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Evolutionary Biology
Once numbering just 27 birds, the global population of California condors is now in the hundreds.
In movies and TV shows, aliens look like pointy-eared humans. Is this realistic? If evolution is predictable, then it very well might be.
From 1974 to 1978, the chimps of Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania were at war with each other, the first time conservationists saw chimps engage in calculated, cold-blooded killing.
Whether or not life exists elsewhere in the Universe, we can be assured of one thing: We are the only human beings in the cosmos.
Tusks suddenly became a liability, even though in natural circumstances, tusks are very useful.
Life largely owes its existence to this equation. Be sure to hug your house plant today.
Bears, chimps, or humans? A track of five poorly preserved footsteps at Laetoli has puzzled paleontologists for decades. Now, a research paper from Nature claims to have solved the mystery.
Evolutionary game theory could tip the advantage to medicine.
Today, every Homo species is extinct besides humans. But one of our close evolutionary relatives still lives on in our DNA.
The human brain makes a striking deviation from the normal building plan.
Missing link? More like the weakest link.
This map of Hutterite colonies in North America says something about religion and evolution — and more precisely, speciation.
An evolutionary biologist explains why you probably won't grow a tail.
Are we really only a moment away from "The Singularity," a technological epoch that will usher in a new era in human evolution?
Society-changing ideas form through a three-stage process, argues author Michael Bhaskar.
Virgin birth – which involves the development of an unfertilised egg – has preoccupied humans for aeons. And although it can’t happen in mammals, it does seem to be possible in […]
Although many dinosaurs never left the ground, they still possessed the basic structural framework for flight.
Most of us will never run a 4 minute mile. But on a bicycle, almost anyone can do it. As human beings, we often take for granted how our bodies work. […]
Yes, the Big Bang is real, but what about what came before? If you ask anyone about the origin of some phenomenon that we’ve observed, they’ll usually default to the same […]
And could Earth-based life provide the seeds for biology elsewhere? Today, on Earth, there’s an enormous variety and diversity of life on our planet. Every single surviving lifeform appears, in […]
‘Reductio ad absurdum’ won’t help you in an absurd Universe. Throughout history, there have been two main ways humanity has attempted to gain knowledge about the world: top-down, where we […]
We’re Earth’s first intelligent, technologically advanced civilization. But maybe not the last. For most of our planet’s history, life in some form has existed on our world. Planet Earth formed some […]
We may be different in many ways, but the cosmic story is the same for each of us. In all the Universe, you won’t find another planet identical to Earth. Planet […]
Extraterrestrial life should arise fairly easily. But intelligence is another matter entirely. Planet Earth has been around for the past 4.5 billion years or so: about the last third of […]
We all share atoms with every person, living or dead, on Earth. There’s more in common among us than you might think. When you eat food, drink liquids, or even breathe […]
The dream of an ‘Earth-like’ planet showcases our astrobiological ignorance. Over the past decade, our understanding of what planets exist around stars other than our own has exploded. The number […]
If you were to compress the entire history of the Universe into one calendar year, everything we love happens on December 31st. Our Universe has been around for 13.8 billion years […]
If an AT-AT walker (or something even larger) wanted to walk across a frozen lake, how thick would the ice have to be? Each winter, one of the most spectacular phenomena […]
There’s an enormous evolutionary advantage for flamingos to stand on one leg, but only physics explains why. Of all the natural marvels unique to planet Earth, the diversity of the living […]