Evolution

Merge: Did Human Language Evolve Due To A Mutation?

Merge is a controversial belief by some that human language faculty arose in humans through a single gene mutation, rather the evolving gradually. This human burst of genetic exceptionalism is embraced by some linguists, such as Noam Chomsky, but the scien ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 21 2020 - 11:10am

Elpistostege Fish Fin Fossil And Evolution Of The Human Hand

An ancient Elpistostege fish fossil has revealed how the human hand evolved from fish fins, the missing evolutionary link in the 'fish to tetrapod transition', as fish began to foray in habitats such as shallow water and land during the Late Dev ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 19 2020 - 11:54am

Disgust Evolved To Protect Us From Disease But With Coronavirus Our Ancient Instincts May Be Wrong

(Inside Science)-- Imagine putting your hand in a pile of poop. It stinks and squishes. What do you do next? Most likely, you'll scrub that hand with plenty of soap-- and you don't need public health officials or a germ theory of disease to tell ...

Article - Inside Science - Apr 7 2020 - 3:29pm

X And Y And Meiosis: Some Progress In The Sex Chromosomes Science Mystery

In high school biology you learned that in humans, a normal cell contains 23 pairs of chromosomes; 22 autosomes, which are the same in both males and females, while in the 23rd, the sex chromosomes, females have two copies of the X chromosome while males h ...

Article - News Staff - May 29 2020 - 8:24am

How Adaptive Radiation Shaped Reptile Evolution

Though we've learned a lot about evolution in the last 150 years, when it comes to the details, some fundamental questions remain unanswered. Such as when and how extremely diverse groups of animals such as reptiles first evolved. For seventy-five yea ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 6 2020 - 5:58pm

Reconciling Evolution And Cooperation

In order to evolve you must first survive, and Darwin posited that this "survival of the fittest" was a driver in natural selection. To the casual reader in 1859, cooperation was hard to reconcile with that, but humans had become the apex predato ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 24 2020 - 9:57am

Rnf Enzyme: Missing Link Between Anoxic Life On Earth And Modern Respiration

Life developed when there was no oxygen on earth. It was an anoxic environment dominated by bacteria, who instead of oxidation and reduction, as our mitochondria do to produce energy, probably extracted various substances by means of fermentation. But ther ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 9 2020 - 5:31am

Alaska's Salmon Are Getting Smaller, And The Natural Fetish For 'Wild Caught' Is To Blame

Try to imagine a world where people though wild lettuce was a status symbol and superior to lettuce grown on a farm; a salad would cost $400. That is the problem with salmon. Elite customers want to know a laborer sweated for it, they insist if it is farme ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Aug 19 2020 - 3:05pm

Severe COVID-19 Reaction? Blame Neanderthals

The overwhelming majority who have gotten or ever will get COVID-19, resulting from the third coronavirus pandemic, named SARS-CoV-2, of this century, won't know it. Most who are not asymptomatic will have it be the same as a cold. Yet a few will have ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 2 2020 - 1:22pm

Charles Darwin Was Right On Why Insects Are Losing The Ability To Fly, Finds New Paper

Charles Darwin and many others knew about the wing loss habit of island insects and debated famed botanist Joseph Hooker as to why. Darwin's position was simple that an insect on an island that flies is at more risk of being blown out to sea. Those le ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 12 2020 - 1:29pm