Evolution

Earth is  hundreds of billions of year old and a set of plants and animals are found in different periods . Man is the latest creation of nature or God or some supernatural or natural power which remians to be defined. In every continent where ever man arose first time and started to learn to use fire there was some kind of imagination of God . God of air , God of water, God of fire, even God for life , God for death Indian mythological theories even assume 33 koti or 330 million Gods ? (Perhaps that might be population of human kind on the earth at that time). Religion came next to…

Blindsnakes are one of the few groups of organisms that inhabited Madagascar when it broke from India about 100 million years ago, and continental drift had a profound impact on how the animals evolved, says a new study published in Biology Letters. Called scolecophidians, the creatures comprise about 260 different species and form the largest group of the world's worm-like snakes. These burrowing animals typically are found in southern continents and tropical islands, but occur on all continents except Antarctica. They have reduced vision -- which is why they are called "blind" -- and they…

What does it mean to be human? In the six million years or so since our ancestors first stood upright, we still don't have the perfect answer. In an effort to help the public appreciate our own unique development as human beings and explore the question for themselves, the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History opened the David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins. The exhibit hall "offers visitors an immersive, interactive journey through 6 million years of scientific evidence for human origins and the stories of survival and extinction in our family tree during times of dramatic…

Following on just 6 months after the last 'new hominid' ...... http://www.science20.com/chatter_box/blog/new_hominid_discovered_anoiapi... 1 ....another discovery, this time in Siberia, of a previously unknown relative. DNA samples suggest that a group of unknown hominids ventured out of Africa less than a million years ago. “It was a shock to find DNA from a new type of ancestor that has not been on our radar screens,” says geneticist Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. These enigmatic hominids left Africa in a previously…

This should be a good read:Understanding Climate's Influence on Human Evolution The hominin fossil record documents a history of critical evolutionary events that have ultimately shaped and defined what it means to be human, including the origins of bipedalism; the emergence of our genus Homo; the first use of stone tools; increases in brain size; and the emergence of Homo sapiens, tools, and culture. The Earth's geological record suggests that some evolutionary events were coincident with substantial changes in African and Eurasian climate, raising the possibility that critical junctures in…

Dogs likely originated in the Middle East, according to a new genetic analysis published this week in Nature. The study reports genetic data from more than 900 dogs from 85 breeds and more than 200 wild gray wolves (the ancestor of domestic dogs) worldwide, including populations from North America, Europe, the Middle East and East Asia. Researchers used molecular genetic techniques to analyze more than 48,000 genetic markers. The data include samples from Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iran — but they have not pinpointed a specific location in the Middle East where dogs originated. "Dogs seem to…

Hi, my name is Tree (strange name but it grows on yah, please don't cut me down.)This is my blog on scientificblogging.com where the title for the index page is: Scientific Blogging | The world's best scientists. The internet's smartest readers. Science 2.0Doing my part to be the part of the last part.yet also wishing, as not a teacher but as among fellow student, to contribute if I can, and I do try. So I seek rather than to state facts, ask good questions, even if I am trying to state a fact.... Cause for giving personal background, is to aid in understanding the path taken, and those…

A study of blind scorpions published in Cladistics is challenging the long-held assumption that specialized adaptations are irreversible, evolutionary dead-ends. According to the new phylogenetic analysis of the family Typhlochactidae, scorpions currently living closer to the surface (under stones and in leaf litter) evolved independently on more than one occasion from ancestors adapted to life further below the surface (in caves). Scorpions are predatory, venomous, nocturnal arachnids that are related to spiders, mites, and other arthropods. About 2,000 species are distributed throughout…

I seem to have developed a reputation for hating networks, but really, it's just tough love. Complex, adaptive, self-organizing networks are fascinating (and inspired the title of this blog), and they deserve a rigorous scientific treatment. Decentralized control mechanisms are incredible, and, although they're all around us, they go completely against our instincts for good, hierarchical design for control systems. How does a cell adapt to environmental signals, in the absence of a brain or CPU? And how do we make our own, human-built networks as self-adaptive and robust as biological ones?…

Check out the Super Star Edition at Mauka to Makai, which, this month, is almost as exciting as watching Shaun White and Apolo Ohno. There are a bunch of posts commemorating Darwin's birthday, which note his obsession with Barnacles, his efforts to decide between getting married and getting a dog, and how he was lampooned by Victorian cartoonists. Read about shark evolution, smart crows, Archbishop Desmond Tutu's genome, teaching evolution and more. With each issue of the Carnival of Evolution, I discover great blogs I've missed or forgotten about. Go check it out. Read the feed: