2014

Belgian biologists have discovered three new stick insect species in Vietnam. One of them is 32 centimetres long and the second largest insect on earth.

Working at the edge of a coal mine in India, a team of Johns Hopkins researchers and colleagues have filled in a major gap in science’s understanding of the evolution of a group of animals that includes horses and rhinos. That group likely originated on the subcontinent when it was still an island headed swiftly for collision with Asia, the researchers report in the online journal Nature Communications.

Research conducted over three years by a team of paleontologists from our Institute, in collaboration with 13 other Belgian and French institutes, has led to the discovery of a new fossil mammal site in Rivecourt, in the Paris Basin, as well as a new species of carnivorous mammal in the Belgian site of Dormaal, in Flanders. These studies, published respectively in the international journals PloS ONE and Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, reshuffle our understanding of the emergence of the first modern mammals, particularly rodents and carnivores.