evolution
emjohnson | July 8, 2009
Offspring Abandonment in the Ancient and Natural World
In the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex the great kingdom of Thebes is condemned following a case of mistaken identity (and a little patricide). The sordid tale begins when the infant prince is abandoned by his parents (see right) after learning of a prophecy that his son will one day murder his father, marry his mother and assume the throne. His ankles pierced with a spike, young Oedipus is sent to be abandoned atop mount Cithaeron. While this tale sets up a beautiful tragedy it also hints at a common reality in both the ancient and…
laelaps | July 8, 2009
A beautiful artistic reconstruction of Indohyus by Carl Buell.
During the last 30 years paleontologists have uncovered a startling amount of fossil evidence which has illuminated the early evolution of whales. The earliest members of the cetacea looked nothing like the marine mammals we are familiar with today, and in December of 2007 a paper in Nature identified a small hoofed mammal called Indohyus as one of the closest relatives to the earliest whales. This hypothesis was supported by a subsequent study published a few months ago in the same journal.
One of the most interesting aspects…
ejohnson | July 7, 2009
Human nature is often cited as an explanation for behavior—not a result. But as Eric Michael Johnson of The Primate Diaries explains, human nature is as much a product of individual actions as it is a driving force. And knowing how social structures arise out of individual patterns of behavior may help us adapt to changing environments, particularly in the face of climate change. Eric is hopeful that evidence of resource-sharing behavior in other species can provide insight and direction to our own: "It's somewhat reassuring to know that, while our individual actions will continue to be…
laelaps | July 7, 2009
Parts of the skull, including the upper jaws (maxillae), of Eritherium azzouzorum as seen from the front (top) and below (bottom). From Gheerbrant (2009).
Yesterday I blogged about the ~27 million year old elephantimorph Eritreum, a creature that stood only about four feet high at the shoulder, but there were once even smaller proboscideans. About sixty million years ago in what is now Morocco there lived a rabbit-sized (~5 kg) hoofed mammal that is one of the earliest known relatives of the modern behemoths of Africa and Asia. Called Eritherium azzouzorum, it was a small mammal that…
cevans | July 6, 2009
One of Buckminster Fuller's most interesting conceits was his dislike of specialization, which he likened to a kind of intellectual prison, restraining "bright" people from truly understanding the complex, and general, systems of which they were a part. After all, he argued, what causes extinction in the animal kingdom? Overspecialization. Of course, it's logical, and it's s problem we see over and over again in human history, from the Industrial Revolution displacing specialized factory workers to the often daunting gap of comprehension between the social and "hard" sciences. As soon as we…
laelaps | July 6, 2009
A restoration of Eritreum compared to the larger Gomphotherium. From Shoshani et al. (2009).
Before I loved dinosaurs, I loved elephants. I would run around the backyard with my little pith helmet on, firing my "elephant mover" to herd the imaginary pachyderms. (At the time I did not understand what guns did. When they went off in the documentaries I saw that the elephants moved, therefore guns were "elephant movers.") It would only be much later, when I could properly appreciate the stout bones I saw in the halls of the American Museum of Natural History, that I would more fully…
grrlscientist | July 5, 2009tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"How does one distinguish a truly civilized nation from an aggregation of
barbarians? That is easy. A civilized country produces much good bird
literature."
--Edgar Kincaid
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited by me and published here for your information and…
laelaps | July 3, 2009
On the 31st of May, 1984, the late evolutionary theorist John Maynard Smith appraised the field of paleontology in the journal Nature. The report was a critical summary of a series of lectures Stephen Jay Gould had given at Cambridge, and Gould considered it "the kindest and most supportive critical commentary I have ever received." Smith wrote;
The attitude of population geneticists to any palaeontologist rash enough to offer a contribution to evolutionary theory has been to tell him to go away and find another fossil, and not to bother the grownups.
In the last ten years, however, this…
neurophilosophy | July 3, 2009THE human brain is a true marvel of nature. This jelly-like 1.5kg mass inside our skulls, containing hundreds of billions of cells which between them form something like a quadrillion connections, is responsible for our every action, emotion and thought.
How did this remarkable and extraordinarily complex structure evolve? This question poses a huge challenge to researchers; brain evolution surely involved thousands of discrete, incremental steps, which occurred in the mists of deep time across hundreds of millions of years, and which we are unlikely to ever fully understand.
Nevertheless,…
edyong | July 2, 2009The island of Hirta, on the western coast of Scotland, is home to a special breed of sheep. Soay sheep, named after a neighbouring island, are the most primitive breed of domestic sheep and have lived on the isles of St Kilda for at least a millennium. They're generally smaller than the average domesticated sheep, and that difference is getting larger and larger. Over the last 20 years, the Soay sheep have started to shrink.
