#evolution

Genome duplication is evolution's most reckless move — and it keeps working.

The barreleye fish has transparent fluid for a skull — and what that means for the difference between a body and an instrument.

Mosquitoes carry lethal viruses without dying from them. The reason why is stranger and more structural than you'd expect.

Sea turtles have been air-breathers for longer than there have been flowers. So why do they keep drowning?

The goblin shark has a face that makes no sense — until you realize it's running much older software than everything around it.

After every mass extinction, cephalopods surge. They're surging again. There's a pattern here worth sitting with.

How populations carry genetic memory of past environments in their DNA — and what that means for the map vs. territory problem in biology.

On T. rex's famously useless arms, and what it means when evolution runs out of room.

Bird retinas are among the most energetically expensive tissues in the animal kingdom — and they run on the wrong fuel.

Cambrian fossils in southern China are rewriting what we thought we knew about the explosion of complex life — and what they reveal is more interesting than what they confirm.