A study of around 100 newly collected specimens of early ammonoids (marine invertebrates with distinctive coiled shells) suggests that the number of species they belong to might have been over-estimated due to the large variability in size and shape within each species.
Researchers at the University of Bristol are part of a new five-year interdisciplinary study exploring better ways to forecast and cope with future volcanic eruptions.
Multicellularity in cyanobacteria originated before 2.4 billion years ago and is associated with the accumulation of atmospheric oxygen, subsequently enabling the evolution of aerobic life, as we know it today, according to a new study from the University of Zurich involving researchers now at the University of Bristol, and Gothenburg.
Katharine Cashman, Professor of Volcanology in the School of Earth Sciences, is one of 21 new Wolfson Research Merit Award holders. The prestigious awards are conferred by the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of science.
The key characteristics of birds which allow them to fly – their wings and their small size – arose much earlier than previously thought, according to new research from the Universities of Bristol and Sheffield into the Paraves, the first birds and their closest dinosaurian relatives which lived 160 to 120 million years ago.
Visitors to the village of Tytherington where the West's very own dinosaur, the Thecodontosaurus, was discovered in the 1970s, will have the opportunity to learn more about this amazing local resident on Wednesday 31 October as part of South Gloucestershire's Discover Festival.
It takes both teeth and jaws to make a pretty smile, but the evolutionary origins of these parts of our anatomy have only just been discovered, thanks to a particle accelerator and a long dead fish. The research, led by the University of Bristol, is published today in Nature.
A new study looking at the structure of feathers in bird-like dinosaurs has shed light on one of nature’s most remarkable inventions – how flight might have evolved. Academics at the Universities of Bristol, Yale and Calgary have shown that prehistoric birds had a much more primitive version of the wings we see today, with rigid layers of feathers acting as simple airfoils for gliding.
Thanks to NASA's Cassini spacecraft, scientists including Dr Nick Teanby, have been able to observe for the first time ever the seasonal atmospheric circulation direction change on Titan – an event which only happens once every 15 years and is never observable from Earth. Their findings are published today in Nature.
Opsins, the light-sensitive proteins key to vision, may have evolved earlier and undergone fewer genetic changes than previously believed, according to a new study from the National University of Ireland Maynooth and the University of Bristol published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) .
