16th May 2008 : Hacker and writer Joshua Klein is fascinated by crows. (Notice the gleam of intelligence in their little black eyes?) After a long amateur study of corvid behavior, he's come up with an elegant machine that may form a new bond between animal and human.

15th May 2008 : UC Berkeley is going to court this week over their Understanding Evolution web site (that's an excellent resource, by the way, especially if you're just trying to get up to speed on the science). At issue is the fact that the site dares to point out that some religions contradict the evidence, and other religions try to avoid conflict with science; that is interpreted to be a sectarian endorsement of certain religions over others. This is where separation of church and state becomes insane: when you are not allowed to point out obvious idiocies because they are protected religious beliefs. Here's the offending section: I think it's pretty namby-pamby and bends over backwards to give deference to superstitious nonsense, but some people are apparently irate over a simple, accurate truth statement: "some religious beliefs explicitly contradict science". They do, but a university isn't allowed to say so?

11th May 2008 : Richard Dawkins pointed out that nature is Darwinian and dominated by the short-term greediness that is required within competitive ecosystems to pass on one's genes. Humans are no different and are dominated by those instincts, but with our complex brain-power we have the ability to rise above these destructive tendencies and be a good steward to the planet and ourselves.

6th May 2008 : Eyes are one of evolution's most useful and prevalent inventions, equipping approximately 95 percent of living species. They exist in many different forms across nature, having evolved convergently across different species. Learn how the ancestors of jellyfish may have been the first to evolve light-sensitive cells. In the pre-Cambrian era, insects, in particular the dragonfly, would take the compound eye to new heights. Find out how dinosaurs adapted their eyes to become such successful hunters of prey. And while dinosaurs remained at the top of the food chain for 150 million years, tiny early mammals developed night vision to populate the night as a survival technique. Finally, learn how primates underwent several adaptations to their eyes to better exploit their new habitat, and how the ability to see colors helped them find food.

5th May 2008 : Switches within DNA that govern when and where genes are turned on enable genomes to generate the great diversity of animal forms from very similar sets of genes

5th May 2008 : If there is life on Mars, it might soon be coaxed out of hiding by a new instrument designed to detect the subtle chemical traces of biological activity.

5th May 2008 : PARIS (AFP) - A new, simplified family tree of humanity has dealt a blow to those who contend that the enigmatic hominids known as Neanderthals intermingled with our forebears.

3rd May 2008 : 16 Apr 08: Neanderthal expert Dr Chris Stringer discusses new ideas of how neanderthals and early man co-existed with Telegraph Science Editor Dr Roger Highfield.

25th Apr 2008 : Harvard Scientists Say T-Rex Was A Close Cousin Of Barnyard Fowl

17th Apr 2008 :

17th Apr 2008 : If you think you understand it, you don't know nearly enough about it

11th Apr 2008 : A fossil animal locked in Lebanese limestone has been shown to be an extremely precious discovery - a snake with two legs.

10th Apr 2008 : WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A rare and primitive frog living in a remote Borneo stream has no lungs and apparently absorbs oxygen through its skin, researchers reported on Wednesday.

10th Apr 2008 : I have to make this really, really simple for the "Hitler was an evolutionist" dimwits.

2nd Apr 2008 : In the first experiment of its kind conducted in nature, a University of British Columbia evolutionary biologist has come up with strong evidence for one of Charles Darwin's cornerstone ideas – adaptation to the environment accelerates the creation of new species.

2nd Apr 2008 : Professor Sean Carroll was on the BBC Radio 4 "Today Programme" this morning, talking about the subject of his new book The Making of the Fittest, and he mentions that the argument against creationism/intelligent design is now stronger than ever.

