Although FB Rice Patent Attorney, Lee Miles, may have hung up his lab coat, he has maintained his involvement in the field of crocodilian genomics as an Honorary Associate at the University of Sydney and as a member of the International Union for Conservations of Nature - Species Survival Commission (IUCN-SSC) Crocodile Specialist Group. As part of an ambitious international collaboration, Dr Miles and colleagues decoded and analysed the genomes of three crocodilian species to gain insights into their evolution. The results of this study have been published in a December 12 special issue of Science in the article entitled ‘Three crocodilian genomes reveal ancestral patterns of evolution among archosaurs’. The reconstructed genome of the common ancestor will be a valuable tool for investigating the evolution of the "archosaurs", the group that includes all dinosaurs, pterosaurs, birds, and crocodilians. For the full story, click here.