Evolution
Pharyngula
Category archives for Evolution
This is why I could never be an anthropologist
Posted by PZ Myers on July 19, 2012 Somedays, it’s just awful to have the mind of a 12 year old boy. So I’m reading this serious and interesting paper on Neandertals, and learn something new. Two particular characteristics have received considerable attention; pronounced humeral diaphysis strength asymmetry and anteroposteriorly strengthened humeral diaphyseal shape. In particular, humeral bilateral asymmetry for cross-sectional area, and…
Brains and beaks
Posted by PZ Myers on July 13, 2012 I’m always telling people you need to understand development to understand the evolution of form, because development is what evolution modifies to create change. For example, there are two processes most people have heard of. One is paedomorphosis, the retention of juvenile traits into adulthood — a small face and large cranium are features of…
Swimming in the Cambrian
Posted by PZ Myers on July 11, 2012 If you ever get a chance, spend some time looking at fish muscles in a microscope. Larval zebrafish are perfect; they’re transparent and you can trace all the fibers, so you can see everything. The body musculature of fish is most elegantly organized into repeating blocks of muscle along the length of the animal, each…
The latest Carnival of Evolution is online at Mousetrap.
The curse of the gingers
Posted by PZ Myers on June 24, 2012 Red hair. Freckles. Pale skin. Soulless. What good are they? Seriously — I have a red-haired son and brother and cousins, and you’ve got to wonder why evolution has spawned all these strange color variants — there’s no known advantage to ginger-ness, and plenty of disadvantages. The biochemical cause of these differences are known. Pigmentation…
I may have to steal this talk
Posted by PZ Myers on June 20, 2012 I’ve been working up a science talk for the fall — I am going to do a basic review of many the mechanisms other than selection that contribute to evolution for lay audiences. And then I discover that T. Ryan Gregory has already done some of the work for me. Maybe I should just plagiarize…
Pinker explains Group Selection
Posted by PZ Myers on June 18, 2012 I found this very satisfying: Steven Pinker summarizes all the problems with group selection. It’s a substantial essay, but if you just want the gist of it, here’s the conclusion. The idea of Group Selection has a superficial appeal because humans are indisputably adapted to group living and because some groups are indisputably larger, longer-lived,…
Carnival of Evolution #48: The Icelandic Saga!
Posted by PZ Myers on June 6, 2012 At last! Here is the much delayed Carnival of Evolution 48! I must begin by apologizing for my tardiness, especially since John Wilkins managed to post the last one on time. I was traveling in the 2½ weeks preceding the deadline for CoE, and the combination of spotty internet access, extreme jetlag (British Columbia to…
The reports of dinosaurs dying of farts are greatly exaggerated
Posted by PZ Myers on May 7, 2012 No, dinosaurs did not fart themselves to death. This is what happens when you get your information from Fox News. Dinosaurs may have farted themselves to extinction, according to a new study from British scientists. The researchers calculated that the prehistoric beasts pumped out more than 520 million tons (472 million tonnes) of methane a…
How was the vertebrate/arthropod LCA segmented?
Posted by PZ Myers on May 7, 2012 Vertebrates are modified segmented worms; that is, their body plan is made up of sequentially repeated units, most apparent in skeletal structures like the vertebrae. Arthropods are also modified segmented worms. Look at a larval fly, for instance, and you can see they are made up of rings stacked together. So here’s a simple and…