Evolution

The fossil record usually shows what adult animals looked like. But the appearance and lifestyle of juvenile animals often differ dramatically from those of the adults. A classic example is provided…

New evidence gleaned from CT scans of fossils locked inside rocks may flip the order in which two kinds of four-limbed animals with backbones were known to have moved from fish to landlubber. Both…

Human alcoholic tendencies go way back, as described in one of the most interesting paragraphs I've ever read in a scientific paper: In the warm tropical climate of sub-Saharan Africa, where the…

    Last week I described how Fred Hoyle, in 1946,  came up with the idea that carbon is synthesized in hot stars toward the end of their lifetime, and we now know that carbon and…

Neanderthals, a distinct Middle Pleistocene population, inhabited a vast geographical area extending from Europe to western Asia and the Middle East from 30,000 to 100,000 years ago. Were they a…

A fierce debate is in progress. Human slaughter or natural demise.... Giant beavers, oversized ground sloths, and huge armadillo-like creatures all disappeared within a couple of thousand years — a…

In works on evolution written by a certain class of biologist we can often see “for the good of the species” references derided in no uncertain terms. Comments such as “fuzzy thinking”, “they got it…

    Last week I described how a boulder-sized meteorite exploded in the skies over Murchison, Australia, forty years ago. The remarkable mix of organic compounds discovered in samples of…

The genetic toolkit that animals use to build fins and limbs is the same genetic toolkit that controls the development of part of the gill skeleton in sharks, according to research published in PNAS…

As the U.S. Southwest grew warmer from 18,700 to 10,000 years ago, juniper trees vanished from what is now the Mojave Desert, robbing packrats of their favorite food. Now, University of Utah…