ScienceDaily: All - May 27, 2025
Today's top research news
Megalodon: The broad diet of the megatooth shark
Contrary to widespread assumptions, the largest shark that ever lived -- Otodus megalodon -- fed on marine creatures at various levels of the food pyramid and not just the top. Scientists analyzed the zinc content of a large sample of fossilized megalodon teeth, which had been unearthed above all in Sigmaringen and Passau, and compared them with fossil teeth found elsewhere and the teeth of animals that inhabit our planet today.
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Flowers unfold with surprising precision, despite unruly genes
Flowers grow stems, leaves and petals in a perfect pattern again and again. A new study shows that even in this precise, patterned formation in plants, gene activity inside individual cells is far more chaotic than it appears.
A root development gene that's older than root development
A gene that regulates the development of roots in vascular plants is also involved in the organ development of liverworts -- land plants so old they don't even have proper roots. The discovery highlights the fundamental evolutionary dynamic of co-opting, evolving a mechanism first and adopting it for a different purpose later.