They are becoming gradually lighter at all ages such that today's lambs and adults weigh around 3kg less than those from 1986. Their hind legs have also shortened to a…
pharyngula | July 1, 2009This talk has me a little concerned: it's proposing something rather radical, for which Arber is going to have to show me some unambiguous evidence to convince me, and I'm coming into it with a very skeptical mindset. Here's the relevant portion of his abstract:
The theory of molecular evolution that we also call "Molecular Darwinism" is based on the acquired knowledge on genetic variation. In genetic variation, products of evolution genes are involved as variation generators and/or as modulators of the rates of genetic variation. These evolution gene products act together with several non-…
jrosenhouse | July 1, 2009Thursday morning started bright and early, since the first talk was at eight. It goes against my grain to be out of bed at that hour, but sometimes in life you just have to make sacrifices.
I was at the big meeting room by 7:45. Got to schmooze with some of the big shots, like Genie Scott and Ken Miller:
Keith Miller (no relation to Ken), a geologist at Kansas State University was there. I met him a few times during my post-doc at K-State, so it was nice to see him again. My fellow Panda's Thumbers Richard Hoppe and Art Hunt were there as well.
The morning's session was called, “…
gregladen | July 1, 2009Dear MSNBC,
I know it is appropriate to have a range of opinions among the talking heads representing a news agency, and MSNBC certainly does have a range. Pat Buchanan, regular commentator on two or three MSNBC news shows, probably serves at the most conservative individual in the MSNBC panoply.
But he has to go now.
This letter comes as a reaction to Buchanan's most recent column, which addresses Darwinian theory and evolution in an over the top intellectually dishonest, inaccurate, and offensive manner. I will not discuss the details of his absurd column; several of my colleagues on…
ejohnson | June 30, 2009This review was originally posted by Brian Switek on Laelaps
Since the early 20th century, at least, young earth creationists have attempted to blame Charles Darwin for genocide, world wars, and whatever political movements seemed most threatening at one time or another (i.e. communism). What Darwin is faulted with changes with the times, but most recently young earth creationists have focused on hot topics from Darwin's own era: racism and slavery. From the Answers in Genesis tract Darwin's Plantation to the upcoming (and unethically produced) documentary The Voyage That Shook the World,…
laelaps | June 30, 2009A few months ago I had the opportunity to sit down with a professional paleontologist and pick his brain about a few things. One of the questions that I most wanted to ask was about the changing nature of paleobiology. Molecular biology, genetics, evo-devo, and other disciplines appeared to have an increasing presence in discussions of ancient life, and I asked the paleontologist if students of paleontology should strive to receive training in these fields to further expand the scope of paleontology.
I could hardly have been more disappointed by the answer. The gist of his response was that…
jrosenhouse | June 29, 2009A few weeks ago I took notice of a looming book fight between Richard Dawkins' forthcoming The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution and Jerry Coyne's book Why Evolution is True.
I gave Round One to Dawkins on the grounds of having a better title. Now Round Two goes to ... Coyne!
His book has shown up on Newsweek's list of fifty books to read now. Quite an honor!
What's that you say? Not really a fair fight since Dawkins' book hasn't been published yet? Cry me a river. Timing is everything.
edyong | June 29, 2009The swine flu pandemic (S-OIV) currently sweeping the world is the result of an influenza H1N1 virus that made the leap from pigs to humans. But this jump is just the latest leg of a journey that has taken over 90 years and shows no signs of finishing.
Today's pandemic is a fourth-generation descendant of the 1918 flu virus that infected around a third of the world's population. This original virus is an incredible survivor and one that has spawned a huge legacy of daughter viruses. By importing and exporting its genes, it has contributed to several new strains that have been responsible for…
gregladen | June 28, 2009On this day in 1885, Thomas Henry Huxley died at the age of 70. He is most famous for his sideburns, but in addition he was also involved with the study of evolution and the defense of Darwinism.
He also invented the term Agnostic. Which he was.
T.H. Huxley, Darwin's Bulldog
emjohnson | June 28, 2009 Our newborn takes after his father.The following is something of an impromptu experiment in live birth twittering. It started out simply as a means to update friends and family, but as events transpired we received some unexpected international attention. The entire labor lasted 47 hours, involved three different locations and two surgeries. This after we had carefully planned for a natural birth with no interventions. Thank you to the hundreds of people in at least eight countries who followed our story and sent messages of support. Special thanks to Henry Gee, Senior Editor of…
grrlscientist | June 28, 2009tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"How does one distinguish a truly civilized nation from an aggregation of
barbarians? That is easy. A civilized country produces much good bird
literature."
--Edgar Kincaid
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited by me and published here for your information and…