Evolution

A team of American and Irish researchers has concluded that the mysterious appearance in 2001 of an infant female bonnethead shark at Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo in a tank that held only two adult…

Although it may sound like an oxymoron, a University of Iowa anthropologist and his colleagues report the first discovery of a skull from a "pygmy-sized" giant panda -- the earliest-known ancestor of…

I took a long weekend so I guess this story is a few days old but I had to relay it because it is so funny! Thanks to Hank Campbell who organizes Scientific Blogging for sending it along. The…

This week's issue of Science has a book review (subscription required unfortunately) of Michael's Behe's latest effort to defend Intelligent Design Creationism. Michael Behe's latest book, The Edge…

It's long been thought that humans hunted woolly mammoths to extinction. Anthropogenic global hunting, as it were. Or that a cataclysmic event did the trick. It may be neither of those and just…

Scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara have discovered significant clues to the evolutionary origins of the nervous system by studying the genome of a sea sponge, a member of a…

Scientists at the University of Liverpool have found that humans’ ability to walk upright developed from ancestors foraging for food in forest tree tops and not from walking on all fours on open land…

Researchers at Ohio University have found that after primates evolved the ability to see red, they began to develop red and orange skin and hair. Humans, apes and Old World monkeys, such as macaques…

Nature, through the trial and error of evolution, has discovered a vast diversity of life from what can only presumed to have been a primordial pool of building blocks. Inspired by this success, a…

A surprisingly complete fossil skull of an ancient relative of humans, apes and monkeys bears striking evidence that our remote ancestor was less mentally advanced than expected by about 29 million…