All posts tagged: evolved

How Trooping the Colour fashion has evolved through the decades

How Trooping the Colour fashion has evolved through the decades

Published by Daniella Wilson

Few royal events fuse pageantry and personal style quite like Trooping the Colour. From the balcony of Buckingham Palace to the carriages along The Mall, the annual parade marks the sovereign’s official birthday, but it has also become a showcase for royal fashion through the ages. From the steadfast glamour of a young Princess Elizabeth to Princess Diana’s bold ’80s style, and the elegance of today’s Princess of Wales, the sartorial story of Trooping the Colour is as rich as the history it honours. 1940s-1950s: A princess in uniform © Gamma-Keystone via Getty ImagesA 21-year-old Princess Elizabeth at Trooping the Colour in 1947 The modern fashion narrative arguably begins in the 1940s, when Princess Elizabeth rode side-saddle in the uniform of the Grenadier Guards. It was a powerful image – composed, dutiful and unmistakably royal. As HELLO!‘s Royal Editor Emily Nash notes: “The late Queen sitting side-saddle in her uniform set the scene for many parades to follow and for her and her daughter the Princess Royal, military uniform was the go-to for the event.” …

We may finally know why dinosaurs like T. rex evolved tiny arms

We may finally know why dinosaurs like T. rex evolved tiny arms

Published by skeptic

Tyrannosaurus rex wasn’t the only predatory dinosaur with small arms ROGER HARRIS/Getty Images/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY With jaws like these, who needs big arms? A new analysis suggests dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex had shrunken forelimbs because their massive, powerful heads became their primary tool for killing large prey, rendering their arms redundant. It is an evolutionary approach that five different lineages of large theropod dinosaurs took independently. Researchers are well aware that a number of large, predatory theropods followed a trend towards bigger bodies, bigger heads and smaller, shorter arms over time. But it wasn’t known why this pattern repeated across multiple predatory dinosaur families, scattered across the globe and separated by many millions of years, says Charlie Scherer at University College London. There was also little understanding of how the bones in their ever-heftier skulls changed as their arms became proportionally smaller. “This paper tackles one of the big evolutionary questions in theropod dinosaurs,” says Andre Rowe at the University of Bristol, UK, who wasn’t involved with the research. Scherer and his colleagues compiled data …

Study explores how virtual “girlfriend experiences” tap evolved relationship motivations in the digital age

Study explores how virtual “girlfriend experiences” tap evolved relationship motivations in the digital age

Published by José Betancourt

Virtual “girlfriend experience” platforms may be booming because they give people easy, customizable access to intimacy in ways that speak to some of our deepest psychological drives for connection, attraction, and control. This is the argument at the heart of a new review published in Evolutionary Psychological Science. Désirée Popelka and colleagues offer a broad theoretical account of how intimacy has transformed alongside technology. They trace the girlfriend experience (GFE) from in-person escort services to online platforms like OnlyFans and, more recently, AI companions. What unites all of these, across every era and format, is the simulation of a romantic relationship: emotional attention, conversation, the feeling of being valued by someone. What shifts is how you access it. In-person GFE comes with real costs in money, effort, physical presence, and selectivity. Online versions strip away physical contact and scale up through subscriptions. AI companions go even further, offering interactions that are continuous, on-demand, and molded entirely around the user. The authors argue that this progression matters because it lets people have something resembling a relationship …

Metal-reinforced scorpions evolved to kill

Metal-reinforced scorpions evolved to kill

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Scorpions are optimized hunters, whose skills have been honed through millions of years of evolution. An armored exoskeleton, strong pincers, a poisonous stinger—almost everything about their anatomy aids in either hunting insects, small mammals, and reptiles, or defending themselves from snakes and birds. But for years, entomologists were aware of a potential secret weapon in the arthropods’ biology: metallic reinforcements. Researchers previously detected trace metals in the exoskeletons of at least some of the estimated 3,000 known scorpion species. At the same time, experts were unsure about the distribution and concentration of these metals. “We knew that metals strengthen the weapons in some species’ arsenals, [but] we don’t know if all scorpions’ weapons contain metal,” Sam Campbell, an environmental scientist at Australia’s University of Queensland, explained in a statement. Back-scatter electron (BSE) scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of the telson of The yellow-fat tailed scorpion (Androctonus australis). Similar contrast of enrichment is present in the telson (stinger), highlighting the presence …

the mysterious story of how dinosaurs evolved – expert Q&A

the mysterious story of how dinosaurs evolved – expert Q&A

Published by skeptic

Exactly how did birds evolve from dinosaurs? It’s a mystery that has been with us for more than 150 years, and palaeontologists are still hunting for pieces of the puzzle today. Among them is the University of Edinburgh’s Professor Steve Brusatte, whose latest book, The Story of Birds, tells the whole fascinating story. We caught up with him recently to find out more. Of all the great dinosaur subjects, why this story? I’ve always been fascinated by birds. They are all around us and there’s such a stunning diversity and variety. As a palaeontologist I specialised early in the theropod (two-legged) dinosaurs. This is the group that includes T.rex and Velociraptor – and gave rise to birds. The more I studied theropods, the more I became more curious about the modern-day animals that descended from them. Back in the early 2010s my PhD was about the origin of birds. Its core involved building a big new family tree of theropod dinosaurs to understand where birds slot in, how they evolved from dinosaurs, and how their …

