Jonathan Lambert

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    Jellyfish Genome Hints That Complexity Isn’t Genetically Complex

    Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine’s Abstractions blog. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . An overarching theme in the story of evolution, at least over the past half billion years or so, is rising complexity. There are other themes, of course, but life has undoubtedly become more complicated since its origin. Early cells globbed together […]

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    How Alan Turing Deciphered Shark Skin

    The universal math behind hair and feathers.

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    What a Newfound Kingdom Means for the Tree of Life

    Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine’s Abstractions blog. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . The tree of life just got another major branch. Researchers recently found a certain rare and mysterious microbe called a hemimastigote in a clump of Nova Scotian soil. Their subsequent analysis of its DNA revealed that it was neither animal, plant, […]

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    World’s Oldest Fossils Now Appear to Be Squished Rocks

    Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine’s Abstractions blog. Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . In August 2016, a research team claimed to have unearthed evidence of life in a remote outcrop of 3.7-billion-year-old rocks in Greenland. This bold claim not only pushed back the origin of life by at least 220 million years, it also […]