One of the oldest and most complete plesiosaur fossils recovered in North America, and the oldest yet discovered from the Cretaceous Period, represents a new genus of the prehistoric aquatic predator according to University of Calgary palaeontologists who have formally described the creature after its remains were uncovered in a Syncrude Canada Ltd. mine near Fort McMurray in 1994.

In a study of New Zealand’s “living dinosaur” the tuatara, evolutionary biologist, and ancient DNA expert, Professor David Lambert and his team from the Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology and Evolution recovered DNA sequences from the bones of ancient tuatara, which are up to 8000 years old. They found that, although tuatara have remained largely physically unchanged over very long periods of evolution, they are evolving - at a DNA level - faster than any other animal yet examined. The research will be published in the March issue of Trends in Genetics.

One day last spring, fossil hunter and anatomy professor Kenneth Rose, Ph.D. was displaying the bones of a jackrabbit’s foot as part of a seminar at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine when something about the shape of the bones looked oddly familiar.

Mantis shrimp can see the world in a way that had never been observed in any animal before, researchers report in the March 20th Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. The discovery—which marks the fourth type of visual system—suggests that the ability to perceive circular polarized light may lend mantis shrimp a secret mode of communication.

Motor neuron disease is a rare, devastating illness in which nerve cells that carry brain signals to muscles gradually deteriorate. One form of it, Lou Gehrig’s disease or ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), is familiar to the public in the lives of scientist Stephen Hawking and Morrie Schwartz, about whom Mitch Albom’s “Tuesdays with Morrie” was written.