News & Infos

11.04.2023

Prof. Dr. Manuel Aranda

Manuel Aranda is a Visiting Fellow at CAS in April and May 2023 at the invitation of Prof. Dr. Gert Wörheide (Palaeontology and Geobiology). more

11.11.2022

Crown-of-thorns seastar from Red Sea

LMU and SNSB researchers have identified coral-eating crown-of-thorns seastars in the Red Sea as distinct species that occurs only in this location. more

09.08.2022 at 00:00

MGAP student Andrea Herbert Mainero receives LMU-Research award for excellent students

MGAP student Andrea Herbert Mainero receives LMU-Research award for excellent students more

11.07.2022

Paleobiology: complex family relationships

An international team of researchers led by LMU paleontologist Bettina Reichenbacher has managed to classify fossils of one of the most species-rich fish groups into a family tree for the first time. more

12.01.2022

Low CO2 concentrations

The team led by LMU researcher Sebastian Höhna reports in Nature Communications. more

10.01.2022

ERC Starting Grant awarded to Dr. Sebastian Höhn

Dr. Sebastian Höhna is one of four receipents at LMU of a prestigeous Starting Grant of the European Research Council (ERC). more

19.11.2021

Climate change: Independent stress response makes octocorals more robust

LMU scientists have identified mechanisms that make octocorals less sensitive to the effects of climate change than other kinds of coral. more

17.09.2021

Deep-sea biodiversity off New Zealand higher than assumed

During a research cruise off the coast of New Zealand, a team led by LMU geobiologist Gert Wörheide discovered six new species of glass sponge. more

17.08.2021

Microbiology: Bacterial evolution in ancient sub-seafloor sediments

Micro-organisms persisting deep below the seafloor for millions of years continue to evolve despite living at the energy limit to life. more

15.02.2021

All eyes on the oceans

The UN's Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development formally opens on February 15. In the following interview, Professor Gert Wörheide tells us why the oceans urgently need more attention. more

27.01.2021

Bones reveal the secret of the exceptional long neck in giraffes

In collaboration with researchers from the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, LMU-palaebiologist Christine Böhmer found support for a one-hundred-year-old hypothesis regarding the evolution of the giraffe’s long neck. In collaboration with researchers from the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, LMU-palaebiologist Christine Böhmer found support for a one-hundred-year-old hypothesis regarding the evolution of the giraffe’s long neck. more

18.11.2020

Some like it hot: Global warming triggered the evolution of giant dinosaurs

An international team of scientists found evidence that a rapid climate change some 180 million years ago probably triggered the evolution of the famous long-necked dinosaur giants. Their results were now published in the prestigious scientific journal „Proceedings of the Royal Society of Lon-don“. more

26.10.2020

Sponges as biomonitors of micropollution

Sponges are filter feeders that live on particulate matter – but they can also ingest microscopic fragments of plastics and other pollutants of anthropogenic origin. They can therefore serve as useful bioindicators of the health of marine ecosystems. more

16.09.2020

The oldest known sperm cells

An international team of paleontologists has discovered giant sperm cells in a 100-million year-old female ostracod preserved in a sample of amber. Clearly, the tiny crustacean had mated shortly before being entombed in a drop of tree resin.Das internationale Team rekonstruierte eine bislang unbekannte Krebstierart, die die Forscher Myanmarcypris hui nannten. more

23.07.2020

Survive below the seafloor

Foraminifera, an ancient and ecologically highly successful group of marine organisms, are found on and below the seafloor. LMU geobiologists report that several species not only survive, but thrive, in these oxygen-free sediments. more

01.07.2020

A new dinosaur from Canton Schaffhausen – ancestor of the giants

An international team of palaeontologists recently described a new dinosaur from Canton Schaffhausen under the name Schleitheimia schutzi in the Swiss Journal of Geosciences. The actual study is based on older finds of a local collector and new fossils from an excavation in 2016. Schleitheimia lived about 210 million years ago in the early time of the dinosaurs and is - following the scientists - part of the origin of the sauropods. This is the group of reptiles that evolved into the long-necked giants, known today as typical dinosaurs by everybody. more

