Review of the year

19 December 2013

2013 review: The year in evolution and life sciences

Dwarfed by the X chromosome, the Y seems more ancient than we thought

(Image: Pasieka/SPL)


2013 was a banner year for the study of evolution, with major discoveries in everything from human evolution to the origin of mammals and the first life.

Take a journey back in time with our top 10 articles of the year on evolution, beginning with our most recent ancestors and voyaging back to the dawn of life.


The father of all men is 340,000 years old
We had thought that all men share a common male ancestor who lived within the last 140,000 years – but an African American man has broken the mould

Inbreeding shaped the course of human evolution
Many early humans were highly inbred, according to a new genetic analysis. Their isolation may explain why modern behaviour took so long to arise.

Oldest human genome dug up in Spain’s pit of bones
A 400,000-year-old genome from ancient human bone could herald a missing-link species – taking us closer than ever to our common ancestor with Neanderthals.

1 in 13 people have bendy, chimp-like feet
You may be walking on chimp-like feet without knowing it. At least 1 in 13 of us has feet that are specially adapted for climbing trees.

Our earliest primate cousin discovered in Asia
55 million-year-old Archicebus is the oldest primate skeleton found, the closest we have come to discovering our origins, and suggests we evolved in Asia.

Meet our last common mammalian ancestor
Small, furry and with a penchant for insects, the greatest grandparent of all modern placental mammals lived after the dinosaurs were wiped out.

Dinosaur-killing asteroid was a twin terror
The infamous space rock that wiped out the dinosaurs may have been a binary – two asteroids revolving around each other.

Bubbles of fat hint at origin of reproduction
One of life’s fundamental properties – its ability to make copies of itself – may have originated with bubbles of fat that spontaneously break up.

Earth’s first life may have sprung up in ice
Pieces of RNA have been made that are capable of copying other pieces of RNA longer than themselves, and they work better at cold temperatures than warm ones.

Planet Earth was blue long before we knew
Earth may have become a watery world just 200 million years after it formed, making it a potential home for life hundreds of million years earlier than thought.

And in case that’s not enough, here are five other big finds in the life sciences, from the most extreme habitats on Earth to the limits of evolution.

Deepest point in the ocean is teeming with life
At the bottom of the Mariana trench, some 11,000 metres below sea level and at pressures 1100 times those at the surface, bacteria are thriving.

Why trees can’t grow taller than 100 metres
The taller the tree, the smaller its leaves. The explanation for this, it turns out, also sets a limit on how tall trees can grow.

Perfection is a myth, show 50,000 bacterial generations
When it comes to evolution, there is no such thing as perfection. Even in the simple, unchanging environment of a laboratory flask, bacteria never stop making small tweaks to improve their fitness.

The 19 superbugs that rule Earth’s hidden depths
Deep inside Earth’s crust, the same kinds of microorganism are found wherever we look. Nobody knows how they became so widespread.

Lake Vostok may boast a thriving ecosystem
Buried beneath Antarctic ice for 15 million years, Lake Vostok may be home to diverse organisms – including animals, if new findings are to be believed.

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