Evolution

From Mindy Weisberger at LiveScience: Captured in a dramatic photo shared yesterday (Feb. 1) to Imgur, a grim scene hints at a violent battle to the death between two giant snakes, identified in the caption as a reticulated python (Python reticulatus) and a king cobra (Ophiophagus hannah), both native to Southeast Asia and among the biggest snakes in the world. Both are formidable serpents. The reticulated python is the longest and heaviest snake on Earth, reaching 23 feet (7 meters) in length and weighing as much as 165 lbs. (75 kilograms), and wielding considerable constricting power. Meanwhile, the king cobra can measure about 18 feet (5.5 m) long and weigh up to 20 lbs. (9 kg), and has a bite Read More ›

From Rafi Letzter at LiveScience: According to two papers published in the journal Cell in January, long ago, a virus bound its genetic code to the genome of four-limbed animals. That snippet of code is still very much alive in humans’ brains today, where it does the very viral task of packaging up genetic information and sending it from nerve cells to their neighbors in little capsules that look a whole lot like viruses themselves. And these little packages of information might be critical elements of how nerves communicate and reorganize over time — tasks thought to be necessary for higher-order thinking, the researchers said. Though it may sound surprising that bits of human genetic code come from viruses, it’s Read More ›

Not your high school science teacher’s evolution. From Genome Web: A Dutch-led team of researchers examined blood samples obtained from individuals whose mothers were pregnant with them during the Dutch Hunger Winter of 1944 to 1945, toward the end of World War II, and from their siblings who were born either before the six-month famine or after, as they report in Science Advances. This cohort of individuals whose mothers were pregnant during the famine has been shown to have higher rates of obesity, dyslipidemia, diabetes, and schizophrenia, the researchers note. More. Carl Zimmer reports at New York Times: “How on earth can your body remember the environment it was exposed to in the womb — and remember that decades later?” Read More ›

Responding to animal behaviorist Kevin Laland’s recent piece at Aeon, Evolution unleashed: Is evolutionary science due for a major overhaul – or is talk of ‘revolution’ misguided? At Oscillations, Mazur writes, In the unconvincing Aeon article, “Evolution unleashed,” Laland asks the question: “If the extended evolutionary synthesis is not a call for a revolution in evolution, then what is it, and why do we need it? Good point. To answer Laland’s question—We don’t need it. We don’t need a graft onto Darwinism and neo-Darwinism. What we do need is a coherent evolutionary theory, untainted by mystical influences and non-transparent funding. An evolutionary theory that reflects the world of microbes and viruses that all animals, plants and fungi live in and Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: While it is largely believed that horses simply evolved with fewer digits, researchers pose a new theory that suggests remnants of all five toes are still present within the hooves of the horse. For the first time, as published in the January 24 issue of Royal Society Open Science, NYITCOM researcher, Nikos Solounias, Ph.D., paleontologist and anatomy professor, and a team of researchers propose that the reduction in the number of digits is not a matter of simple attrition; instead, they believe that all five digits have merged to form the compacted forelimbs with hooves that we know today. Currently, scientists accept that splints, small bones found along the outer sides of the metacarpal in modern horses, are Read More ›

From Tyler O’Neil at PJ Media, on a new book, Four Views on Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design (J. B.Stump, ed), Opponents of intelligent design (ID) usually dismiss the theory as unscientific, an attempt at smuggling religion into science through a back door. They slam it as a “god of the gaps” argument — inserting God into questions where science has not yet found a persuasive answer. In a new book, former geophysicist and author Stephen C. Meyer, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, explained why intelligent design is not a “god of the gaps” argument, but a viable scientific theory. “The theory of intelligent design, unlike creationism, is not based upon the Bible,” Meyer wrote in Four Views Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Paleontologists at the University of Toronto (U of T) and the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto have entirely revisited a tiny yet exceptionally fierce ancient sea creature called Habelia optata that has confounded scientists since it was first discovered more than a century ago. In those days, we had it all sewn up except for a few outliers. Then… The researchers argue that this difference in anatomy allowed Habelia to evolve an especially complex head that makes this fossil species even more peculiar compared to known chelicerates. The head of Habelia contained a series of five appendages made of a large plate with teeth for mastication, a leg-like branch with stiff bristle-like spines for grasping, and an Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: Researchers at the Royal Ontario Museum and the University of Toronto have described an exceptionally well-preserved new fossil species of bristle worm called Kootenayscolex barbarensis. Discovered from the 508-million-year-old Marble Canyon fossil site in the Burgess Shale in Kootenay National Park, British Columbia, the new species helps rewrite our understanding of the origin of the head in annelids, a highly diverse group of animals which includes today’s leeches and earthworms. This research was published today in the journal Current Biology in the article “A New Burgess Shale Polychaete and the Origin of the Annelid Head Revisited.” … One key feature of the new Burgess Shale worm Kootenayscolex barbarensis is the presence of hair-sized bristles called chaetae on the Read More ›

