The puzzling pattern of tool use in the animal kingdom
Ellie Smith explores animal tool use, focusing on ecological and cognitive factors affecting its rarity and diversity.
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Setting sail from the shores of the cosmic ocean: Humanity and the search for alien life
Ilke Boran explores the origins of life and identifies moons beyond Earth with the potential to support thriving biological systems.
Neo-taphonomy: From modern bones to the fossil record in Africa
Jacinto Mathe investigates the enigmatic origins of humanity, unraveling the mysteries through the lenses of neo-taphonomy and paleoecology.
The man, the myth, the hunter: A scientific fairytale?
Sophie Gray highlights how new evidence challenges long-held misconceptions about sex roles in hunting.
Laughter: It’s no joke
Ellie Smith describes the importance of laughter in shaping human behaviour, social bonding, and evolution.
The Ancient Origins of the Animal Skeletal System
Ilke Boran reports on newly discovered fossils shedding light on the evolutionary history and ancient origins of the animal skeletal system.
Why bananas could disappear from our supermarkets
The lack of genetic diversity in banana plants puts them at risk of disease pandemics that could wipe them off our supermarket shelves for good. Isabel Schmidt discusses how our current bananas have been developed and how to overcome these risks in the future.
For Queen and Colony: How ants stop disease outbreaks
Sophie Berdugo discusses how, much like the self-isolation we have become accustomed to during the COVID-19 pandemic, ants also adopt self-isolation techniques to stop the spread of fungal infections.
Fishing Through Geological Time
By Matthew Sutton This article was originally published in The Oxford Scientist Michaelmas Term 2021 edition, Change. Earth’s oceans are an immense and foreboding place. They occupy 71% of the surface area of the planet and have a total volume exceeding 1.3 billion cubic kilometres. Occupying every corner of every part of this gargantuan biome…
Progress, revived: can evolution change things for the better?
By Giovanni Mussini This article was originally published in The Oxford Scientist Michaelmas Term 2021 edition, Change. In one of the last and most accomplished of his works, Giacomo Leopardi, the 19th century giant of Italian poetry, turns to the natural world to ridicule le magnifiche sorti e progressive–the magnificent and progressive fates–of humanity: as…