Some animals carry patterns so precise and mathematically exact that scientists struggle to explain how nature produced them ...

Ancient skin Scientists have been able to detect for the first time a clear "skin" pattern from a 50-million-year-old reptile, using non-invasive infrared and synchrotron technology. The findings are ...

A new study reveals that the sleep patterns previously thought exclusive to mammals and birds - REM and slow-wave sleep patterns - are also found in reptiles. The results shake up our understanding of ...

Brain sleep appeared early in vertebrate evolution. Researchers describe the existence of REM and slow-wave sleep in the Australian dragon, with many common features with mammalian sleep: a phase ...

The skins of two slithery reptiles – the ball python and a type of lizard known as the sandfish skink – have inspired researchers to create a new kind of super-slippery biomimetic material. By etching ...

Unless you've been hiding in your closet, there's no way to miss a certain trend for spring 2011 - python prints! This raging reptile craze has caught on big time. Animal print items become trendy for ...

In most vertebrates, skin appendages such as hair, feathers, or scales originate from placodes—small, specialized skin regions whose spatial organization is controlled by well-conserved genetic ...

Behavioural sleep is ubiquitous among animals, from insects to man. In humans, sleep is also characterized by brain activity: periods of slow-wave activity are each followed by short phases of ...

The development of the vertebral column has been studied extensively in modern amniotes, yet many aspects of its evolutionary history remain enigmatic. Here we expand the existing data on four major ...