Latest Mammal Stories
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Giant prehistoric kangaroos and wombat-like creatures the size of hippopotamuses were not killed off by human hunters but by climate change and starvation, an Australian study has found.The study, based on the re-excavation of a site at Lake Menindee in western New South Wales state, found strong evidence that the cold climates of the last Ice Age were followed by a drought which caused the mammals to starve to death.The site was first studied in the 1950s, when scientists...
SYDNEY -- Giant prehistoric kangaroos and wombat-like creatures the size of hippopotamuses were not killed off by human hunters but by climate change and starvation, an Australian study has found.The study, based on the re-excavation of a site at Lake Menindee in western New South Wales state, found strong evidence that the cold climates of the last Ice Age were followed by a drought which caused the mammals to starve to death.The site was first studied in the 1950s, when scientists argued...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Snakes may make people jump for a good reason -- human close-up vision may have evolved specifically to spot the reptiles, researchers reported on Thursday. Humans, monkeys and other primates have good color vision, large brains, and use their vision to guide reaching and grasping. But while some scientists believe these characteristics evolved together as early primates used their hands and eyes to pick fruit and other foods, Lynne Isbell, a professor of...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A creature that looked like a beaver, right down to its flat paddle-like tail and webbed feet, lived 164 million years ago alongside dinosaurs, U.S. and Chinese researchers reported on Thursday. It might not have gnawed trees as modern beavers do -- its teeth suggest it ate fish -- but the little animal had fur and even the inner ear structure of a mammal, they report in Friday's issue of the journal Science. Thomas Martin of the Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg in...
WASHINGTON -- The growing populations of harbor seals and sea lions along the West Coast may be good news for California condors. While condors are now best known for eating dead deer, cattle and other animals, new research shows that carcasses of marine animals once formed a large part of their diet. Some condors are already finding food in sea lion and seal rookeries that have been growing along the coast, reports Stanford University researcher Page Chamberlain. A large part of the condor's...
NEW BRUNSWICK/PISCATAWAY, N.J. "“ The first, high resolution continuous record of oxygen concentration in the earth's atmosphere shows that a sharp rise in oxygen about 50 million years ago gave mammals the evolutionary boost they needed to dominate the planet, according to Paul Falkowski, Rutgers professor of marine science and lead author of a paper published Sept. 30 in the journal Science. Falkowski and his colleagues have measured the abundance of carbon 13, a byproduct of...
WASHINGTON (AP) - Mammals, once tiny creatures scampering on the forest floor, grew larger as the amount of oxygen in the air increased over millions of years, a new study says.Today mammals, ranging from dogs and cats to elephants, dolphins and people, dominate the planet.It's a success story Paul G. Falkowski of Rutgers University and colleagues say was helped by the more than doubling of oxygen in the air over the last 205 million years. Their findings are published in Friday's issue of...
Saving large mammals such as elephants and rhino from extinction could be made more effective by focusing efforts on individual species as well as their habitats. Scientists at the Zoological Society of London's Institute of Zoology (IoZ) and Imperial College London have identified fundamental new approaches to improve the success of large mammal conservation. Published today in the journal Science, the largest study of its kind analyses key factors linked to the extinction of mammals....
A shifting diet of two flightless birds inhabiting Australia tens of thousands of years ago is the best evidence yet that early humans may have altered the continent's interior with fire, changing it from a mosaic of trees, shrubs and grasses to the desert scrub evident today, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder-led team. The unprecedented ecosystem disruption is now thought to have led to the extinction of Australia's large terrestrial mammals, which disappeared shortly after...
If you thought the sleep-deprived months with your newborn were tough, pity the poor mother dolphin or killer whale.Reporting in the June 30 edition of the peer-reviewed journal Nature, UCLA/Veterans Affairs neuroscientists report a developmental pattern in bottlenose dolphins and killer whales that is unique from other mammals, with calves of both species active 24 hours a day during their first month.The mother also has minimal sleep during this period, but unlike all other mammals always...
Latest Mammal Reference Libraries
The Aardvark, Orycteropus afer, sometimes called the "˜antbear', is a medium-sized mammal native to Africa. It lives south of the Sahara desert where there is suitable habitat for them to live. It prefers savannas, grasslands, woodlands and bush. They are not found in deserts but are found in areas where there is a good supply of ants and termites. The most distinctive characteristic of the Aardvark is their teeth. Instead of having a pulp cavity, they have a number of thin tubes of...
The European Mole, Talpa europaea, is a mammal of the order Soricomorpha. This mole lives in an underground tunnel system, which it constantly extends. It uses these tunnels to hunt its prey. Under normal conditions the displaced earth is pushed to the surface, resulting in the characteristic "mole hills". It has a cylindrical body and is around 5 1/4 inches (12 cm) long. Females are typically smaller than males. The eyes are small, and hidden behind fur. Its ear is just a small ridge...
The platypus is a semi-aquatic endemic to eastern Australia and Tasmania. Together with the four species of echidna, it is one of the five species of monotremes, the only mammals that lay eggs instead of giving birth to live young. It is the sole living representative of its family and genus, though a number of related species have been found in the fossil record. The unique appearance of this egg-laying, duck-billed mammal baffled naturalists when it was first discovered, with some...