6th Mar 2008 : I have been taken aback by the inexplicable hostility of Mary Midgley's assault.1 Some colleagues have advised me that such transparent spite is best ignored, but others warn that the venomous tone of her article may conceal the errors in its content. Indeed, we are in danger of assuming that nobody would dare to be so rude without taking the elementary precaution of being right in what she said. We may even bend over backwards to concede some of her points, simply in order to appear fair-minded when we deplore the way she made them. I deplore bad manners as strongly as anyone, but more importantly I shall show that Midgley has no good point to make. She seems not to understand biology or the way biologists use language. No doubt my ignorance would be just as obvious if I rushed headlong into her field of expertise, but I would then adopt a more diffident tone. As it is we are both in my corner, and it is hard for me not to regard the gloves as off. I will try to make my reply constructive, in the hope that it may interest those who have not read Midgley's article, as well as those who have. Unattributed quotations with page numbers will all be taken from her article. Since it was my book, The SelJish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), which stimulated her attack, it will also be necessary for me to quote from it. I shall divide my reply into eight sections.

6th Mar 2008 : SOLOMONS, MARYLAND—On a clear January day, Stephen Godfrey is dressed for fossilhunting: frayed baggy jeans, a puffy green vest, and a leather jacket that's seen better times. A paleontologist and curator at the modest Calvert Marine Museum here, Godfrey frequents the nearby Calvert Cliffs, which rise from the shoreline of Chesapeake Bay and hold everything from ancient shark teeth to dolphin skulls. "You start collecting them because, well, they're beautiful," he says of his beloved fossils.

2nd Mar 2008 : A major evolution exhibit opens in Toronto next week, which begs the question: Why so much fuss over a 150-year-old theory that seems to gather more scientific support by the decade?

28th Feb 2008 : A fossilised "sea monster" unearthed on an Arctic island is the largest marine reptile known to science, Norwegian scientists have announced.

27th Feb 2008 : Being the second part of an occasional series looking at mutations.

26th Feb 2008 :

26th Feb 2008 : Imagine the Book of All Species: a single volume made up of one-page descriptions of every species known to science. On one page is the blue-footed booby. On another, the Douglas fir. Another, the oyster mushroom. If you owned the Book of All Species, you would need quite a bookshelf to hold it. Just to cover the 1.8 million known species, the book would have to be more than 300 feet long. And you'd have to be ready to expand the bookshelf strikingly, because scientists estimate there are 10 times more species waiting to be discovered.

24th Feb 2008 : This isn't "Part 2" in our 3-part tales videos, but this is a youtube video created by RodHullIAmHim for an actual section in The Ancestor's Tale, called "The Salamander's Tale". The audio is from the audiobook version, read by Richard Dawkins and Lalla Ward.

21st Feb 2008 : Here's a nice illustration of the evidence behind our understanding of the evolution of whales, all in 7 minutes.

21st Feb 2008 : WOODS HOLE, Mass. — The cuttlefish in Roger Hanlon's laboratory were in fine form. Their skin was taking on new colors and patterns faster than the digital signs in Times Square.

21st Feb 2008 : ONE of evolution's missing links has been found lurking in Sydney Harbour.

18th Feb 2008 : A 70-million-year-old fossil of a giant frog has been unearthed in Madagascar by a team of UK and US scientists.

18th Feb 2008 : ROM researcher helps uncover the earliest fossil yet of a prehistoric bat

15th Feb 2008 : From the 60 Second Science Podcast.

7th Feb 2008 :

4th Feb 2008 : Far from having stopped, the pace of 'advantageous mutation' is moving much faster than we thought, a new study discovers

1st Feb 2008 : P.Z. Myers, biologist at the University of Minnesota Morris, host of the website Pharyngula( http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/ ), and indefatigable defender of evolution, shares his expertise and insights on brain function, explaining how research into the brain reveals the evolutionary causes of religious belief.

1st Feb 2008 : Dr. Geoffrey Simmons, Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute and Dr. PZ Myers, Biologist and Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota-Morris will debate Darwin's theory of evolution.

24th Jan 2008 : Scientists believe they could be a step closer to solving the mystery of how the first birds took to the air.

19th Jan 2008 : A scientist has achieved a world first... by cloning himself. In a breakthrough certain to provoke an ethical furore, Samuel Wood created embryo copies of himself by placing his skin cells in a woman's egg.

