Exercise scientists: women hunted, men gathered
Scientific American upends the old idea that manly men evolved to hunt for meat for growing prehistoric families with physiological evidence that women – who […]
evolution
Island lizards are evolving – in one year’s time.
Scientific American steps into the fast lane, unexpectedly, on the island of Redonda. People wiped out the local (invasive) populations of rats and goats, and […]
Sigh. Maybe a sweet potato *doesn’t* mean that prehistoric Polynesians visited South America after all.
The Guardian has some sweet potato evolutionary research that unintentionally drives a wedge in the idea that the presence of the humble yam in both […]
Giant genitals were the downfall of some ancient crustaceans
I can’t beat Nature‘s headline, so I won’t even try. “Giant genitals were the downfall of some ancient crustaceans.” The creatures from the Late Cretaceous […]
Science Art: 2014 Evolutionary Biology – Austrian 25 Euro, designed by Helmut Andexlinger.
Click to embiggen Money! Monkey money! This is some currency art done in niobium and silver, honoring the discipline of evolutionary biology. I don’t think […]
Which came first, the sponge or the jelly? (We might have an answer.)
Nature tries to solve a nearly intractable chicken-and-egg problem for evolutionary biologists. Which is the oldest kind of animal, a sponge or a comb jelly? […]
Love and Fitness
PLOS Biology wants us to know that in a cost/benefit analysis, love comes out ahead: A new study published in PLOS Biology by Malika Ihle, […]
Snake vision. We evolved for snake vision.
ScienceDaily keeps an eye out for creepy-crawlies with news that primate vision may have evolved *specifically* to identify snakes: In a paper published Oct. 28 […]
Pitchers tell evolution’s story
Nature draws an ancient lesson from America’s favorite pastime, observing how baseball pitchers reveal the evolution of human beings: “Throwing projectiles probably enabled our ancestors […]
Cars shape sparrows’ evolution.
Nature demonstrates how (possibly) our machines are transforming birds’ whole existence: Roadside-nesting cliff swallows have evolved shorter, more manoeuvrable wings, which may have helped them […]
Slow and steady mutations save the species.
Or at least, Astrobiology says, save the species’ descendants. The secret of survival, on an evolutionary scale, isn’t a single lucky mutant, but a whole […]
Lovecraft report: Proto-organism found in remote lake sludge.
PhysOrg calls it “man’s remotest relative,” a living thing that has no branch on the tree of life. Why can’t they just call a shoggoth […]
Robot buddies.
Science Mag produces proof – actual, empirical proof – that nice guys really can finish first and that even killer robots can learn to care […]
Malarial evolution.
Scientific American notices that the mosquitoes that carry malaria seem to be splitting off into their own species: “We can see that mosquitoes are evolving […]
Evolution made us conservative, not smart.
LabSpaces shares some interesting research on the role of novelty in human development: An earlier study by Kanazawa found that more intelligent individuals were more […]