Evolution

Reconstructing The Evolution Of Ancient Microbes?

580 million years ago, life on Earth began a rapid period of change called the Cambrian Explosion, defined by the birth of new life forms over many millions of years that ultimately helped bring about the modern diversity of animals. While fossils can help ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 20 2010 - 1:01pm

Salt Water Frogs?

Recently, a question kept me wondering: Why aren't there salt water frogs? This is an honest and humble personal question because I have not really done any research on this and primarily because I have not seen any frog on my occasional trips to beac ...

Blog Post - Johann Cruz - Aug 14 2016 - 7:53pm

Denisovans? Fossil Discovery Is Neither Modern Human Nor Neanderthal

A 30,000-year-old finger bone found in a cave in southern Siberia came from a young girl that was neither an early modern human nor Neanderthal, but instead belonged to a previously unknown group of human relatives who may have lived throughout much of Asi ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 22 2010 - 3:33pm

No, There Are No Alien Bar Codes In Our Genomes

Even for a physicist, this is bad: Larry Moran, in preparation for the appropriate dose of ridicule that this situation deserves, quotes physicist and pop-science author Paul Davies: Another physical object with enormous longevity is DNA. Our bodies contai ...

Article - Michael White - Jan 12 2011 - 1:23pm

The Importance Of Salt In Evolutionary Soup

Microbiologists have discovered a central metabolic pathway in microorganisms and the microorganisms use this pathway to survive under extremely salty conditions, like the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is not dead, in the science sense.  Many microorganisms which ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 21 2011 - 9:54am

First entry on Simulating Life's Origins

This is the first posting on the Simulating Life's Origins column. Not much more to say here except to test whether this feature is working! ...

Blog Post - Bruce Damer - Jan 25 2011 - 3:09pm

Frog 'Re-Evolution'

Can complex traits lost during evolution recur later?   It was an academic argument but now it has some more data.  Writing in Evolution, a study analyzes   Gastrotheca guentheri, a tree frog with teeth in its lower jaw, separating if from every other frog ...

Blog Post - Hank Campbell - Jan 31 2011 - 3:49pm

Australopithecus Afarensis: Lucy Had Foot Arches?

Arches in human feet have been instrumental in our ability to walk upright and researchers at the University of Missouri and Arizona State University say they have found proof that arches existed in a predecessor to the human species,  Australopithecus afa ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 10 2011 - 4:03pm

Evolution In Action: Hudson River Fish Mutate To Adapt To PCBs

Researchers have discovered a genetic variant that allows a fish in the Hudson River to live in waters heavily polluted by polychlorinated biphenyls- PCBs. In their report,  they show that a population of Hudson River fish apparently evolved rapidly in res ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 18 2011 - 2:00pm

Climate Change Means Tree Of Life Will Get Slimmer

A study just published in the journal Nature by researchers in France, Portugal and Spain looks for the first time at the effects of climate change on the tree of life (that aggregates species according to their evolution/genetic similarity) to find that t ...

Article - Catarina Amorim - Feb 26 2011 - 9:17pm