Next Mother's Day, say it with an evolved model of logistical efficiency — a flower. A new discovery about how nature's icons of romance manage the distribution of sperm among female gametes with industrial precision helps explain why the delicate beauties have reproduced prolifically enough to dominate the earth.

This image shows the differences in chemical structure of the
5-methylcytosine (5mC) base (left) from the 5-hydroxymethylcytosine
(5hmC) base in DNA against a background of DNA sequencing imagery. Imagine reading an entire book, but then realizing that your glasses did not allow you to distinguish "g" from "q." What details did you miss?

This is a reconstruction of Carbonemys preying upon a small crocodylomorph. Picture a turtle the size of a Smart car, with a shell large enough to double as a kiddie pool. Paleontologists from North Carolina State University have found just such a specimen – the fossilized remains of a 60-million-year-old South American giant that lived in what is now Colombia.

One-letter switches in the DNA code occur much more frequently in human genomes than anticipated, but are often only found in one or a few individuals.