In last week’s column I described how Bill Irvine uses radio astronomy techniques to detect and identify organic compounds in interstellar space. Why is it so important for the origin of life on…

I recently came across a radio lecture given by Dr Lee Alan Dugatkin on 7.6.2007, titled "Is Goodness Natural?" It deserves comment. (An article on the same subject but with some differences in text…

Researchers writing in Nature magazine say the fossil skeleton of a newly discovered carnivorous animal, Puijila darwini, is a "missing link" in the evolution of the group that today includes seals,…

The fossil record usually shows what adult animals looked like. But the appearance and lifestyle of juvenile animals often differ dramatically from those of the adults. A classic example is provided…

New evidence gleaned from CT scans of fossils locked inside rocks may flip the order in which two kinds of four-limbed animals with backbones were known to have moved from fish to landlubber. Both…

Human alcoholic tendencies go way back, as described in one of the most interesting paragraphs I've ever read in a scientific paper: In the warm tropical climate of sub-Saharan Africa, where the…

    Last week I described how Fred Hoyle, in 1946,  came up with the idea that carbon is synthesized in hot stars toward the end of their lifetime, and we now know that carbon and…

Neanderthals, a distinct Middle Pleistocene population, inhabited a vast geographical area extending from Europe to western Asia and the Middle East from 30,000 to 100,000 years ago. Were they a…

A fierce debate is in progress. Human slaughter or natural demise.... Giant beavers, oversized ground sloths, and huge armadillo-like creatures all disappeared within a couple of thousand years — a…

In works on evolution written by a certain class of biologist we can often see “for the good of the species” references derided in no uncertain terms. Comments such as “fuzzy thinking”, “they got it…