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54-million-year-old skull reveals early evolution of primate brains

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Researchers at the University of Florida and the University of Winnipeg have developed the first detailed images of a primitive primate brain, unexpectedly revealing that cousins of our earliest ancestors relied on smell more than sight.

Filed under Natural History, Research, Sciences on Monday, June 22, 2009.

UF study finds ancient mammals shifted diets as climate changed

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A new University of Florida study shows mammals change their dietary niches based on climate-driven environmental changes, contradicting a common assumption that species maintain their niches despite global warming.

Filed under Environment, Natural History, Research, Sciences on Tuesday, June 2, 2009.

University of Florida study provides insight into evolution of first flowers

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Charles Darwin described the sudden origin of flowering plants about 130 million years ago as an abominable mystery, one that scientists have yet to solve.

Filed under Natural History, Research on Monday, May 18, 2009.

UF study: Preserved shark fossil adds evidence to great white’s origins

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A new University of Florida study could help resolve a long-standing debate in shark paleontology: From which line of species did the modern great white shark evolve?

Filed under Natural History, Research, Sciences on Thursday, March 12, 2009.

UF study: Rapid burst of flowering plants set stage for other species

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A new University of Florida study based on DNA analysis from living flowering plants shows that the ancestors of most modern trees diversified extremely rapidly 90 million years ago, ultimately leading to the formation of forests that supported similar evolutionary bursts in animals and other plants.

Filed under Environment, Natural History, Research, Sciences on Monday, February 9, 2009.

World’s largest snake shows tropics were hotter in the past

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The largest snake the world has ever known — as long as a school bus and as heavy as a small car — ruled tropical ecosystems only 6 million years after the demise of the fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex, according to a new discovery published in the journal Nature.

Filed under Environment, Natural History, Research, Sciences on Wednesday, February 4, 2009.

Scientists: Earthquakes, El Niños fatal to earliest civilization in Americas

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — First came the earthquakes, then the torrential rains. But the relentless march of sand across once fertile fields and bays, a process set in motion by the quakes and flooding, is probably what did in America’s earliest civilization.

Filed under Natural History, Research, Sciences on Monday, January 19, 2009.

Endangered sawfish focus of national collection and recovery efforts

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The University of Florida, keeper of the world’s shark attack records, is also now overseeing a national records collection for another toothy marine predator: the sawfish.

Filed under Environment, Florida, Natural History, Research, Sciences on Monday, December 1, 2008.

Small islands given short shrift in assembling archaeological record

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Small islands dwarf large ones in archaeological importance, says a University of Florida researcher, who found that people who settled the Caribbean before Christopher Columbus preferred more minute pieces of land because they relied heavily on the sea.

Filed under Environment, Natural History, Research on Thursday, October 30, 2008.

‘Pristine’ Amazonian region hosted large, urban civilization, study finds

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — They aren’t the lost cities early explorers sought fruitlessly to discover.

Filed under Natural History, Research, Sciences on Thursday, August 28, 2008.