Tag: evolution
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Reminder: General Meeting November 10th, 2017: What do we know about life on early Earth?
The title of Dr. D’Arcy Meyer-Dombard’s program at our November 2017 meeting is “What do we know about life on early Earth?” The speaker at our February 9, 2018 meeting will be Dr. Dan Gebo from the Department of Anthropology at NIU. His research focuses on understanding locomotor adaptation and evolution in living and…
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NY Times: Ancient Fossil Offers a New European Ancestor to Giraffes
The NY Times has a story about giraffes, more specifically… the ancestors of giraffes. Decannatherium rex lived during the late Miocene in Spain. The fossil specimen fills in a lot of gaps in what we knew about giraffes. The lead author of the study was Dr. Maria Rios, a researcher with the Museo Nacional de…
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Humans Today Have Even More Neanderthal DNA Than We Realised
George Dvorsky Oct 6, 2017, 6:00pm Before this new study, only four Neanderthal specimens have had their genomes sequenced. Of these, only one — an Altai Neanderthal found in Siberia — was of sufficient quality, where scientists were able to accurately flag variations in the genome. The new analysis, enabled by a remarkably well-preserved genome…
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PBS NOVA: “Life’s Rocky Start”
The next episode of PBS’s Nova is “Life’s Rocky Start”. It starts airing on January 13, 2016 at 9 PM on PBS. There’s a preview on the web and like their other shows, full episodes should be available online. Sounds like a good one, enjoy! Program Description: Four and a half billion years ago, the…
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Evolution: 550 million years in 1 minute
Here’s an animated video of human evolution. Nevermind that this didn’t necessarily need to be centered around Homo sapiens. It could have just as easily ended in a squirrel, a cat, or better yet a dog. There is a book version that unfolds to be 30 meters long. Enjoy!
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Reminder: General Meeting in June Will Be Held the Friday, on June 5th, 2015
Due to a scheduling conflict, June's general meeting will be held on the first Friday of the month, June 5th, 2015. The speaker will be Adam Smith of the Field Museum. His topic is a good one, "The Evolution of Birds". See you there!
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General Meeting in June Will Be Held on June 5th, 2015
Due to a scheduling conflict, June’s general meeting will be held on the first Friday of the month, June 5th, 2015. The speaker will be Adam Smith of the Field Museum. His topic is a good one, “The Evolution of Birds”. See you there!
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Ancient teeth may help solve a monkey mystery
According to a recent story published in the journal Nature, monkeys have lived in South America for 36 million years. The team of researchers, from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, discovered four molars in Eastern Peru. These molars have been dated to 36 million years ago, which is 10 million years older…
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Molecular Evolution of Oxygen
Via Science Daily: … researchers report they have identified an enzyme that was the first — or among the first — to generate molecular oxygen on Earth… The new findings, reported in the journal Structure, build on more than a dozen previous studies that aim to track the molecular evolution of life by looking for evidence…
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570 Million Year Old Hint At Animal Life Origns
Via Wired: … Using a technique called x-ray tomographic microscopy, researchers captured an unprecedented level of detail in the Doushanto fossils, imaging internal and external features down to a ten-thousandth of an inch. They could even see individual nuclei within the cells, some of which were caught in the act of dividing. Interestingly, these nuclei…
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Ancient Seas May Have Poisoned Life
Via Science News: Soon after complex animals made their first great strides onto the stage of life, the oceans brewed up a toxic chemical mix that put the brakes on evolutionary innovation, suggests a paper in the Jan. 6 Nature. The culprits? Too little oxygen and too much sulfur dissolved in coastal waters, reports a…
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Dr. Robert Martin Lecture Tonight – Friday, May 13
If you are interested in learning more about Dr. Martin, the Field Museum offers information… In the tree of life, human evolution is a very unusual case in many ways. If the focus of study is too narrow, it is difficult to avoid special pleading. My long-term research strategy has hence been rooted in the…
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Obituary for Harry Whittington
Via Telegraph: Professor Harry Whittington, who died on June 20 aged 94, was the former Woodwardian Professor of Geology at Cambridge and the world’s leading authority on fossil trilobites; in later life he led painstaking research which revealed a “Cambrian explosion” and raised disturbing questions about the processes of evolution….
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Scientist Zeresenay Alemseged: Someone to Know
Via EthioBlog: Ethiopian scientist Zeresenay (Zeray) Alemseged, who discovered the 3.3 million year old girl fossil called Selam in Ethiopia, is featured on PBS’s “Becoming Human” documentary which is being shown this week. Zeresenay is currently curator and chair of anthropology at the California Academy of Sciences and a world renowned paleontologist….
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Multicellularity Explained
Creaturecast continues to produce informative and interesting videos on developmental biology, which helps to explain the evolution of species and the fossils (and the mysterious nitrogen) they have left behind.
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Researcher uncovers oldest amber ever recorded: The Mystery of Illinois Amber
Via NYTimes: Hat tip: Mark White
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More Evidence of Dinosaur to Bird
Via Scientific American (9/24): … The dinosaur-bird transition has been the subject of debate for more than a century, and some researchers are still arguing that other bird-like dinos are too recent to be the ancestors of birds. The quandary, known in the paleontology field as the temporal paradox, has been dealt another…
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MicroRNA Used to Track Evolution to Fossils
Via Science News: …. The team’s microRNA sequencing results also agree with the order in which the different annelids and their relatives appear in the fossil record—something that previous hypotheses about their relationships had failed to do, said co-author Derek Briggs, Yale’s Frederick William Beinecke Professor of Geology and Geophysics. “This study is an elegant…
