• Natural Sciences -> Geology and paleontology

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What are some of the most unexpected discoveries in the field of evolutionary biology in recent years?

Sylva Rottenbury

Well, there have been a lot of cool discoveries in evolutionary biology recently! One of the most surprising ones is that dinosaurs might have had feathers! That's right, some fossils of dinosaurs have been found with feather-like structures. This is really surprising because we used to think that only birds had feathers. But now we know that some of their dinosaur ancestors probably had feathers too!

Another surprising discovery is that some animals can actually change their DNA! Normally, DNA is something that is passed down from parents to offspring and stays the same throughout an individual's life. But some animals, like certain types of octopuses, can change their DNA in response to their environment. This is really amazing because it means they can adapt to different situations much faster than we thought.

We've also learned a lot about the evolution of human beings. It turns out that modern humans actually have some DNA from other species of hominids, like Neanderthals and Denisovans. This means that at some point in the past, our ancestors interbred with these other hominids. It's really cool to think that we're not just descended from one type of hominid, but from a whole bunch of different ones!

Finally, we've learned a lot about the process of evolution itself. One surprising thing is that sometimes evolution can happen really quickly. For example, there's a type of fish called the stickleback that has adapted to live in freshwater instead of saltwater. This adaptation happened in just a few thousand years, which is really fast in evolutionary terms. Overall, there are so many surprising and fascinating discoveries being made in the field of evolutionary biology, and we're sure to learn even more in the coming years!