19th Jan 2008 : ScienceDaily (Jan. 20, 2008) — According to Darwin's theory of evolution, individuals in a species pass successful traits onto their offspring through a process called "deterministic inheritance." Over multiple generations, advantageous developmental trends – such as the lengthening of the giraffe's neck – occur.

18th Jan 2008 : Reconciling the biblical God with Darwin's theories would challenge even an omnipotent being. But a growing number of thinkers and scientists are altering their concept of the deity to make room for evolution.

17th Jan 2008 : Stephen's guest is Neil Shubin author of Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body.

17th Jan 2008 : The fossilised skull of the largest rodent ever recorded has been described by scientists for the first time.

15th Jan 2008 : The Institute of Medicine of The National Academy of Sciences, USA, recently
released a report on the issues of science, evolution and creationism. The
publication is intended as a resource for people who find themselves
embroiled in debates about evolution.

13th Jan 2008 : Hernias, hiccups, and snores—oh, my! It's been 3.5 billion years, and the human body's past still plays a role in our lives and health.

10th Jan 2008 : This week's New Scientist has an article by Daniele Fanelli announcing an apparent change of mind by E O Wilson. This has been picked up by the Daily Telegraph under the headline Scientist renounces insect 'kin selection' theory and by the Independent under the headline Evolutionists at war over altruism's origins . New Scientist asked me to reply, but they gave me a very tight limit of 650 words. I decided that I could fit into this limit only with references to other publications, and I took great care to upload those publications to the web, and asked New Scientist to publish the url:

5th Jan 2008 : Parasitic caterpillars show local evolution as never before.

29th Dec 2007 : Weaver birds create intricate nests; sculptors and other artists and artisans also create intricate, ingenious constructions out of similar materials. The products may look similar, and outwardly the creative processes that create those processes may look similar, but there are surely large and important differences between them. What are they, and how important are they

26th Dec 2007 : Evolutionary principles impact our understanding of everything from cancer, through drug and pesticide resistance, to managing the environment to maintain biodiversity. But the US public understands evolution poorly, and the mere presence of the topic in public science education has sparked controversy.

20th Dec 2007 : The whale is descended from a deer-like animal that lived 48 million years ago, according to fossil evidence.

17th Dec 2007 : Sam Harris is best known for his barn-burning 2004 attack on religion, The End of Faith, which spent 33 weeks on the New York Times best-seller List. The book's sequel, Letter to a Christian Nation also came out in editions totalling hundreds of thousands. Last Monday, however, the combative Californian produced a shorter (seven pages) and seemingly calmer publication that will be a hit if it reaches 10,000 readers [note from Josh: we've had 75,000 unique visitors since last Tuesday when it was posted here] : "Functional Neuroimaging of Belief, Disbelief and Uncertainty." It appears in the respected journal Annals of Neurology. And Harris, 40, claims it has little if any connection to his popular two books. Believers, however, may draw their own conclusions — and may want to read his subsequent neurological studies even more carefully.

17th Dec 2007 : It has been 50 years since scientists first created DNA in a test tube, stitching ordinary chemical ingredients together to make life's most extraordinary molecule. Until recently, however, even the most sophisticated laboratories could make only small snippets of DNA -- an extra gene or two to be inserted into corn plants, for example, to help the plants ward off insects or tolerate drought.

13th Dec 2007 :

11th Dec 2007 : Objective: The difference between believing and disbelieving a proposition is one of the most potent regulators of human behavior and emotion. When we accept a statement as true, it becomes the basis for further thought and action; rejected as false, it remains a string of words. The purpose of this study was to differentiate belief, disbelief, and uncertainty at the level of the brain.

9th Dec 2007 : The battle between science and creationism has reached the prestigious Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where a former researcher is claiming he was fired because he doesn't believe in evolution.

3rd Dec 2007 : Chimpanzees have an extraordinary photographic memory that is far superior to ours, research suggests.

1st Dec 2007 : AUSTIN, Tex., Nov. 29 (AP) — The state's director of science curriculum said she resigned this month under pressure from officials who said she had given the appearance of criticizing the teaching of intelligent design.

