viruses have different origins and virus ecologies as their epicentres shift and viruses evolve, with changes indicating increased adaptation among domestic birds.
- Ruopeng Xie
- , Kimberly M. Edwards
- & Vijaykrishna Dhanasekaran
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News & Views |
From the archive: animal behaviour, and Darwin discusses organ loss
Snippets from Nature’s past.
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News |
Reproducibility trial: 246 biologists get different results from same data sets
Wide distribution of findings shows how analytical choices drive conclusions.
- Anil Oza
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Article
| Open Access
Genotyping, sequencing and analysis of 140,000 adults from Mexico City
Genotype and exome sequencing of 150,000 participants and whole-genome sequencing of 9,950 selected individuals recruited into the Mexico City Prospective Study constitute a valuable, publicly available resource of non-European sequencing data.
- Andrey Ziyatdinov
- , Jason Torres
- & Roberto Tapia-Conyer
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Article
| Open Access
Mexican Biobank advances population and medical genomics of diverse ancestries
Nationwide genomic biobank in Mexico unravels demographic history and complex trait architecture from 6,057 individuals.
- Mashaal Sohail
- , María J. Palma-Martínez
- & Andrés Moreno-Estrada
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News & Views |
Cichlid fish seized an ecological opportunity to diversify
The analysis of fossils in sediment cores from Lake Victoria, Africa, reveals that a group of cichlid fish rapidly diversified as the lake got larger and provided new ecological niches, whereas the other fish there did not diversify.
- Martin J. Genner
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News & Views |
How purposeless physics underlies purposeful life
Evolution by natural selection peerlessly describes how life’s complexity develops — but can it be explained in terms of physics? A new approach suggests it can.
- George F. R. Ellis
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Article
| Open Access
Assembly theory explains and quantifies selection and evolution
Assembly theory conceptualizes objects as entities defined by their possible formation histories, allowing a unified language for describing selection, evolution and the generation of novelty.
- Abhishek Sharma
- , Dániel Czégel
- & Leroy Cronin
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Article
| Open Access
A continuous fish fossil record reveals key insights into adaptive radiation
This study presents a continuous fossil record, extracted from a series of sediment cores, that shows how haplochromine cichlids came to dominate the fish fauna of Lake Victoria in Africa.
- Nare Ngoepe
- , Moritz Muschick
- & Ole Seehausen
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Article
| Open Access
Bridging two insect flight modes in evolution, physiology and robophysics
Asynchronous flight in all major groups of insects likely arose from a single common ancestor with reversions to a synchronous flight mode enabled by shifts back and forth between different regimes in the same set of dynamic parameters.
- Jeff Gau
- , James Lynch
- & Simon Sponberg
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Nature Podcast |
Astronomers are worried by a satellite brighter than most stars
Researchers determined the telecommunications satellite was periodically brighter than 99% of stars, and powerful X-rays have uncovered an ancient trilobite’s last meal.
- Benjamin Thompson
- & Nick Petrić Howe
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News & Views |
From the archive: lost in translation, and fascinating frogs
Snippets from Nature’s past.
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Book Review |
A ‘user’s manual for the female mammal’ — how women’s bodies evolved
The female perspective is often missed in evolutionary tales, but it is at the centre of what makes us human.
- Josie Glausiusz
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Spotlight |
Digging up ancient animals in Amazonia
Laurent Marivaux works to identify ancient mammals to understand evolutionary history in South America.
- Magali Reinert
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Article
| Open Access
The sex-specific factor SOA controls dosage compensation in Anopheles mosquitoes
A newly identified gene, sex chromosome activation (SOA), is a master regulator of dosage compensation in Anopheles gambiae.
- Agata Izabela Kalita
- , Eric Marois
- & Claudia Isabelle Keller Valsecchi
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Research Briefing |
A trilobite’s last meal reveals feeding behaviour and physiology
The gut contents of a fossilized trilobite, Bohemolichas incola, from the Ordovician period (about 465 million years ago), were imaged by a technique called synchrotron microtomography and fully itemized. The results indicate that the animal fed indiscriminately on small shelly invertebrates and that its gut had a neutral to alkaline pH.
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Article
| Open Access
Uniquely preserved gut contents illuminate trilobite palaeophysiology
Fossilized gut contents of an Ordovician trilobite shed light on the feeding habits of one of the most common and well-known extinct arthropods.
- Petr Kraft
- , Valéria Vaškaninová
- & Per E. Ahlberg
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News & Views |
From the archive: teenage disdain, and Darwin ponders tiny males
Snippets from Nature’s past.
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News & Views |
Getting inside the oldest known vertebrate skull
Analysis of a 458-million-year-old fossil fish reveals anatomical insights about the vertebrate skull and how skull organization evolved from that of ancestral early vertebrates to that of jawed vertebrates.
- Zhikun Gai
- & Philip C. J. Donoghue
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Article
| Open Access
The oldest three-dimensionally preserved vertebrate neurocranium
Computed tomography reveals that the cranial anatomy of Ordovician stem-group gnathostome Eriptychius americanus from the Harding Sandstone of Colorado, USA, is distinct among vertebrates.
- Richard P. Dearden
- , Agnese Lanzetti
- & Ivan J. Sansom
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Article
| Open Access
Evidence for the earliest structural use of wood at least 476,000 years ago
Wooden artefacts from waterlogged deposits in Zambia dating back 477 ka indicate hitherto unknown sophistication in woodworking at an early date.
- L. Barham
- , G. A. T. Duller
- & P. Nkombwe
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Research Highlight |
The secret sex lives of ‘celibate’ stick insects
Genetic analysis shows that some stick insects that supposedly reproduce without sex are actually pairing off to have offspring.
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News |
A new human species? Mystery surrounds 300,000-year-old fossil
A chinless jawbone from eastern China that displays both modern and archaic features could represent a new branch of the human family tree.
- Dyani Lewis
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News |
Ancient-human fossils sent to space: scientists slam ‘publicity stunt’
The decision to send hominin bones on a commercial spaceflight has raised eyebrows among human-evolution researchers.
- Ewen Callaway
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Article
| Open Access
Uncovering new families and folds in the natural protein universe
The extent to which the AlphaFold database has structurally illuminated proteins that are challenging to annotate for function or putative biological role using standard homology-based approaches at high predicted accuracy is investigated.
- Janani Durairaj
- , Andrew M. Waterhouse
- & Joana Pereira
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