Evolution

Whither The Celts? In the 1980s there was a terrific British documentary called simply "The Celts", made because of ongoing fascination by entitled western elites with indigenous people and perhaps the lingering hope/fear that maybe they were somehow better than the winners. The Celts were a blanket name for a lot of people who were just The Other to Romans, any number of tribes that the Romans ascribed names to based on region.  They were basically a kind of "dark matter" for ancient authors, who didn't know what they were or how to figure them out, but knew they have to have existed…

DNA - inheritance - is more important than the color of your eyes or your hair, it can also influence whether you might develop certain diseases, like cystic fibrosis or hemophilia. Evolution - survival of the fittest - may seem like the great biological equalizer but mankind has clearly conquered it, since all kinds of people who might have died in the past due to foodborne diseases or tainted water or diseases no longer do. Yet evolution has long been shaped by man rather than the other way around. A new study finds a dramatic decline in genetic diversity in male lineages 4,000 to 8,000…

We have tens or hundreds of active 'foreign' genes, according to a new paper, and that may merit a rethink of how we discuss evolution, say the authors. The reason is horizontal gene transfer, the transfer of genes between organisms living in the same environment. It is well known in single-celled organisms and thought to be an important process that explains how quickly bacteria evolve, for example, resistance to antibiotics, and it is  thought to play an important role in the evolution of nematode worms, which have acquired genes from microorganisms and plants, and some…

The origin of life remains a mystery with more questions than answers. How were molecules created? How did they assemble into large structures? Among the conundrums, the "homochirality" phenomenon upon which amino acids and sugars form is particularly fascinating.   The single-handedness of biological molecules has fascinated scientists since Pasteur first separated the enantiomorphic crystals of a tartrate salt more than 150 years ago because the homochirality of biological molecules is a signature of life. Now, University of Akron Professor of Polymer Science Tianbo Liu say he has…

Most female animals die around the same time they stop reproducing, only humans and two types of whale continue to live for many years after giving birth to their last baby.  But why?  Menopause is one of nature's greatest mysteries.   A new study says that female killer whales survive after menopause because they help their family members find food during hard times, though that could be more like keeping busy and staying relevant than being an evolutionary mandate.  The team used information collected over the last 35 years and made observations on a total of 102…

High up in the high Andes mountains of Argentina, a population has adapted to tolerate the toxic chemical arsenic.  For thousands of years, in some regions of the Andes, people have been exposed to high levels of it, because arsenic in volcanic bedrock is released into the groundwater. How could this population adapt to tolerate arsenic, a potent killer of such ill repute that it's often the overused plot-driver of many murder mysteries?  In a new study published in the advanced online edition of Molecular Biology and Evolution, a Swedish research team led by Karolinska Institutet…

A partial human skull found in northern Israel  excited paleontologists because it seemed to hold clues about when and where humans and Neanderthals might have interbred. The Manot Cave is a natural limestone formation that had been sealed for 15,000 years. It was discovered by a bulldozer clearing the land for development and the partial skull, sitting on a ledge, was found by spelunkers exploring the newly-opened cave. Five excavation seasons uncovered a rich deposit, with stone tools and stratified occupation levels covering a period of time from 55,000 to 27,000 years ago.…

One day something will outgrow the blue whale – but it won't be another whale. EPA When life on Earth began around 3.6 billion years ago, all organisms were small. Indeed, it took some 2.5 billion years to evolve any organism that grows larger than a single cell. Since then, things have accelerated a bit and – along with the great diversification of body forms – animals have tended to get bigger. Indeed, the largest animal ever to live, the blue whale, is still very much with us, and has been swimming the world’s oceans for only a couple of million years – a mere blink of the eye in the long…

Caring for offspring is unequal between the sexes in many animal species and a new study suggests evolution is the culprit. Making babies is one of the fundamental conflicts of interest between the sexes. Care by either partner is beneficial to both partners as it increases the health and survival prospects of the common young, while providing care is costly only to the caring individual. As a result, each partner does best in a situation where most of the care is provided by the other partner--an outcome that is clearly impossible. Small initial differences which predispose one sex to…

Panspermia Did life evolve on Earth, or did it arrive from space? This article was prompted by articles in the U.K. Daily Mail and Daily Mirror.  There is nothing new in these news reports: Milton Wainwright has been writing about this titanium sphere for some years. Did aliens send this metal orb to seed life on Earth? Riddle of microscopic sphere found 16 miles up, oozing slime which may contain microorganisms. Dr Milton Wainwright from the University of Sheffield used balloons to collect samples of dust and particles 16 miles up in the Earth's atmosphere In one sample he found a tiny…