A large new genetic and dietary study of snakes, from an international team led by University of Michigan biologists, suggests these legless wonders are ‘evolutionary winners.’ Massive shifts in traits associated with feeding, locomotion, and sensory processing have allowed them to be ‘evolutionarily flexible,’ researchers say.

The miles-wide asteroid that struck Earth 66 million years ago wiped out roughly three-quarters of the planet’s plant and animal species. Meanwhile, a monstrous tsunami scoured the ocean floor thousands of miles from impact.

When the U-M Museum of Natural History reopens in 2019, visitors will come face to face with a hyperrealistic reconstruction of an extinct human relation.

Thumb-area teachers help U-M paleontologists excavate prehistoric mastodon bones, which could be 13,000 years old.

“In the African villages that I study in Mali, children fare as well in nuclear families as they do in extended families,” says U-M professor Beverly Strassmann.