Evolution

Two anti-evolution bills pending in the Louisiana Legislature would "unleash an assault against scientific integrity, leaving students confused about science and unprepared to excel in a modern workforce," AAAS CEO Alan I. Leshner wrote in a letter to the New Orleans Times-Picayune

A home in the Louisiana bayou: Photo by Brit (CC)

The letter, published Tuesday 6 May, warns that Louisiana is already facing considerable economic and education challenges, with employers are struggling to fill science and tech jobs and 53% of state eighth-graders scoring below basic competence on the most recent national science tests.    » read more »

27 September 2007 -- An international team of scientists has unlocked the genetic blueprint of hair samples from ancient woolly mammoths found in Siberia. The researchers say the DNA will give them valuable information about the evolution of elephants and possibly other prehistoric animals.

Scientists mapped the entire DNA sequence from the hair shafts of 13 Siberian woolly mammoths.

The mammoths roamed the earth 30,000 to 60,000 years ago and are the common, prehistoric ancestor of the African and Indian elephants.    » read more »

Aug 4, 2007 -- Several genes with strong associations to schizophrenia have evolved rapidly due to selection during human evolution, according to new research in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B (Wednesday, 5 September 2007).

Researchers found a higher prevalence of the influence of so-called positive selection on genes or gene regions known to be associated with the disorder than a comparable control set of non-associated genes, functioning in similar neuronal processes.    » read more »

28 August 2007 -- The fossilized bones of a female hominid creature found in Ethiopia in 1974 and today known around the world as Lucy are now in the United States on an unprecedented tour. The bones are part of a larger exhibit on Ethiopia, as both the birthplace of humankind and as a cradle of early civilization, that is set to open at Houston's Museum of Natural Science on Friday. But Lucy's tour outside Ethiopia has generated some controversy.    » read more »

08 August 2007 -- Scientists say two new skulls unearthed in Kenya challenge the conventional view of human evolution. Instead of one human species evolving in succession after the other over the past two million years, the fossils reveal that two species at the dawn of human development evolved side by side. Scientists also say one fossil suggests that our nearest human ancestor may have been more primitive than previously thought.

According to the theory of evolution, there was a straight line in the development from our prehistoric ancestors to modern humans.    » read more »

31 May 2007 -- Scientists say early human ancestors may have begun walking on two legs on tree branches, not on the ground as commonly believed. The evidence contradicts the long-held belief that early humans first began walking upright on the ground. VOA's Jessica Berman reports.

The defining feature of human evolution is bipedalism which means walking on two legs.

Known as the Savannah hypothesis, paleontologists have long believed that bipedalism began after knuckle-walking primates, primates walking on all fours, descended from trees to the ground.    » read more »

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Put a human and a chimpanzee side by side, and it seems obvious which lineage has changed the most since the two diverged from a common ancestor millions of years ago. Such apparent physical differences, along with human speech, language and brainpower, have led many people to believe that natural selection has acted in a positive manner on more genes in humans than in chimps.

But new research at the University of Michigan challenges that human-centered view.    » read more »