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News Stories relating to "evolution"
Roadkill? Evolution!
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
There's all kinds of evolution: Cliff swallows that build nests that dangle from highway overpasses have a lower chance of becoming roadkill than they used to because their progeny has developed shorter wingspans, so that they can dodge oncoming traffic.
It would be...
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It would be...
The Evolution of Gambling
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
The history of life on Earth is still a mystery: Bacteria have been around for about 3 billion years, but for most of this time they had had the Earth to themselves. Seaweed, jellyfish-like creatures, sponges and worms arrived a few million years before the Cambrian period began, over 500 million years ago.
But 200 million years ago...
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But 200 million years ago...
Your Ancestor was a Rat!
Friday, February 15, 2013
No, we don't just mean that we all have some nasty folks in our family tree--We're talking about an actual rat-like mammal that is the common ancestor of all humans. It weighed about half a pound, had a long furry tail and ate insects (something WE...
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Evolution: It's in Our Genes
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Homo sapiens (modern humans) appeared approximately 180,000 years ago, but stayed in one location around bodies of water in central Africa for almost 100,000 years, before they dispersed throughout the rest of the world. This is why...
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Why We Evolved
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
There are lots of theories about what caused human evolution. Here's a new one: cooking!
When humans invented cooking, it increased the number of calories they consumed, since heat breaks down cellulose in plants, making them more digestible and releasing...
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When humans invented cooking, it increased the number of calories they consumed, since heat breaks down cellulose in plants, making them more digestible and releasing...
The Black Death was a Form of Evolution
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Studying the Medieval skeletons of people who went through the European plague (also called the Black Death), which killed 30% of Europeans, including nearly half of the people in London, between 1347 and 1351, may help us...
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How Long Does it Take to Evolve?
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Evolution doesn't happen overnight: large changes in body size take a long time. There have been increases and decreases in mammal size following the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Now biologists estimate that a mouse-to-elephant size change would take at least 24...
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We're All Hybrids
Monday, February 20, 2012
The traditional idea that modern humans left Africa and spread throughout the world about 50,000 years ago, replacing all other species of human, is changing. Instead, genetic analysis shows that modern humans encountered and bred with at least two different types of ancient humans: the Neanderthals, who lived in Europe and Asia, and a mysterious...
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Why We All Have Different Faces
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Why are the faces of primates (and people!) so dramatically different from one another?
Biologists working as "evolutionary detectives" studied the faces of 129 adult male primates from Central and South America in search of some answers, and discovered that faces they studied evolved over at least 24 million years....
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Biologists working as "evolutionary detectives" studied the faces of 129 adult male primates from Central and South America in search of some answers, and discovered that faces they studied evolved over at least 24 million years....
Evolution May Not Keep Up With Climate Change
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
If climate change accelerates, can animals and plants evolve quickly enough to keep up with it? Climate changes profoundly...
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Our Evolution was Electric
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Humans are here thanks to electricity. Evolutionary biologists have discovered that just about every vertebrate on Earth--including us--descended from an ancient ancestor with the ability to detect electrical fields in water.
500 million years ago, two types of fish diverged...
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500 million years ago, two types of fish diverged...
Throwing Made Us Human
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
During the football playoffs, we began to wonder how humans, unlike any other species on Earth, learned to throw long distances. New research suggests that this unique evolutionary trait is entangled with language development in a way critical to our very existence. In fact, throwing...
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What Makes Us Human?
Thursday, November 4, 2010
There are all kinds of evolution. How did we become human when we share 98% of our genes with chimps? Part of this has to do with superior brain power--we have at least 300,000 brain cells for each neuron in...
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Ancient Intelligent Beings
Friday, July 23, 2010
Different from us? - It's easy to forget that there have been many small beings, such as fairies, leprechauns and trolls, in the legends of many cultures. In his contact experiences, Whitley has seen small Grays, as well as short, stocky cobalt blue figures. Were these beings only mythical or did (or do) they really exist?...
It's Getting Hotter!
Monday, July 19, 2010
Are we evolving? - June 2010 was the hottest June on record (since NOAA began keeping track of temperatures in 1880). Climate change may not be good for current humans, but it may have helped our ancestors BECOME human--are we still evolving? In the Turkana Basin of Kenya, one of the places where human life began, the average...
Where Did We Come From?
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
How did we get here? There are some strange things going on, when it comes to evolution: Viceroy butterflies protect themselves from predators by looking just like Monarchs (which are toxic to birds). Is this an accident or some kind of "intention?"
Evolution
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Next step is machine intelligence - Quantum physicist Stephen Hawking says humans have entered a new phase of evolution, one that will be continued by our creation of intelligent machines. Evolution is one of the topics discussed in the Lloyd Pye subscriber interview this week.
Evolution used to proceed slowly, over...
Evolution Heating Up
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Things are definitely starting to heat up again, and global warming may speed up the pace of evolution in mammals. Will we get smarter in order to save ourselves?
In warmer climates, the cells that eventually develop into sperm and eggs divide more frequently. In BBC News, Victoria Gill quotes researcher Len Gillman as saying, "An...
Evolution Faster Than Ever
Friday, January 4, 2008
Despite the comments of some of the political candidates now running for office, Evolution is real and it's still going on--in fact, we're evolving faster than ever. Scientists USED to think that human evolution was all over. What's causing this acceleration?
In BBC News, Anna-Marie Lever reports that in the past 5,000 years (a blink of...
Why We're Here: Mammals Liked to Smell the Flowers
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
Researchers now think that evolution has more do to with "flower power" than with an asteroid wiping out the dinosaurs, giving us mammals a chance to take over.
In the Independent, Steve Connor reports that a student of the 4,500 species of mammal that are alive today has found that the period when mammals began to thrive and displace...
Evolution: What's Happening NOW
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Formerly wild animals are being crowded out of their natural habitats and are moving into suburbs and even into big cities?and they're evolving new ways to cope. Humans are still evolving as well?we're getting SMARTER. And scientists have discovered that evolution takes place more quickly at the equator.
In the April 22 issue of New...
Walking Fish?Then & Now
Monday, April 17, 2006
A fossil of a fish with "legs," that anthropologists think represents the missing link in the evolution of sea creatures into land animals, has recently been discovered in Ethiopia. At the same time, biologists have learned that one type of fish?the catfish?STILL "walks" ashore to look for food.
Discovering that a catfish that lives in...
New Evolution
Thursday, April 6, 2006
Evolution isn?t just something that went on in the past, it's still happening today. And some scientists think that evoltion plays out pretty much the same everywhere, meaning that alien life, when we find it, won't be so different from us.
A group of geneticists at the University of Chicago have scanned the entire human genome in search...
We're Close to Chimps, So What Makes Us Different?
Tuesday, December 23, 2003
Chimps and humans are 99% alike when it comes to DNA. Researchers think what makes us different are "lifestyle" changes that occurred 6 million years ago, when we both separated from a common ancestor. These have to do with how we smell and hear things and what we eat.
Fears Shaped by Evolution
Monday, June 2, 2003
A long time ago, before we were human, our ancestors had to survive in a world dominated by giant lizards (dinosaurs). "Their brains certainly had to be effective in identifying reptiles in the world around them," says Swedish psychologist Arne
NOTE: This news story, previously published on our old site, will have any links...
Racism Part of Evolution
Wednesday, December 12, 2001
A new study finds that racism is a product of human evolution, although it is not programmed into the brain. This means that prejudice towards people of other races can be changed.
The research suggests that the tendency to notice someone?s skin color emerged for one reason: to detect shifting coalitions and alliances. Visual cues let...
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