Natural History Archive

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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.