Cosmic simulations reveal how galaxies formed and evolved over billions of years

Cosmic simulations reveal how galaxies formed and evolved over billions of years

Published by Jenni Sidey

Cold gas does not look dramatic at first glance. Neither does dust. Yet those two quiet ingredients sit at the center of a new effort to build a far more realistic picture of how galaxies formed. They help explain how galaxies changed and spread across the universe over billions of years. A new suite of simulations called COLIBRE now tracks both, along with the violent push and pull from stars and black holes, in a way earlier large-scale models usually could not. The result is a set of virtual universes that, according to the research team, reproduces real galaxies with striking accuracy, from the nearby universe to the distant young cosmos seen by the James Webb Space Telescope. That matters because galaxy simulations have become one of astronomy’s main testing grounds. They let scientists check whether the standard cosmological model can actually produce the kinds of galaxies telescopes observe. In this case, the answer looks stronger than before. Essential components “Much of the gas inside real galaxies is cold and dusty, but most previous large …

Ancient teeth unlock million-year-old secrets of where early humans evolved

Ancient teeth unlock million-year-old secrets of where early humans evolved

Published by Jenni Sidey

Teeth are like tiny biological time capsules. They tell stories about ancient diets and environments long after their owners have died and landscapes have changed. After bones break down, tooth enamel stays hard and unchanged, even in fossilized teeth that have been buried under sediment and rock for millions of years and are now being uncovered by erosion or excavation. Tooth enamel forms when an animal is young, and it remains chemically stable for the rest of that animal’s life. The food an animal eats and the water it drinks during its youth leave chemical signals within the enamel. Because of that, hidden within the enamel of fossilized teeth, scientists can find traces of extinct forests, expanding savanna grasslands, shifting climates and evolving animal communities. A small group of oryx forage in the open savanna of Awash National Park in Ethiopia, with scattered acacia trees and dry grasses illustrating the park’s semi-arid environment. (CREDIT: Zelalem Bedaso) These clues from ancient meals are enabling scientists to reconstruct pictures of entire ecosystems, including forests, wetlands and grasslands that existed at the time. It’s …

289-million-year-old mummified reptile reveals how bodies evolved to breath and move

289-million-year-old mummified reptile reveals how bodies evolved to breath and move

Published by Jenni Sidey

Clay, oil, and deep time do not usually leave much behind. Skin disappears. Cartilage collapses. Proteins break apart. Yet a small reptile that lived about 289 million years ago has done something rare enough to reset expectations in paleontology. The fossil, identified as Captorhinus and described in Nature, preserves not just bone but skin, cartilage, and protein remnants. It is, according to the study, the oldest known mummified remains of a terrestrial vertebrate. More than that, it preserves the cartilage framework of the animal’s respiratory system, giving researchers an unusually clear look at how some of the earliest reptiles may have breathed and moved on land. “This is an exciting discovery in paleontology with great evolutionary significance,” said University of Toronto Mississauga researcher and lead author Robert Reisz. “This unprecedented preservation of a respiratory system showcases the oldest known complete rib cage for muscle powered inhalation and exhalation.” That matters because one of the biggest turning points in vertebrate history was the move from aquatic and semi-aquatic life to life fully on land. Early anamniotes, …

Our modern vision evolved from an ancient one-eyed worm creature

Our modern vision evolved from an ancient one-eyed worm creature

Published by skeptic

It’s easy to take our eyes for granted. But our recent research shows they took an incredible evolutionary journey to reach their current familiar form. It has long been known that our (vertebrate) eyes differ fundamentally from the ones of our distant relatives (invertebrates), because of their cell composition and how they develop before birth. However, answers to why or how these differences first emerged long remained elusive. Our study suggests that our eyes descend from a worm-like ancestor that was roaming the oceans 600 million years ago. The same also applies to all bilateral animals, meaning animals whose bodies can be divided into roughly mirror-image left and right halves. As part of our study, we surveyed 36 major groups of living animals (covering nearly all bilateral animals) to see where their eyes and light-sensing cells are located and what they do. A pattern emerged. We discovered that eyes and light-sensing cells are consistently found at two separate locations: paired on both sides of the face, and at the midline of the head, on top …

Land animals evolved from ocean ancestors – new study unravels the genetics behind the transition

Land animals evolved from ocean ancestors – new study unravels the genetics behind the transition

Published by skeptic

The transition from water to land is a question that still intrigues scientists. Those ancient organisms would have needed to adapt to several new challenges to life out of water. So, how did they do it? In a 2025 study, my colleagues and I tried to understand the genetic basis of adapting to life on land by comparing the genetic material of 150 living animals. We discovered that some adaptations to land are universal, while others are found only in a few lineages. Animal life started in water over 600 million years ago. Around 500 million years ago animals began their journey from water to land. Known as the Cambrian period, this is one of the biggest evolutionary shifts in Earth’s history, that paved the way for all modern land-based ecosystems. Although green plants transitioned to land just once around 500 million years ago, animals colonised land at multiple points in time independently. This makes animal life on land a striking example of “convergent evolution” – the process in which different lineages evolve solutions to …