From ScienceDaily: The team studied the transparent roundworm (C. elegans), which shares about 60-80% of the same genes as humans, to shed light on the importance of mechanisms regulating the frequency of gene mutations in different cells and organs. “C. elegans and humans share very similar mitochondria, and it is a useful organism as we can genetically tease apart the mechanisms of what is happening at a cellular level,” he said. The researchers developed an exceptionally pure method of isolating mitochondria from specific cells in the body to study them in detail. “We now suspect that there is a mechanism in all animals that can filter out these mutations before they are passed to future offspring, which could otherwise cause Read More ›

From molecular biologist Jonathan Wells at Salvo: In 2005, Douglas Futuyma published a textbook about evolution claiming that “no intelligent engineer would be expected to design” the “functionally nonsensical arrangement” of cells in the human retina. That same year, geneticist Jerry Coyne wrote that the human eye is “certainly not the sort of eye an engineer would create from scratch.” Instead, “the whole system is like a car in which all the wires to the dashboard hang inside the driver’s compartment instead of being tucked safely out of sight.” Like Dawkins, Williams, Miller, and Futuyma, Coyne attributed this arrangement to unguided evolution, which “yields fitter types that often have flaws. These flaws violate reasonable principles of intelligent design.” We can be Read More ›

Extinct species’ DNA suggests so, according to researchers. From Ewen Callaway at Nature: Scientists had assumed from fossil evidence that an ancient predecessor called the straight-tusked elephant (Paleoloxodon antiquus), which lived in European forests until around 100,000 years ago, was a close relative of Asian elephants. In fact, this ancient species is most closely related to African forest elephants, a genetic analysis now reveals. Even more surprising, living forest elephants in the Congo Basin are closer kin to the extinct species than they are to today’s African savannah-dwellers. And, together with newly announced genomes from ancient mammoths, the analysis also reveals that many different elephant and mammoth species interbred in the past. More. Speciation ain’t what it used to be. Read More ›

From Pallava Bagla/Debjani Chatterjee at NDTV: Junior Education minister Satyapal Singh stands by his statement questioning Charles Darwin’s theory, says “I am a man of science”. The scientific community has called it “polarising” and an “insult to scientific community” “Darwin’s theory is being challenged the world over. Darwinism is a myth,” Mr Singh told NDTV.” If I’m making a statement I can’t make it without a basis… I am a man of science, I’m not coming from Arts background… I have completed my PhD in Chemistry from Delhi University,” he said. Here the story gets a bit messy because Mr. Singh accuses the Darwinians of claiming that apes morphed into humans, which is not exactly what they say. Mr Gadagkar, Read More ›

From Lorna Siggins at the Irish Times: Though this species of brittle star (which are closely related to starfish) first developed nearly half a billion years ago, its modern day descendants are remarkably similar.  … According to Doyle, this brittle star is incredibly resilient — it was around during the Silurian period, when the first land plants evolved. More. Well, everything new is old again, right? And when we are talking about evolution, that matters. See also: “Confounding”: Moths and butterflies predate flowering plants by millions of years and Stasis: Life goes on but evolution does not happen

Devolution means that a life form jettisons valuable qualities just to survive, often by becoming  parasite or “freeloader” (see below). From Nancy Pearcey at CNS: King’s vision of equal rights is no longer “self-evident” to many of America’s opinion makers in media, politics, and academia. Why not? Because they have embraced secular ideologies that sabotage King’s ideal. Listen in on some of the thinkers who are busy destroying King’s vision of inalienable rights. In a UNESCO lecture, the atheist philosopher Richard Rorty observed that throughout history, societies have excluded certain groups from the human family—those belonging to a different tribe, class, race, or religion. Historically, Rorty noted, it was Christianity that gave rise to the concept of universal rights, derived from Read More ›

By evolutionary biologist Kevin Laland, who seems to have adopted that role: Evolution unleashed: Is evolutionary science due for a major overhaul – or is talk of ‘revolution’ misguided? If you are not a biologist, you’d be forgiven for being confused about the state of evolutionary science. Modern evolutionary biology dates back to a synthesis that emerged around the 1940s-60s, which married Charles Darwin’s mechanism of natural selection with Gregor Mendel’s discoveries of how genes are inherited. The traditional, and still dominant, view is that adaptations – from the human brain to the peacock’s tail – are fully and satisfactorily explained by the natural selection (and subsequent inheritance). Yet as novel ideas flood in from genomics, epigenetics and developmental biology, Read More ›