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Category: Paleontology
The evolutionary history of mammals can be reviewed as the evolutionary history of tooth loss. The early mammals had many teeth, and every now and then in evolutionary time, a tooth is lost wiht subsequent species arriving from that n-1 toothed form having that smaller...
Posted by Greg Laden at 4:10 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Natural Selection
Natural Selection is the key creative force in evolution. Natural selection, together with specific histories of populations (species) and adaptations, is responsible for the design of organisms. Most people have some idea of what Natural Selection is. However, it is easy to make conceptual errors...
Posted by Greg Laden at 5:09 PM • 28 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Falsehoods
In my initial s.php">list of Falsehoods, I included these two closely related items: Evolution has stopped for humans; and Serious scientists often entertain the question: "Has evolution stopped for humans?" I'll make the distinction between them clear eventually. For now, let's focus on the first:...
Posted by Greg Laden at 11:55 AM • 34 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Genetics
Mendel was born on July 20th, 1822. He is famous for his discovery of peas and genetics. Here is his stuff translated into English....
Posted by Greg Laden at 8:43 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Anthropology
I've noticed that Scienceblogs.com has been running ads for hot Russian mail order brides. These ads are rather funny ...
Posted by Greg Laden at 12:01 AM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Natural Selection
In an BBC article describing a Royal Society paper on the rate of mutation in warm vs. cooler climates, the BBC made this statement: DNA can mutate and change imperceptibly every time a cell divides and makes a copy of itself. But when one of...
Posted by Greg Laden at 12:58 PM • 29 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Genetics
Junk DNA is like bigfoot. If a zoologist says something like "Hmmm... it would be cool to find bigfoot" all the other zoologists jump on him or her, drag the poor sap into the alleyway, toss on a blanket, and beat the scientist with rubber...
Posted by Greg Laden at 8:36 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Anthropology
I first became acquainted with the Romanovs (as historical figures, not the actual Romanovs) reading in middle school about Russian History. Later, someone turned me on to Massie's Nicholas and Alexandra, which is quite a well known popular historical account of the last Czar of...
Posted by Greg Laden at 8:00 PM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Evolutionary Biology
Why is there "junk DNA"? What is Junk DNA? What is a Pseudogene? What is Gene Duplication? Goodness, you certainly do have a lot of questions. And some of them can be answered, or at least addressed, on examination of a very interesting new paper...
Posted by Greg Laden at 7:28 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Anthropology
I recently posted about the work by Pagel and colleagues regarding ancient lexicons. That work, recently revived in the press for whatever reasons such things happen, is the same project reported a while back in Nature. And, as I recall, I read that paper and...
Posted by Greg Laden at 2:58 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
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