Evolution

Is There A 27 Million Year Cycle For Mass Extinction Or Just Coincidence?

A new paper finds that mass extinction of land-dwelling animals- amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and birds- occur in a cycle of about 27 million years. A pattern in nature or just coincidence? Probably coincidence, since 27 million years give or take is a ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Dec 18 2020 - 6:25pm

Bitter Or Sweet? It's Not Just Preference, Tongues Have Evolved In Different Areas

An American might ask if the mayonnaise is spicy while an Asian will warn them they only think they want the hot sauce on Asian food. A woman is more likely to be better at detecting bitter tastes than men. The difference is not cultural, that some people ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 6 2021 - 12:30pm

Why Haven't Crocodiles Evolved Much Since The Age Of The Dinosaurs?

A lot has changed since the age of dinosaurs hundreds of millions of years ago. Humans didn't exist and dinosaurs are gone. Yet crocodiles are still here and, unlike humans, have not evolved much by comparison. They even look similar to ones from the ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 7 2021 - 10:40am

The Human Brain: Where And When It Evolved

Though modern humans and our closest evolutionary relatives, the great apes, shared a common ancestor millions of years ago, most similarities stop there. We live on the ground, walk on two legs and have much larger brains.  That doesn't mean the larg ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 10 2021 - 11:29pm

If The Bubonic Plague Didn't Kill You, It Helped Make Your Descendants Stronger

The remains of 36 bubonic plague victims from a 16th century mass grave in Germany provide evidence that evolutionary adaptive processes, driven by the disease, may have conferred immunity on later generations of people from the region. The researchers col ...

Article - News Staff - May 6 2021 - 1:36pm

The 25-Million Year Gap Between The 'Molecular Clock' And The Fossil Record Gets A Little Smaller

Microfossils found in rock samples retrieved in Australia more than 60 years ago (DOI 10.1126/science.abj2927) fill an approximately 25-million-year gap in knowledge by reconciling the molecular clock- or pace of evolution- with the fossil spore record- th ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 16 2021 - 12:01pm

Australopithecus Sediba Lower Back Fossils Are The 'Missing Link' Between Climbing And Walking

The ancient relative to modern humans Australopithecus sediba walked like a human, but climbed like an ape, filling in a gap in the fossil record long posited by biologists, finds a new analysis. The recovery of new lumbar vertebrae from the lower back of ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 30 2021 - 2:41pm

Greenlanders Have Lower BMI, Fat Percentage And Cholesterol- Evolution May Be Why

Over the course of evolutionary history, Greenlanders have benefited from a genetic variation that offers an incredible advantage; two copies of a gene variant make it so that they absorb sugar differently than other people do. A new study finds that up to ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 29 2021 - 12:25pm

Happy Darwin Day: He Wasn't A One-Hit Wonder With Natural Selection, He Also Wrote How Expressions Evolved

Was Charles Darwin a one-hit wonder? According to scientists who take a gene’s-eye view of evolution, the 19th-century English naturalist contributed one crucial idea to understanding how species change: natural selection, or “design without a designer”. ...

Article - The Conversation - Feb 12 2022 - 6:02am

Syllipsimopodi Bideni: An Octopus With 10 Arms Pushes Back The Age Of Vampyropoda By Nearly 82 Million Years

A recent study describes a new species of vampyropod based on a 328-million-year-old fossil and pushes back the age of the group by nearly 82 million years. And shows that the oldest ancestors of the group of animals that includes octopuses and vampire sq ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 9 2022 - 12:33pm