Humans and other primates are outliers among mammals for having nails instead of claws. But how, when and why we transitioned from claws to nails has been an evolutionary head-scratcher. Now, new fossil evidence shows that ancient primates – including one of the oldest known, Teilhardina brandti – had specialized grooming claws as well as…

In 1959, a then-teenage lepidopterist Thomas Emmel collected 13 fawn-colored butterflies in the highlands of Mexico. Nearly 60 years later, those butterflies are finally being recognized as a new species by his colleague Andrew Warren, who named the butterfly Cyllopsis tomemmeli to honor Emmel, now 76 and an internationally recognized Lepidoptera expert at the University of Florida.…

For those with renal failure, the process of kidney dialysis is all too familiar: Three times a week, for a cumulative 12 hours, you sit in a chair and a machine does what your bean-shaped organs can’t — in this case, filter toxins out of your blood. Although the treatment is an integral part of…

A University of Florida study shows that mollusk fossils provide a reliable measure of human-driven changes in marine ecosystems and shifts in ocean biodiversity across time and space. Collecting data from the shells of dead mollusks is a low-cost, low-impact way of glimpsing how oceans looked before pollution, habitat loss, acidification and explosive algae growth…