“It is demonstrable,” said he, “that things cannot be otherwise than as they are; for as all things have been created for some end, they must necessarily be created for the best end. Observe, for…

A recent article titled ‘Protective buttressing of the human fist and the evolution of human hands’ rests on the assumption that human evolution has been characterised by competition for mates,…

This past May, I was fortunate enough to take part in a conference in Venice, Italy, which was a retrospective on the legacy of famous paleontologist and author Stephen Jay Gould 10 years after his…

Neil Shubin alert: Researchers have found evidence that the development of hands and feet occurred through the gain of new DNA elements that activate particular genes - and they used a zebrafish…

Human hands and their remarkable dexterity have given us everything from the guitar of Segovia to the art of the Dutch masters but, says David Carrier from the University of Utah, they evolved to be…

Bacteria have lived for millions of years in our planet where, with an impressive capability to adapt, they now colonize virtually every environment, including us. But as tiny one-cell organisms they…

From an evolutionary standpoint, homosexuality is a trait that should not develop and persist in the face of natural selection. Yet it exists in most cultures, among men and women. Analyses have…

Neuroscientists think they have some insight for evolutionary biologists into how humans, and other mammals, have evolved to have intelligence. They say they have identified the moment in history…

What happens when the modern evolutionary theory of punctuated equilibrium collides with the older theory of mosaic evolution? That's the issue addressed by paleobiologists Melanie J Hopkins at the…

Genetic blending between Europeans and Asians occurred over 2,000 years ago in the Altai region of Mongolia, according to a new analysis.  The remains of ancient Scythian warriors indicate that…