McGill University

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Home institution of the study's lead authors

In the hills near Villa de Leyva, Colombia, the Paja Formation holds the bones of long-necked plesiosaurs, marine crocodile relatives, turtles and sharks, all packed into Early Cretaceous rock. A team from McGill University and the Centro de Investigaciones Paleontológicas read that assemblage as a snapshot of two biological eras overlapping: lineages on their way out, living beside lineages on their way up.

Updated 2 days ago

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Led the discovery through its Department of Physiology

Immunologists have long assumed chemical signals alone decide whether a T cell, a white blood cell that coordinates immune defenses, becomes a long-term memory cell. A McGill University team has found the cells also sense the stiffness of surrounding tissue, and that physical cue influences the decision.

Updated Oct 31

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Co-led the atlas project

A new genetic atlas shows which DNA differences between humans and great apes actually matter, and it exposes a trade-off. The changes that shaped the human skeleton also left human cartilage with about a third of the cushioning molecules that apes have.

Updated Oct 16