Ultimately, our ability to convincingly lie to each other may have evolved as a direct result of our cooperative nature. Thus concludes the abstract of a new paper in the journal Proceedings of the Royal…
Academic rigour, journalistic flair
Articles on Evolution
Displaying 821 - 840 of 997 articles
Primate communities with high levels of co-operation will contain a large proportion of cheaters. Research by scientists…
The latest Star Trek movie, opening tomorrow, raises an eternal question: why are the Klingons (or Cylons or Daleks) always at roughly our technological level? For any sense of drama, interplanetary protagonists…
We should forget about ever finding something as small and delicate as a dinosaur embryo, right? A few months ago I would have agreed – but now, well, things have changed. When my colleague, palaeontologist…
How important is penis size? Authors from the Australian National University, Monash and La Trobe provide the most complete answer yet: the size of a flaccid penis can significantly affect how attractive…
As the weather starts to cool down and winter clothes enter rotation in our wardrobes, some peculiar combinations emerge: shorts and scarves; thongs and jackets; T-shirts and beanies. The last is often…
Extensive studies on mustard seeds have revealed the evolutionary path of Indian mustard. Mustard has been cultivated in…
What is a male? What is a female? If you were to conduct a survey, most people would probably have little difficulty expressing some fundamental differences. After all, we learn to tell boys apart from…
As many as 21 species of giant squid live and die under the surface of our oceans. At least, that’s what we thought. A paper published today by my colleagues and I in Proceedings of the Royal Society B…
Why do some species exhibit patterns of reversed gender roles? That question was addressed in a Nature Communications paper published yesterday. Typically in animals, females tend to invest more in caring…
Ancient camels up to 29% larger than their modern-day cousins may have roamed the High Arctic of Canada around 3.5 million years ago, according to a new study of a fossil found in the region. The study…
Australian native flowers have moved away from insects as pollinators and instead coloured themselves to attract birds. Over…
Sex without seed. Seed without sex. It’s been said that the greatest gift of science to humankind would be achieving those two goals. Effective contraceptives such as the pill have pretty much nailed the…
All forms of science are reliant on facts, hard evidence and statistics to maintain relevance and credibility. But what of the legitimacy of the so-called “pseudosciences”? A warning: I’m going to pick…
Forget blurry pictures and casts of big foot-prints. A Texas veterinarian, Dr Melba Ketchum, and her collaborators have published an article, in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, proving the existence…
Placental mammals like elephants, bats and humans evolved from small, insect-eating mammals, a study led by Stony Brook University…
Ice Ages caused a mass extinction of plants in south-eastern Australia around a million years ago, according to a new study that presents a fresh take on how extinction shapes biodiversity. Scientists…
A new study from Monash University researchers has found that female turtles have an unique biological ability to delay laying…
In a sort-of Ice Age version of Jurassic Park, Harvard University’s Professor George Church has suggested – to much media coverage – that, one day soon, scientists somewhere will place a very unusual personal…
Life originated on Earth about four billion years ago. Death, sex and multicellularity came along about a billion years later. According to our new atavistic model, cancer came with multicellularity. About…
Top contributors
-
Strategic Professor in Palaeontology, Flinders University
-
Scientia Professor of Evolutionary Ecology; Academic Lead of UNSW's Grand Challenges Program, UNSW Sydney
-
Professor in Evolutionary Biology (jointly appointed with South Australian Museum), Flinders University
-
Honorary Associate Professor, UNSW Sydney
-
Senior Lecturer in Paleontology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences at the University of Bath, University of Bath
-
Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology at the Milner Centre for Evolution, University of Bath
-
Associate Professor, Department of Physiology, Monash University
-
Senior Researcher in Vertebrate Palaeontology, University of the Witwatersrand
-
Adjunct Research Associate, Monash University
-
Jenny Graves is a Friend of The Conversation.
Distinguished Professor of Genetics and Vice Chancellor's Fellow, La Trobe University
-
Principal Lecturer in Wildlife Conservation, Nottingham Trent University
-
Mark Elgar is a Friend of The Conversation.
Professor of Evolutionary Biology, The University of Melbourne
-
Professor of Natural Sciences, UCL
-
Senior lecturer, School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, University of Bristol
-
Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Evolutionary Ecology, Griffith University
