In the late Devonian period, roughly 365 million years ago, fish-like creatures started venturing from shallow waters onto land. Among the various adaptations associated with the switch to land life was…
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Articles on Evolution
Displaying 841 - 860 of 997 articles
As social creatures, non-verbal communication through facial expression is important in portraying emotions – and because of this, it’s interpreted rapidly and accurately. Regardless of culture, defined…
The ears on a South American rainforest katydid’s legs work nearly the same way human ears do, a new study has found, showing that animal groups as apparently unrelated as mammals and insects have evolved…
Why are some animals blue and others red? Explaining the diversity of colours in nature is a central issue in evolutionary biology. And part of the answer may lie in the most obvious place: the eye. In…
You’d be hard pressed to find many people who hold ants in high regard. That might be due to their destructive behaviour towards lawns, their ability to infest your house in no time at all, or a willingness…
Contrary to expectations, the rate of bird evolution appears to be accelerating. Scientists discovered this by creating an…
The eye is perhaps one of the best examples of Darwinian evolution. Incremental steps driven by natural selection have led to the evolution of this complex organ from its origin as a simple light-sensitive…
Female Komodo dragons pay a high price for investing a lot of energy into reproduction - they only live about half the average…
Monkeys who observe fights tend to exploit the losers for grooming favours. This may provide an evolutionary context for…
It takes 24 million generations for a mouse-sized animal to evolve into an elephant-sized animal, but only two million generations…
Evolutionary change is occurring rapidly around us, every day, as insects impose natural selection pressures on plants. Using…
Scientist have observed E. coli bacteria evolve a new function. They documented three stages of changes, including a complicated…
Gibbons and humans have more in common than might immediately seem apparent. Among many behavioural traits shared by our two species is singing. Not just that – the songs of gibbons have the potential…
In recent advertisements for Meat and Livestock Australia, actor Sam Neill told us, in David Attenborough-inflected tones, that: “when our early ancestors started to eat red meat, our brains began to grow…
Does it seem strange that we will enthusiastically kiss an attractive person’s mouth, with tongues intertwining and saliva going everywhere, but that we might wrinkle our nose up at the idea of using that…
The tiny colonial sea creatures, Rhabdopleurids, have stayed relatively unchanged for over 500m years and outlived some of…
New fossils described in the journal Nature this week seem to close the door on a controversy that has raged for 40 years. They also confirm that the beginnings of the human genus more than 2m years ago…
An ancient slithering creature from the time of T-Rex has been identified as the most primitive known snake. The finding…
Blood is thicker than water when it comes to being a team player – at least if you’re a bird in outback Australia. So shows a new study I was involved in, published this week in the journal Proceedings…
Of all violent videogames, first-person shooters are viewed as the biggest problem because of the perspective taken during gaming: the first-person standpoint makes it seem as if the player is performing…
Top contributors
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Strategic Professor in Palaeontology, Flinders University
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Scientia Professor of Evolutionary Ecology; Academic Lead of UNSW's Grand Challenges Program, UNSW Sydney
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Professor in Evolutionary Biology (jointly appointed with South Australian Museum), Flinders University
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Honorary Associate Professor, UNSW Sydney
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Senior Lecturer in Paleontology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences at the University of Bath, University of Bath
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Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology at the Milner Centre for Evolution, University of Bath
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Associate Professor, Department of Physiology, Monash University
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Senior Researcher in Vertebrate Palaeontology, University of the Witwatersrand
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Adjunct Research Associate, Monash University
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Jenny Graves is a Friend of The Conversation.
Distinguished Professor of Genetics and Vice Chancellor's Fellow, La Trobe University
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Principal Lecturer in Wildlife Conservation, Nottingham Trent University
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Mark Elgar is a Friend of The Conversation.
Professor of Evolutionary Biology, The University of Melbourne
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Professor of Natural Sciences, UCL
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Senior lecturer, School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, University of Bristol
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Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Evolutionary Ecology, Griffith University
