I’ve known for ages about the enzyme called telomerase, & I’ve known why it’s important – but I have to confess that I’ve never actually thought particularly hard about why we need it. ‘Why’ being in the practical, ‘what’s going on in the cell?’ sense. Lazy thinking on my part, I guess. But today I found […]
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knuckle-walking – not an ancestral trait in humans
After writing about ‘Ardi’, I remembered that this wasn’t the only paper I’d read recently suggesting that our ancestors were not knucklewalkers and that knuckle-walking must have evolved independently in the gorilla & chimp lineages. (We can say this because, if the last common ancestor of chimps & humans didn’t get around by knuckle-walking, then […]
Continue readingthe ‘missing link’ disproved?
A friend of mine’s sent me an item from National Geographic with the headline ‘Oldest "human" skeleton found – disproves "missing link"’. (Thanks, Heather!) The story itself is based on the publication this week of a series of papers describing aspects of Ardipithecus ramidus, & they make extremely interesting reading. But before I start talking about them, […]
Continue readingthe fabric of history
Last night I caught parts of Caveman (starring Ringo Starr & a dinosaur) while playing with the puppy – the daughter & her friend were watching it. Um, er, what can I say? …?? I liked the dinosaur, he had personality & panache 🙂 Anyway, Ringo & the other human cast members were scurrying around (in […]
Continue readinga special kind of donation
As I left the office this afternoon I said to my colleagues, ‘I’ll be in a bit later tomorrow, I have an interview with a vampire.’ At which they all laughed, because they know this means I’m off to my regular appointment at the NZ Blood Service centre, over by the hospital.
Continue readingplant growth responses to touch
Commenting on my last post about plant behaviour, Jim mentioned a paper by Marian Smith on plant responses to being touched or shaken. Unfortunately I couldn’t get the link to work, but I did a Google Scholar search on the name & topic & got this: Plant growth responses to touch – literally a ‘hands-on’ exercise! […]
Continue readingwhat’s your favourite (transitional) fossil?
A couple of weeks ago Brian Switek’s blog Laelaps included a post on transitional fossils (those things that some creationists will tell you simply don’t exist… ) Brian’s post was sparked by this story (OK, maybe the writer of was aiming for ‘balance’, but really!) & he suggested that others might like to emulate him & write […]
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