evolution
What martyred Thomas Becket and his holy lice can teach us about evolution
It’s a tale of murder, sex, and vermin. And gorillas. Reader discretion advised ...
Why humans may not be to blame for ancient African mammal extinction
New research has disputed a longstanding view that early humans helped wipe out many of the large mammals that once ...
Are our microbes part of us? ‘Radical upgrade’ of evolutionary theory
Look closely enough at any plant or animal and you will discover a riot of bacteria, fungi and viruses forming ...
Why teaching evolution is still difficult in many public schools
[November 12] marked the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Epperson vs. Arkansas, which struck down the state’s ...
‘Anti-evolution drug’ could stop superbugs from mutating
Over the past 90 years, scientists have discovered hundreds of antibiotics—microbe-killing drugs that have brought many pernicious diseases to heel ...
Why Darwin’s ‘abominable mystery’ may not be all that mysterious
For 140 years, scientists have been trying to explain what Charles Darwin described as “an abominable mystery”. Darwin was bothered by evidence ...
How DNA tests solved the mystery of this strange, now-extinct monkey
For nearly 100 years, scientists haven’t been able to agree on the evolutionary origins of a strange, now-extinct monkey that ...
Evolved adaptation: Challenges to Darwin’s belief that mutations are random and neutral
When Charles Darwin articulated his theory of evolution by natural selection in On the Origin of Species in 1859, he ...
Did Neanderthals have their own language?
Did Neanderthals have language? Before trying to answer that, I should admit my bias: I’m team Neanderthal. As an anthropologist ...
Peering back in time: Engineered synthetic organisms could help answer key evolutionary questions
Evolution is the accepted explanation for life's diversity today, but there are still some holes in the process that we ...
300,000-year-old stone tools found in Saudi Arabian desert could shed light on human migration out of Africa
Stone tools unearthed in Saudi Arabia’s inhospitable Nefud Desert indicate that members of our genus Homo had ventured beyond the ...
Directed evolution and Nobel Prize winner Frances Arnold
“Life is a tornado, and I am a leaf,” [Nobelist Frances H.] Arnold says. As the Linus Pauling Professor of ...
Ancient spearheads raise new questions about North America’s first inhabitants
[A]rchaeologists have uncovered evidence of a human settlement stretching back as far as 15,500 years: hammer stones and broken knives, ...
‘Cradles of diversification’: Lagoons played key role in evolution of first vertebrates
Scientists have discovered that shallow, lagoon-like environments were the cradle for vertebrate evolution, giving rise to our distant ancestors. A ...
‘De-extinction’ engineers dream of reviving the lost passenger pigeon
Once the dominant species in eastern North America, passenger pigeons roamed the forests in giant flocks up to several billions ...
Human evolutionary theory challenged in global study by diversity of birth canals
The shape of a mother’s birth canal is a tug-of-war between two opposing evolutionary forces: It needs to be wide ...
Recreating the chemical soup that may have sparked life on earth
In the molecular dance that gave birth to life on Earth, RNA appears to be a central player. But the ...
Where did Europe’s original dogs go?
The first farmers to arrive in Europe from the Middle East brought their dogs along with them, effectively wiping out ...
No strings attached: Why are men more interested in casual sex?
First, is there any truth in [gender] stereotypes? And second, if there is, why? The answer to the first question, ...
‘The Tangled Tree’: Book explores what’s wrong with Darwin’s theory of evolution
Until recently, the central tenets of Darwin’s theory of evolution, from how heredity works to the gradual variation in species, had ...
Challenging earth’s oldest fossils: Critics say ‘there’s absolutely nothing biological about them’
Two years ago, researchers from the University of Wollongong in Australia shook the science world by claiming to have discovered ...
Is there a link between climate change and human evolution?
[W]hile all the talk nowadays focuses on how to change the course of the climate’s evolution, a study out [October 11] ...
Tragic tradeoff: How depression evaded evolution
Depression is an evolutionary conundrum. On the one hand, it’s the leading cause of disability worldwide; on the other, the ...
Teaching of evolution under siege in Turkey, Israel and India
In recent weeks there have been alarming reports from both Israel and Turkey of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution being erased from school curriculums ...
Defining life: If it’s created in a lab, is it really alive?
Describing life is difficult and evasive. Will we fully understand life if we can create it through synthetic biology? ...
This ‘hot mess’ bird links dinosaur and avian evolution
Yes, birds are technically modern dinosaurs. But sometimes it’s tough to tell where the non-avian dino ends and the bird begins ...
Is it time to rethink evolutionary timeline for Earth’s animals?
New research suggests that animal origins happened much earlier than previously thought ...