08.01.2020

Revelatory relationship

A new study of the ecology of an enigmatic group of novel unicellular organisms by LMU scientists supports the idea hydrogen played an important role in the evolution of Eukaryota, the first nucleated cells. more

18.09.2019

Team Munich did exceptionally well at the 90th Annual Conference of the Paläontologische Gesellschaft:

15.07.2019

New light on cichlid evolution in Africa

07.07.2019

Professor Wörheide elected into the Academia Europaea

14.05.2019

Archaeopteryx gets company

Researchers at LMU Munich describe a hitherto unknown bird from the late Jurassic period. It is the second bird capable of flight, after the famous Archaeopteryx, to be identified from this era. more

28.02.2019

Diversification after mass extinction

A team led by LMU paleontologist Adriana López-Arbarello has identified three hitherto unknown fossil fish species in the Swiss Alps, which provide new insights into the diversification of the genus Eosemionotus. more

11.02.2019

Larger datasets unravel deep roots

Comparative genome content analyses provide insight into the early evolution of animals. A novel method that permits the use of larger datasets in such studies yields results that are consistent with classical views of animal phylogeny. more

28.01.2019

Plants resisted the worst mass extinction

The great mass extinction around 250 million years ago affected plants much less than animals. An article with this conclusion by Evelyn Kustatscher and Hendrik Nowak from the Museum of Nature South Tyrol together with Elke Schneebeli-Hermann from the University of Zurich is published today in the renowned scientific journal Nature Communications. more

10.12.2018

Ancient lake deep drilling allows for fresh look at theory of island biogeography

Speaker: Prof. Thomas Wilke (Justus Liebig University Gießen) more

19.11.2018

Climate change and cultural collapse

An analysis of ancient DNA recovered from sediments in the Arabian Sea suggests that climate changes that set in some 4000 years ago may have triggered the collapse of the early urban civilization in the Indus valley. more

20.08.2018

Coral Reefs – Endangered oases of the oceans

01.08.2018 at 00:00

Outwardly identical, yet distinct

All placozoans are superficially identical. But comparative genomic data reported by an LMU team reveals the presence of different genera. This is the first time that a new animal genus has been defined solely by genomics. more

06.06.2018

Unusual honor for LMU geobiologists

A taxonomic study of Red Sea and Western Indian Ocean calcareous sponges has led to the recognition of 16 species new to science. Three of those have now been named in honor of LMU researchers. more

21.03.2018

Adaptive radiations in the Mesozoic

Bony fishes are the most diverse of all extant vertebrate groups. A comprehensive phylogenetic analysis of the group now provides new insights into its 250-million-year evolutionary history. more

21.02.2018

5th Young Reef Scientists Meeting

We are pleased to announce that the 5th edition of the Young Reef Scientists Meeting will be held at Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich (Germany) from the 5th to the 7th of September 2018. more

06.02.2018

Sponges can economize on oxygen use

Sponges lack a signaling pathway that responds to low intracellular oxygen levels in more complex animals. Do they use a different mechanism for this purpose or did their earliest ancestors evolve at a time when less oxygen was available? more

05.02.2018

International Year of the Reef

On 28 January, the International Year of the Reef (IYOR 2018) was officially launched in Germany at boot Düsseldorf, the world's largest water sports trade fair. This global initiative, first launched in 1997, is now taking place for the third time. more

29.01.2018

The eleventh Archaeopteryx

LMU researchers report the first description of the geologically oldest fossil securely attributable to the genus Archaeopteryx, and provide a new diagnostic key for differentiating bird-like dinosaurs from their closest relatives. more

