DNA demethylation in mammalia occurs after fertilization and during embryogenesis and accompanies cell aging and cancer transformation. With the help of the primer extension reaction, MALDI MS and DNA cleavage by thymine DNA glycosylase deamination of 5-methylcytosine residues has been shown to take place when the model methylated DNA duplexes are treated with nuclear extracts from the cell lin...

Box jellyfish carry an elaborate visual system consisting of 24 eyes, which they use for driving a number of behaviours. However, it is not known how visual input controls the swimming behaviour. In this study we exposed the Caribbean box jellyfish Tripedalia cystophora to simple visual stimuli and recorded changes in their swimming behaviour. Animals were tethered in a small experimental chamb...

First record of the Long-snouted Bhutan Squirrel Dremomys lokriah bhotia (Wroughton, 1916) (Mammalia: Rodentia) from state West Bengal, India

.Abramov AV. 2000b. A taxonomic review of the genusMustela (Mammalia, Carnivora). Zoosystematica Rossica 8:

In the Mammalia, vestigial skeletal structures abound but have not previously been the focus of study, with a few exceptions (e.g., whale pelves). Here we use a phylogenetic bracketing approach to identify vestigial structures in mammalian postcranial skeletons and present a descriptive survey of such structures in the Mammalia. We also correct previous misidentifications, including the previou...

BACKGROUND Two recent studies published in the same issue of Nature reached conflicting conclusions regarding the phylogeny of early mammals: One places the clade containing haramiyidans and multituberculates within the Mammalia and the other separates haramiyidans from multituberculates and places the former outside of the Mammalia. These two contrasting results require that the minimally olde...

•Current controversies about the definitions of taxon names reflect different underlying philosophical perspectives concerning the nature of definitions. The antithetical perspectives, called methodological essentialism and methodological nominalism (Popper, 1966, The open society and its enemies, Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton, NJ), are exemplified by alternative views in a controversy surro...

Photographic evidence of the Spotted linsang Prionodon pardicolor (Mammalia: Carnivora: Prionodontidae) from Tashigang Forest Division, Eastern Bhutan

Gestation periods in mammals are generally in line with scaling laws. There are several exceptions in which species of relatively similar size and degree of neonatal maturation show a significant difference in gestation length. For example the giraffids have a very long gestation period, compared to bovids of similar size. By using published data about the placental surface area at term, we sho...

Fossils from two fissure fillings in Pant Quarry (designated Pant 4 and Pant 5), South Wales, United Kingdom, probably of Early Jurassic age document a taxonomically diverse vertebrate fauna, the Morganucodon-sphenodont fauna, composed of several kinds of reptiles, non-mammalian synapsids, and mammals. Six isolated molariform teeth from Pant 4 and 5 fissures clearly record the presence of Thoma...