29th Nov 2007 : Like us, our canine friends are able to form abstract concepts. Friederike Range and colleagues from the University of Vienna in Austria have shown for the first time that dogs can classify complex color photographs and place them into categories in the same way that humans do.

28th Nov 2007 :

21st Nov 2007 : The immense fossilised claw of a 2.5m-long (8ft) sea scorpion has been described by European researchers.

17th Nov 2007 : Fossil hunters exploring the eastern edge of the Rift Valley of Kenya have found the jawbone of a 10-million-year-old ape that appears to be a close relative of the last ancestor of humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas.

15th Nov 2007 : A tropical fish that lives in mangrove swamps across the Americas can survive out of water for months at a time, similar to how animals adapted to land millions of years ago, a new study shows.

14th Nov 2007 : Creationists and intelligent-design boosters have a guerrilla tactic to undermine textbooks that don't jibe with their beliefs. They slap a sticker on the cover that reads, EVOLUTION IS A THEORY, NOT A FACT, REGARDING THE ORIGIN OF LIVING THINGS.

9th Nov 2007 : Mark Lawson interviews Sir David Attenborough

9th Nov 2007 : Turkana Boy, considered the most complete early human fossil, is being removed from his bomb-proof vault to take centre stage at an exhibition that curators say will provide the most complete record of the evolution of Man.

8th Nov 2007 : PARIS (AFP) - Small, fast-moving carnivorous dinosaurs had air-sac respiratory systems similar to modern-day penguins and other diving birds, scientists reported on Wednesday.

7th Nov 2007 :

6th Nov 2007 : Are humans "wired for empathy"? How does this affect what Chomsky calls the "manufacturing of consent"?

19th Oct 2007 : Neanderthals, an archaic human species that dominated Europe until the arrival of modern humans some 45,000 years ago, possessed a critical gene known to underlie speech, according to DNA evidence retrieved from two individuals excavated from El Sidron, a cave in northern Spain.

15th Oct 2007 : A conversation with Cindy Lee Van Dover.

12th Oct 2007 : Apes are patient, but only people are fair. That may help explain why people came out on top

12th Oct 2007 : Scientists have discovered how a microscopic organism has benefited from nearly 80 million years without sex.

9th Oct 2007 : Human innate immunity differs between Africans and others, perhaps due to different infectious environments

3rd Oct 2007 : "Survival of the fittest" has popularly described evolution for more than a century, but a new study published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters provides further evidence that random genetic mutations over millions of years may also play a powerful role.

22nd Sep 2007 : Monkeys have a sense of justice. They will protest if they see another monkey get paid more for the same task.

21st Sep 2007 : It was the most astonishing anthropological find of a generation - a diminutive new species of human that apparently shared the planet with us until 13,000 years ago.

20th Sep 2007 : Where do moral rules come from? From reason, some philosophers say. From God, say believers. Seldom considered is a source now being advocated by some biologists, that of evolution.

16th Sep 2007 : Computers can provide design variations that no human would have imagined.

8th Sep 2007 : Searching for a different kind of riches in the ground, an oil company made a priceless find it never expected.

2nd Sep 2007 :

30th Aug 2007 : Using a novel method developed to identify reliably functional binding motifs, researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel have performed a genome-wide study of functional human transcription factor binding sites that encompasses nearly ten thousand genes and four hundred known binding motifs.

29th Aug 2007 : Few people have heard of the mite harvestman, and fewer still would recognize it at close range. The animal is a relative of the far more familiar daddy longlegs. But its legs are stubby rather than long, and its body is only as big as a sesame seed.

27th Aug 2007 : A research team has for the first time ever discovered DNA from living bacteria that are more than half a million years old. Never before has traces of still living organisms that old been found. The exceptional discovery can lead to a better understanding of the ageing of cells and might even cast light on the question of life on Mars.

22nd Aug 2007 : LONDON (Reuters) - Researchers working in Ethiopia have unearthed the fossils of a 10-million-year-old ape, a discovery they say suggests that humans and African great apes may have split much earlier than thought.

