Researchers are shedding light on our ancient prehistoric world using state-of-the art X-ray technology. This World Dinosaur Day, scientists are revealing the hidden bones of the Harbury Ichthyosaur – providing clues to dinosaur anatomy, physiology and evolution.

Social mingling shapes and transforms the ‘vocabularies’ of apes, just like in humans, according to new research led by the University of Warwick.

Scientists have shown that orangutan call signals believed to be closest to the precursors to human language, travel through forest over long distances without losing their meaning. This throws into question the accepted mathematical model on the evolution of human speech according to researchers from the University of Warwick.

As Temperatures rise due to global warming the need to protect plants from stressful conditions has increased, as stress can cause a loss in yield and cause further impact economically. A consortium led by the University of Warwick have successfully identified two proteins that protect crops from stress, which is key in safeguarding food production.

Researchers at the University of Warwick have uncovered the mechanism that allows plants to pass on their ‘memories’ to offspring, which results in growth and developmental defects.

The capacity for language is built upon our ability to understand combinations of words and the relationships between them, but the evolutionary history of this ability is little understood. Now, researchers from the University of Warwick have managed to date this capacity to at least 30-40 million years ago, the last common ancestor of monkeys, apes and humans.

Dr Adriano R. Lameira, from the Department of Psychology at the University of Warwick, has been awarded a prestigious UKRI Future Leader Fellowship, for his project: The ape and the first word: Understanding the origins and evolution of the first linguistic structures in the human clade through comparative research.

Thousands of years ago the UK was physically joined to the rest of Europe through an area known as Doggerland. However, a marine inundation took place during the mid-holocene, separating the British landmass from the rest of Europe, which is now covered by the North Sea. Scientists from the School of Life Sciences at the University of Warwick have studied sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) from sediment deposits in the southern North Sea, an area which has not previously been linked to a tsunami that occurred 8150 years ago.

One of the most promising theories for the evolution of human speech has finally received support from chimpanzee communication, in a study conducted by a group of researchers led by the University of Warwick.

The microbes found in aquatic environments and their interactions will be investigated by Warwick researcher Professor Orkun Soyer, thanks to an investigator award from The Gordon and Betty Moore foundation.

Walking and running subjects our feet to forces in excess of body weight. The longitudinal arch of the feet was thought to be the reason the feet do not deform under such load. However, researchers from the University of Warwick, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University in Japan and Yale University have illustrated that the transverse arch may be more important for this stiffness.

Psychologist observing two chimpanzees in a zoo have discovered that they performed a behaviour hitherto never seen, they coordinated together in a rhythmic social ritual.

The diversity of the crop Sorghum, a cereal used to make alcoholic drinks, has been decreasing over time due to agricultural practice. To maintain the diversity of the crop and keep it growing farmers will need to revise how they manage it.

Flax naturally adapted to new environments rather than by human influence due to a set of genes that enable it to change its architecture according to researchers from the School of Life Sciences at the University of Warwick.

New evidence reveals that the evolution of Maize in South America is more complex than initially thought, and there was a further geographical area in which partial domestication occurred in the Southwest Amazon - according to an international collaboration of researchers including the University of Warwick, and published in the journal Science.