The viruses that helped to make you human Getty Images About 8% of the human genome comes from viruses and without it we wouldn't have evolved into the species we are today Although they are more commonly associated with causing disease and, at times, devastating pandemics, viruses have also played an important role in human evolution – and without them …
A study, conducted by Maureen O'Leary, a paleontologist at Stony Brook University in New York, and her research team, concluded that the ancestor of all placental mammals evolved “less than 400,000 years after the mass extinctions that wiped out the dinosaurs.” The groundbreaking study's findings were published on September 26 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Placental mammals …
