Feature Channels: Evolution and Darwin

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"Darwin's Golden Retriever" Dr. Eugenie Scott has received the California Academy of Sciences' highest honor: the Fellows Medal.

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Standing out in a crowd is better than blending in, at least if you're a paper wasp in a colony where fights between nest-mates determine social status.

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The NCSE's Dr. Eugenie Scott has received the California Academy of Sciences' highest honor: the Fellows Medal.

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A new investigation of a fossilized tracksite in southern Africa shows how early dinosaurs made on-the-fly adjustments to their movements to cope with slippery and sloping terrain. Differences in how early dinosaurs made these adjustments provide insight into the later evolution of the group.

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The UCSD/Salk Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny (CARTA), an organized research unit of the University of California, San Diego, today announced the launch of its online Museum of Comparative Anthropogeny (MOCA), available at http://carta.anthropogeny.org/moca/about.

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University of Maryland biologists have genetically mapped the sex chromosomes of several species of cichlid (pronounced "sick-lid") fish from Lake Malawi, East Africa, and identified a mechanism by which new sex chromosomes may evolve.

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University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Associate Professor Lee Meadows, Ph.D., is author of a new book , "The Missing Link: An Inquiry Approach for Teaching All Students About Evolution," that claims it’s possible to teach evolution without offending students who have strong religious convictions against the theory.

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GSA Past President Judith Totman Parrish has named Judge John E. Jones, III, as the 2009 recipient of GSA’s prestigious President's Medal. Parrish will present the award at the GSA Annual Meeting Presidential Address & Awards Ceremony on Saturday, 17 October, at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland. Jones will also participate in a 5-member panel discussion at the meeting, on Monday, 19 October, during “Darwin Day,” a 200th birthday celebration of Charles Darwin.

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When the ancestors of living cetaceans—whales, dolphins and porpoises—first dipped their toes into water, a series of evolutionary changes were sparked that ultimately nestled these swimming mammals into the larger hoofed animal group. But what happened first, a change from a plant-based diet to a carnivorous diet, or the loss of their ability to walk?

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"Living Darwin," an original theatrical production, will debut at Virginia Tech this fall. The Theatre Workshop in Science, Technology, and Society and the Department of Theatre and Cinema developed the play, which addresses the theories of Charles Darwin.

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A University of Oregon research team has found that evolution can never go backwards, because the paths to the genes once present in our ancestors are forever blocked. The findings come from the first rigorous study of reverse evolution at the molecular level.

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Scientists have ample evidence that individuals use a variety of cues to identify their own kin. People can also detect resemblances in families other than their own. A new study shows that their success in doing so is the same, whether or not those families are the same race as themselves.

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The reason some female hoofed animals have horns and others don’t has long puzzled evolutionary biologists, even Darwin. But a survey of 117 bovid species led by a UMass Amherst researcher suggests females living in open country and those who defend a feeding territory are more likely to have horns.

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The fight to keep evolution in the public school curriculum is well known. But a quieter fight is being waged on college campuses, where evolution is taught primarily as a biological topic and avoided in human social sciences and humanities. That is now changing, thanks to a course and multicourse curriculum developed at Binghamton University, State University of New York.

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Cities are organized like brains, and the evolution of cities mirrors the evolution of human and animal brains, according to a new study by researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

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As part of a year-long recreation of Darwin’s historic voyage on the HMS Beagle, an olfactory scientist from the Monell Center will explore how people respond to smell at each of the ship’s ports of call.

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Pigtail macaques in Thailand. Ring-tailed lemurs in Madagascar. Fossil fishes in the deserts of Peru. Frogs in the mountains of Tanzania. Few regions of the world have escaped the attention of students enrolled in the University of Chicago’s Committee on Evolutionary Biology.

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Are state science standards worthless? Are kids learning about evolution or being spoon-fed creationist pseudoscience? What's the proper role of state science standards in American public education, anyway?

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A new study has statistically proven what paleontologists have believed for years: new species emerge just as often as they die out, most evolution occurs in small bursts and crocodiles are really weird.

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Without even a graduate degree, biologist Margie Profet received a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" for her pioneering papers about evolution. Young, attractive, and brilliant, she quickly became a scientific "It Girl." But four years ago, Profet vanished without a trace. Here, for the first time, is the final chapter of her celebrated life.