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 a great relief if this type of evolution would happen to the many birds that are killed by wind turbines every year.
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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, higher forms of life suddenly arrived: arthropods, brachiopods, coelenterates, echinoderms, mollusks and even chordates, the animal group from which vertebrates like us developed. Each of these evolutionary changes can be coordinated with a period in which the amount of oxygen in the ocean rose. Each of these oxidation events corresponds with an increase in the size, complexity and diversity of life, both plant and animal.
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If you don’t like vegetables, you may be missing out on nutrition, especially if you’re dieting. You could even be part Neanderthal!
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Why wait in line for an organ transplant when you can grow your own? Or if you don’t like your nose, forget plastic surgery–grow a new one. These amazing abilities–once part of science fiction–are now on the way.
A laboratory made a bladder in 1996, and there have been five windpipe replacements so far. One researcher transplanted lab-grown tear ducts and an artery into some of his patients. He has created an artificial nose that he plans to transplant onto a man who lost his own nose due to skin cancer.
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