04.12.2017

In the beginning there was the sponge

Which group of animals evolved first? This problem has become a bone of contention among biologists. An international research team is now confident that the definitive answer is at hand: Sponges appeared before comb jellies. more

25.10.2017

Scavenging to survive below the seafloor

Microorganisms living in the sediments buried below the seafloor obtain their nutrients by using secreted enzymes to degrade adsorbed detritus. A new study shows that in order to survive for long time scales, microorganisms eat one another after they die. more

20.09.2017

Lumbering giants had agile ancestors

The best known sauropod dinosaurs were huge herbivorous creatures, whose brain structures were markedly different from those of their evolutionary predecessors, for the earliest representatives of the group were small, lithe carnivores. more

07.08.2017

Hidden witnesses to climate history

They once inhabited the seafloor and have been steadily buried: Microorganisms in the sub-surface sediments at the bottom of the Arabian Sea reveal details of fluctuations in climate and environmental conditions over the past 52,000 years. more

16.06.2017

Hot start, followed by cold shock

The initial phases of animal evolution proceeded faster than hitherto supposed: New analyses suggest that the first animal phyla emerged in rapid succession – prior to the global Ice Age that set in around 700 million years ago. more

14.06.2017

Exploring invertebrate genomes

A new EU-funded project will explore the diversity and architectures of genomes found in invertebrate animals, and promises to enhance our knowledge of their ecological and evolutionary importance, as well as their biotechnological potential. more

02.05.2017

On mosaics and melting-pots

Genetic studies of cichlid fishes suggest that interspecies hybrids played a prominent role in their evolution. Analysis of a unique fossil cichlid from the Upper Miocene of East Africa now provides further support for this idea. more

21.12.2016

The origin of antlers

A new study shows that deer species capable of building and shedding their antlers already existed about 20 to 15 million years ago, in the Miocene. The finding sheds new light on the evolution of deer. more

31.08.2016

A monster put in its place

An analysis of the fossil known as the Minden Monster has enabled paleontologists to assign the largest predatory dinosaur ever found in Germany to a previously unknown genus, among a group that underwent rapid diversification in the Middle Jurassic. more

08.08.2016

Ancient DNA reveals novel relationships

LMU researchers have sequenced mitochondrial DNA from museum specimens of rare species of deer. Analysis of partial nucleotide sequences has enabled the team to refine our picture of the evolutionary history of cervids. more

19.07.2016 at 21:00

Aftermath of a mass extinction

A new study of fossil fishes from Middle Triassic sediments on the shores of Lake Lugano provides new insights into the recovery of biodiversity following the great mass extinction event at the Permo-Triassic boundary 250 million years ago. more

04.05.2016

The evolution of development

On the basis of an analysis of 520 million-year-old fossils, LMU researchers show that embryonic and larval development in the early ancestors of spiders and scorpions was strikingly and unexpectedly similar to that of modern crabs. more

13.01.2016

Ash-falls blighted the grasslands

LMU paleontologists have used data derived from new fish-fossil finds, pollen analyses and sedimentology to reconstruct the environmental conditions that prevailed in Africa’s Rift Valley in the Middle to Late Miocene Era. more

13.01.2016

Unique biodiversity - from top to bottom

Living fossils, rare corals and sponges: The depths of the Coral Sea off the northeast coast of Australia harbor unique and hitherto undiscovered biological communities. more

30.11.2015

Revolution averted

Who came first – sponges or comb jellies? A new study by an LMU team reaffirms that sponges are the oldest animal phylum – and restores the classical view of early animal evolution, which recent molecular analyses had challenged. more

17.09.2015

Hox genes provide a backward look

A study of the embryonic development of the Nile crocodile’s axial skeleton reported by LMU paleontologists sheds new light on a phase of vertebrate evolution that dates back hundreds of millions of years. more

30.06.2015

DNA barcoding discloses diversity

LMU-Wissenschaftler haben DNA-Erkennungssequenzen antarktischer Schwämme analysiert und neue Einblicke in deren Artenvielfalt und Evolutionsgeschichte erhalten. more

