Just to let you all know – with the summer break coming up I'll probably drop down to just a couple of posts a week. And maybe even a few that aren't really on-topic – still biology/science but maybe on things that are a bit odd, peculiar, or downright strange. But normal service will resume […]
Continue readingfaces of our ancestors
I wish I'd found this page earlier – you might have found it interesting in preparing for your exams. It's a series of images pf reconstructed hominin faces, & a linking story about them. (There's actually a whole book about them – I bought myself a copy earlier this year & I'm enjoying dipping into […]
Continue readingbattle of the brains
A day or so ago people were talking in the tea-room about a clip on TV that showed chimpanzees beating humans hands-down on a test of memory. This piqued my curiosity, because I don't watch a lot of TV & hadn't seen the show. But today I found a link to it – have a look! I […]
Continue readingweird & wacky… science?
Now that things are (sort of) winding down for the year, I thought I'd share some gems of pseudoscience with you. This is an ongoing interest of mine & I'm hoping that you'll apply your critical filters to what follows (& I'd be interested in your comments, too!)
Continue readingwho’d be a cockroach?
Well, OK, they wouldn’t be my bug of first choice. But have a look at this video – would you wish this on a even a cockroach? I’ll admit, it does look pretty gross. As Stephen Jay Gould said (1983), I suspect that nothing evokes greater disgust in most of us than slow destruction […]
Continue readingThe ancient mariners
One of the 'themes' you need to think about, when studying human evolution, is dispersal – just how did human populations spread about the globe, and when did they do it? In September this year a group of scientists got to together to talk about how and when humans might have become seafarers.
Continue readingtree-hugging wolves?
The university has an e-subscription to the journal Science, so each week we get details of the latest issue via e-mail. I was scrolling through one of the July issues when an article's title caught my eye: Aspens return to Yellowstone, with help from some wolves. Really? I thought. What have wolves got to do […]
Continue readinga worm, but not as we know it
One of the neat things that have come from advances in molecular biology is our ability to use DNA technology to tease out evolutionary relationships – especially those that aren't immediately obvious (such as the subject of an earlier post). Now here's another example – an animal that looks superficially like a worm – but turns out […]
Continue readinggradualism and/or punk eek?
I've just had an e-mail from Emma, who writes: I'm getting really confused about Punctuated Equilibrium and Gradualism… do both operate at once? Or do some scientists argue for one and some argue for the other?
Continue readingprimates’ closest living relatives?
Scientists have thought for a long time that tree shrews are the closest living relatives of primates. More recently, use of DNA data together with morphological comparisons suggested that colugos are also very closely related to apes, monkeys (& us). These so-called 'flying' lemurs use extensive flaps of loose skin, stretched between their outspread front and back […]
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