The evolutionary history of lemurs occurred in isolation from other primates on the island of Madagascar for at least 40 million years. Lemurs are prosimian primates belonging to the suborder Strepsirrhini, which branched off from other primates less than 63 mya (million years ago). They share some traits with the most basal primates, and thus are often confused as being ancestral to modern monkeys, apes, and humans. Instead, they merely resemble ancestral primates. Lemurs are thought to have evolved during the Eocene or earlier, sharing a closest common ancestor with lorises, pottos, and galagos (lorisiforms). Fossils from Africa and tests of nuclear DNA suggest that lemurs made their way to Madagascar between 40 and 52 mya. Having undergone their own independent evolution on Madagascar, lemurs have diversified to fill many niches normally filled by other types of mammals. They include the smallest primates in the world, and once included some of the largest. Since the arrival of humans approximately 2,000 years ago, they are now restricted to 10% of the island, or approximately 60,000 square kilometres (23,000 sq mi), and many are facing extinction. (more...)
... that sections of state highway M-37 in Michigan have been named for a Civil War general, a governor, and the road's "divine scenic and recreational delights"?
... that the Japanese pop music female duo ClariS have not released photos of themselves to the public, and instead have employed illustrators to draw their likenesses?
... that a humorous solution for the Buridan's bridgesophism is that Plato should let Socrates cross the bridge and then throw him into the river on the other side?
1997 – Scientists at the Roslin Institute in Scotland announced the birth of a clonedsheep named Dolly, the first mammal to have been successfully cloned from an adult cell, seven months after the fact.
NGC 6302 is a bipolarplanetary nebula in the constellation Scorpius. Its central star, a white dwarf that was only recently discovered, is one of the hottest objects in the galaxy, with a surface temperature in excess of 200,000 K, implying that the star from which it formed must have been very large. The central star had escaped detection because of a combination of its high temperature, a dense gaseous and dustyequatorial ring that surrounds it, and the bright background from the star itself. It was not until the Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope came into operation that astronomers were able to observe it.
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