Summaries | Headlines

Green Algae: The Nexus Of Plant-Animal Ancestry (October 12, 2007) -- Genes of a tiny, single-celled green alga called Chlamydomonas reinhardtii may contain scores more data about the common ancestry of plants and animals than the richest paleontological dig. ... > full story

A Gene Divided Reveals The Details Of Natural Selection (October 12, 2007) -- Scientists show how, over many generations, a single yeast gene divides in two and parses its responsibilities to be a more efficient denizen of its environment. The work illustrates, at the most ... > full story

Benefits Of 80 Million Years Without Sex (October 12, 2007) -- Scientists have discovered how a microscopic organism has benefited from nearly 80 million years without sex. Bdelloid rotifers are asexual organisms, meaning that they reproduce without males. ... > full story

Difference Between Fish And Humans: Century-old Developmental Question Answered (October 12, 2007) -- Embryologists have helped solve an evolutionary riddle that has been puzzling scientists for over a century. They have identified a key mechanism in the initial stages of an embryo's development that ... > full story

Early Apes Walked Upright 15 Million Years Earlier Than Previously Thought, Evolutionary Biologist Argues (October 10, 2007) -- An extraordinary advance in human origins research reveals evidence of the emergence of the upright human body plan over 15 million years earlier than most experts have believed. More dramatically, ... > full story

New Insights Into The Evolution Of The Human Genome (October 9, 2007) -- Researchers have created the first evolutionary history of the duplications in the human genome that are partly responsible for both disease and recent genetic innovations. This work marks a ... > full story

Ancient African Megadroughts May Have Driven Human Evolution -- Out Of Africa (October 9, 2007) -- From 135,000 to 90,000 years ago tropical Africa had megadroughts more extreme and widespread than any previously known for that region, according to new research. Learning that now-lush tropical ... > full story

Driving Force Of Evolution? Evolution Of Proteins Linked To Species' Metabolic Rate (October 8, 2007) -- "Survival of the fittest" has popularly described evolution for more than a century, but a new study provides further evidence that random genetic mutations over millions of years may also play a ... > full story

Primitive Plants Use Heat And Odor To Woo Pollinating Insects (October 8, 2007) -- Scientists discovered a strange reproductive method in primitive cycad plants: The plants heat up and emit a toxic odor to drive pollen-covered insects out of male cycad cones, and then use a milder ... > full story

Fossil Data Plugs Gaps In Current Knowledge, Study Shows (October 6, 2007) -- Researchers have shown for the first time that fossils can be used as effectively as living species in understanding the complex branching in the evolutionary tree of life. While many scientists feel ... > full story

Census Of Protein Architectures Offers New View Of History Of Life (October 5, 2007) -- Protein architectures -- the three-dimensional structures of specific regions within proteins -- provide an extraordinary window on the history of life. Scientists compiled a global census of protein ... > full story

Galapagos Hawk's Evolutionary History Illuminated (October 5, 2007) -- Scientists used DNA sequences from feather lice to study how island populations of their host, the Galápagos Hawk might have colonized the Galápagos islands, home to the endangered and declining ... > full story

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Genetic drift -- Genetic drift is the term used in population genetics to refer to the statistical drift over time of gene frequencies in a population due to random sampling effects in the formation of successive ... > full article

Natural selection -- Natural selection is the phrase Charles Darwin used in 1859 for the process he proposed to explain the origin of species and their apparent adaptation to their environment. Along with the rules of ... > full article

The evolution of human intelligence -- The nature and origins of hominid intelligence is a much-studied and much-debated topic, of natural interest to humans as the most successful and intelligent hominid species. There is no universally ... > full article

Introduction to genetics -- Genetics is the study of how living things receive common traits from previous generations. These traits are described by the genetic information carried by a molecule called DNA. The instructions ... > full article

Parallel evolution -- Parallel evolution is the independent evolution of similar traits, starting from a similar ancestral condition. Frequently this is the situation in more closely related lineages, where several ... > full article

Multiregional hypothesis -- The multiregional origin hypothesis of human species holds that some, or all, of the genetic variation between the contemporary human races is attributable to genetic inheritance from either Homo ... > full article

Evolutionary psychology -- Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach to psychology that attempts to explain useful mental and psychological traits—such as memory, perception, or language—as adaptations, i.e., as the ... > full article

Timeline of human evolution -- The timeline of human evolution outlines the major events in the development of humans species and the evolution of human's ancestors. It begins with the time of the origin of life and presents a ... > full article

Gene -- A gene is a locatable region of genomic sequence, corresponding to a unit of inheritance, which is associated with regulatory regions, transcribed regions and/or other functional sequence regions. ... > full article

Homo ergaster -- Homo ergaster ("working man") is an extinct hominid species (or subspecies, according to some authorities) which lived throughout eastern and southern Africa between 1.9 to 1.4 million years ago with ... > full article

Evolution of the eye -- The evolution of the eye has been a subject of significant study, as a distinctive example of a homologous organ present in a wide variety of species. The development of the eye is considered by most ... > full article

Evolution of the horse -- The evolution in the structure of their teeth, odd-toed limbs, obvious mobility of the upper lip, and other aspects, joins the horse to the evolutionary line of odd-toed, hoofed mammals: the ... > full article

Homo heidelbergensis -- Homo heidelbergensis ("Heidelberg Man") is an extinct, potentially distinct species of the genus Homo and may be the direct ancestor of Homo neanderthalensis in Europe. According to the "Recent Out ... > full article

Convergent evolution -- In evolutionary biology, convergent evolution is the process whereby organisms not closely related (not monophyletic), independently evolve similar traits as a result of having to adapt to similar ... > full article

Neandertal interaction with Cro-Magnons -- Neanderthals apparently co-existed with anatomically modern humans beginning some 100,000 years ago. However, about 45,000 years ago, at about the time that stoneworking techniques similar to those ... > full article

Hominidae -- The hominids are the members of the biological family Hominidae (the great apes), which includes humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans. The exact criteria for membership in the Homininae are ... > full article

Extinction -- In biology and ecology, extinction is the cessation of existence of a species or group of taxa, reducing biodiversity. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last ... > full article

Homo rudolfensis -- Homo rudolfensis is a fossil hominin species originally proposed in 1986 by V. P. Alexeev for the specimen Skull 1470 (KNM ER 1470). Originally thought to be a member of the species Homo habilis, the ... > full article

Fossil -- Fossils are the mineralized or otherwise preserved remains or traces (such as footprints) of animals, plants, and other organisms. The totality of fossils and their placement in fossiliferous ... > full article

Evolution -- In biology, evolution is the change in the inherited traits of a population from generation to generation. These traits are the expression of genes that are copied and passed on to offspring during ... > full article