17.06.2015

The long reach of the Hox code

LMU researchers have shown that patterns of activity of certain genes in vertebrate embryos correlate with differences in the length of the neck region. The findings also provide new insight into the evolution of long-necked dinosaurs. more

05.05.2015

Unique fish fossils identified

An LMU team has identified the first fossil specimens of a major group of killifishes that is widely distributed in freshwater habitats today. The 6-million-year-old material sheds new light on the evolution of the bony fishes. more

04.05.2015

The secrets of the brachiopod shell

LMU researchers have carried out the first detailed study of the molecular mechanisms responsible for formation of the brachiopod shell. Comparison with shell synthesis in other groups reveals the deep evolutionary roots of the process. more

23.03.2015

Deciphering the genomes of invertebrates

LMU is hosting a 3-day international workshop on the Genomics of Invertebrates next week. The meeting begins on Sunday March 22nd. more

12.01.2015

Evolution - Rock sponges split up

A study led by LMU researchers throws new light on the evolution of the so-called rock sponges, and reveals that conventional, morphology-based taxonomies do not accurately reflect the true genealogical relationships within the group. more

24.11.2014

Stone chronicles

The first detailed study of the otoliths of extant African annual killifish species provides vital information that will facilitate the identification of fossil forms of this group and contribute to the elucidation of their evolutionary history. more

02.07.2014

First show-off, then take-off

LMU paleontologists are currently studying a new specimen of Archaeopteryx, which reveals previously unknown features of the plumage. The initial findings shed light on the original function of feathers and their recruitment for flight. more

14.05.2014

Exceptional preservation of ancient sperm in Miocene ostracods from the Riversleigh fossil deposits (Queensland, Australia)

Since the discovery of ostracods’ giant sperm in the mid 1800s, their function and evolution have remained enigmatic, in part because of a lack of fossil data. A study on an Australian Miocene ostracod fauna – carried out by LMU researcher Renate Matzke-Karasz and an international team – now sheds light on the evolution of this opulent way of reproduction. more

04.06.2013

The eloquence of the otoliths

Fish fossils that are about 23 million years old give unprecedented insight into the evolutionary history of the gobioid order, one of the most species-rich groups among the modern bony fishes. more

14.03.2013

Trove of fish fossils discovered

A research team led by LMU paleontologist Bettina Reichenbacher has uncovered a rich trove of fossil fish in the Rift Valley in Kenya. The new specimens promise to reveal important details of the evolutionary history of freshwater fish in Africa. more

08.10.2012

The riddle of the mystery gazelle

From chimera to species: Museum specimens obtained nearly 200 years ago represent the only evidence for an enigmatic species of Arabian gazelle. Closer examination of the material has now led to a different, and very surprising, conclusion. more

04.07.2012

The genetic way to identify sponges

Sponges are an ancient phylum of animals found in marine and freshwater habitats, and their systematic classification poses many problems for zoologists. A new archive of DNA sequences promises to make the task far less taxing for taxonomists. more

03.07.2012

Downy dinosaur discovered

The new fossil find from the chalk beds of the Franconian Jura evokes associations with a pet cemetery, for the young predatory dinosaur reveals clear traces of fluffy plumage. It also poses an intriguing question: Were all dinosaurs dressed in down? more

26.06.2012

Fit as a sponge

Sponges - a very old evolutionary lineage - lack true muscles but still have some proteins typically found in muscle cells. These new findings suggest that the origins of musculature lie much further back in time than suspected. more

02.05.2012

Dinosaurs indecline long before mass extinction?

Despite years of intensive research about the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs about 65.5 million years ago, a fundamental question remains: were dinosaurs already undergoing a long-term decline before an asteroid hit at the end of the Cretaceous? A study led by scientists at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH)and LMU Munich gives a multifaceted answer. more

06.02.2012

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