Evolution

Humans belong to a sub-clasification of animals called deuterostomes (or second-mouth). During embryological development there is a period where part of the tissue “folds” back into itself creating…

How did life begin, anyway?      I am a research professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and over the past 30 years my students and I have been working to understand how…

Professor Lynn Margulis is the biologist who had the incredible insight that the cells of modern organisms were originally formed by the symbiotic combination of prokaryotic cells and colonies of…

Show Me The Science Month Day 25 Installment 25 In nature, there is a sucker born every day. We humans may think that we're clever, but evolution has produced con games that would put Bernie Madoff…

Show Me The Science Month Day 24 Installment 24 How do new genes arise? One common way is through gene duplication - the creation of a second copy of a gene when the DNA replication or repair…

Want to start an argument among shark paleontologists?   Ask whether Carcharodon carcharias, the great white shark, evolved from the line that produced Carcharodon megalodon, the largest…

Show Me The Science Month Day 23 Installment 23 Thanks to your parents, you have two copies of each chromosome, which means that you have maternal and paternal copies of every gene. In most cases,…

This statement about natural selection is the last sentence of Adaptation and Natural Selection, George Williams' masterpiece about evolution. George Williams is one of the unsung heroes of 20th…

There is no question that humans are unique among living things in possessing a rich communications vehicle like language. However, by itself, this is insufficient to explain why such a thing should…

In this installment I would like to extend the concepts of belief systems into other areas that we are all familiar with but haven’t necessarily explored. The data organization capability of the…