Evolution

Hydra Vision Genes Provide A Glimpse Of Evolution History

By peering deep into evolutionary history, scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara have discovered the origins of photosensitivity in animals. The scientists studied the aquatic animal Hydra, a member of Cnidaria, which are animals that h ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 17 2007 - 12:23am

St. Bernard Ironically Hurts Creationism

The St Bernard dog – named after the 11th century priest Bernard of Menthon – may have ironically challenged the theory of creationism, say scientists. Biologists at The University of Manchester say that changes to the shape of the breed’s head over the ye ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 24 2007 - 10:57am

FOXP2 Gene Discovery Means Prehistoric Man Just Got A Lot More Diverse

It's historically been the case that fossil remains of Neanderthals paint an incomplete picture; they can't tell us about their cognitive skills or really give us details of what they looked like. But scientists at the Max Planck Institute in Lei ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 26 2007 - 5:28pm

'Island Rule' Of Evolution Disputed

A theory explaining the evolution of giant rodents, miniature elephants, and even miniature humans on islands has been called into question by new research published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. A new study refutes the ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 6 2007 - 7:32pm

Evolution And Fly Genomics

New work on fruit fly genomics suggests new ways to look at the much larger human genome, and gives insights into the role of adaptation in evolution. In two recent papers, researchers led by David Begun and Charles Langley, professors of evolution and eco ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 8 2007 - 10:41am

Male Cichlids Are Evolutionary Playas- They Fake Their Way To Mating

A gene has been found in male cichlid fish that evolved to lure female fish so that male cichlids can deposit sperm in the females mouths. A study in BMC Biology reveals that the gene is associated with egg-like markings on the fins of cichlid fishes and u ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 15 2007 - 2:03am

Horizontal Gene Transfer And How Genetic Modularity Begets Complexity

What is the fundamental creative force behind life on Earth? It's a question that has vexed mankind for millennia, and thanks to theory and almost a year's worth of number-crunching on a supercomputer, Rice University physicist and bioengineer Mi ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 13 2007 - 3:15pm

Evolution Of Skin Colors Of The World

A favorite book of mine is Evolution: A Scientific American Reader, a collection of articles on astronomy, cell biology, paleontology and anthropology from the print magazine. One of my favorite chapters, "Skin Deep" by Nina Jablonski and George ...

Article - John Dennehy - Jan 7 2008 - 11:19pm

Study: Evolution Is Not Random

A multi-national team of biologists has concluded that developmental evolution is deterministic and orderly, rather than random, based on a study of different species of roundworms. The findings are reported in the latest issue of the journal Current Biolo ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 19 2007 - 1:58pm

Report: Neanderthals Matured Faster Than Homo Sapiens

An international European research collaboration led by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology reports evidence for a rapid developmental pattern in a 100,000 year old Belgian Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis). The Scladina ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 4 2007 - 12:05pm