a new voyage for the beagle

The Beagle Project aims to build a replica of HMS Beagle and retrace Darwin’s famous voyage. The intention is that this will inspire global audiences through unique public engagement and learning programmes, and original scientific research in evolutionary biology, biodiversity and climate change. I think it’s great! I’ve been keeping half an eye on the website, […]

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life in the cambrian

I first read Stephen Jay Gould’s book, Wonderful Life, not long after it was first published in 1989. The book centres on the Burgess Shale, a wonderfully rich source of of different fossils (a Lagerstätte) from the Cambrian, around 530 million years ago. The Burgess Shale is unusual in that it contains an array of soft-bodied […]

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apparent beneficial effect of Bt-cotton crops

Way back in 2004, the first of the ‘new’ Scholarship exams asked students to: Compare and contrast the ecological and evolutionary outcomes of releasing herbicide tolerant and insect resistant GM plants. It’s an interesting question. I suspect that a lot of the answers would have focused on the potential negative environmental effects of releasing these GM […]

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