The evolution of the human brain is the topic of a lot of research. This shouldn’t be surprising since it is so well-developed in human beings, and, as many believe, it is one of the main traits that…

Global warming is bad but at least we have a chance to control it.  Simple life hundreds of millions of years ago had to just go with the flow so when global glaciation put a chill on things…

A particular kind of sugar molecule had a big impact on human evolution and may have directed the evolutionary emergence of our ancestors, according to a new study in  Proceedings of the…

Cooperation has been/still is a major factor in the success of the human species, and in many others as well. Altruism and fairness are thought to play an important role in the development of…

Today's post in honor of the 2011 Cephalopod Awareness Days. October 9th is Nautilus Night.500 million years ago, at the time of the Cambrian Explosion, there was no life on land. The ocean…

This TED video of Christoph Adami is about life, and how to look for it. He begins by talking about the apparent difficulty in defining life (click here for a post about inorganic life) (funny that…

Males of many species guard the females they have mated with, a behavior generally interpreted as a tactic to reduce the likelihood that rival males will mate with the female. This, of course, can…

In which context did life arise? A problem yet unsolved. Several plausible ideas and hypotheses have been put forward: shallow seas, meteorites (see DNA, Made In Space?), and even much more extreme…

I didn't need to be persuaded that evolution happened. In fact, upon finding out in my teens that there were people that rejected it, I can say that my reaction was one of utter confusion. Why on…

A new study in Nature shows that genetic parasites invaded the mammalian genome more than 100 million years ago and dramatically changed the way mammals reproduce. The molecular changes allowed…