21st Aug 2007 : Offering insight into how evolution progresses inside a gene, scientists have pinpointed mutations in an ancient protein that transformed its shape and function more than 400 million years ago.

19th Aug 2007 : Scientists Around World in Race to Create Artificial Life; Success Likely in 3 to 10 Years

9th Aug 2007 : Two fossils found in Kenya have shaken the human family tree, possibly rearranging major branches thought to be in a straight ancestral line to Homo sapiens.

7th Aug 2007 : An 8-million-year-old bacterium that was extracted from the oldest known ice on Earth is now growing in a laboratory, claim researchers.

5th Aug 2007 : The theory of evolution is the flashpoint in the war between science and religion. Polls show that nearly half of all Americans believe the Biblical story of creation. Only a quarter accept evolution. And that's infuriated a lot of people. The philosopher Daniel Dennett thinks we need to "break the spell" of religion. But creationist Paul Nelson says evolution simply can't explain certain mysteries.

5th Aug 2007 : Aspens may be symbols of the West, but over the last half century, they've been disappearing from the Lamar Valley of Yellowstone National Park.

4th Aug 2007 : On evening of 9th July 2007, the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation keynote event was held at London's Natural History Museum. Featuring Richard Dawkins, Steve Jones, Lewis Wolpert and chaired by Peter Bentley, a discussion on evolution and complexity took place in front of an audience of 600 people. On this page you can listen to the discussion and take a look at some of the photos of the event.

3rd Aug 2007 : When Martin Nowak was in high school, his parents thought he would be a nice boy and become a doctor. But when he left for the University of Vienna, he abandoned medicine for something called biochemistry.

26th Jul 2007 : We have sequenced the complete mitochondrial genome of the extinct American mastodon (Mammut americanum) from an Alaskan fossil that is between 50,000 and 130,000 y old, extending the age range of genomic analyses by almost a complete glacial cycle.

22nd Jul 2007 : Sarah Jones'S first real sense of what it might be like to be a marine biologist came during summers at Seacamp San Diego, a camp for middle-school and high-school students.

17th Jul 2007 : Humans evolved to walk upright because it uses less energy than travelling on all fours, according to researchers.

13th Jul 2007 : Scientists say they have seen one of the fastest evolutionary changes ever observed in a species of butterfly.

10th Jul 2007 : UKTV documentary on Charles Darwin.

9th Jul 2007 : Johns Hopkins researchers have added to the growing mound of evidence that many of the genetic bits and pieces that drive evolutionary changes do not confer any advantages or disadvantages to humans or other animals.

7th Jul 2007 : If rats benefit from the kindness of strangers they are more likely to assist an unfamiliar rat in future. In doing so, they provide the first evidence of an unusual form of altruism that appears to violate evolutionary theory.

7th Jul 2007 : A panel of scientists convened by the country's leading scientific advisory group says the hunt for extraterrestrial life should be greatly expanded to include what they call "weird life": organisms that lack DNA or other molecules found in life as we know it.

5th Jul 2007 : Science Daily — Functional MRI scans have revealed a "biologically embedded" basis for altruistic behavior, with several characteristic regions of the brain being activated when players of a game called "Prisoner's Dilemma" decide to trust each other and cooperate, rather than betray each other for immediate gain, say researchers from Emory University. They report on their study in the July 18 issue of the journal Neuron, published by Cell Press.

1st Jul 2007 : 'Intelligent Design' (ID) is a new form of creationism that emerged after legal decisions in the 1980s hampered the inclusion of 'creation science' in the public school curriculum. In the 20 years since ID appeared, there has been no evidence of it being used to solve problems in biology. Although the scientific/scholarly part of ID has been a failure, the 'cultural renewal' part of ID has been a success, as supporters of ID seek 'restoration' of a theistic sensibility in American culture to replace what they consider an overemphasis on secularism. Eugenie C. Scott, Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education, tackles the issue of evolution and science in the classroom.

28th Jun 2007 : On the deck of the Santa Cruz in the Galapagos Islands, Richard Dawkins takes a minute to talk about Darwin and his historic visit to the Galapagos Islands.