Ninety percent of marine and 70 percent of terrestrial creatures perished suddenly in an event variously called the Permian extinction, the Permian–Triassic (P-Tr) extinction, or the Great Dying. The calamity’s cause, referred to as the K-T event, remains unknown, even though asteroid impact has been in vogue.

Certain aphids manipulate plant tissues to form a hollow gall in which they then reside. But aphids will also help heal plant tissue that they’ve damaged. This behavior serves as a vital self-defense mechanism, because when the gall’s walls are eaten by caterpillars, the tender aphids inside become easy prey for other insect predators.

Stem cell treatments have proven successful for many diseases, and there is great promise that new treatments will emerge to combat even more maladies. These successful treatments involve inserting correctly functioning stem cells into tissues where native mutated cells have caused disease.

Scientists have accidently discovered a rare and perhaps unique fossilized brain of an iniopterygian, an extinct kind of ratfish or chimaera that supposedly lived 300 million years ago.

Evolutionary scientists often use results derived from molecular biology dating methods (based on DNA sequence similarities) to bolster their assumptions that some related organisms may have diverged millions of years ago.