Had the young naturalist not made a great discovery about rock formations in the first half of his career, On the Origin of the Species might never have been written.
The evolutionary tree may not be this simple.
shutterstock
The challenge we face after a century of extraordinary discoveries is pinning down the lineage and mapping the evolutionary route through which we as human beings got here.
Sperm banks and human cloning may not be the future. A study in beetles reveals that having two sexes boosts genetic quality.
Hydrothermal vents on the seafloor hold the key to understanding the evolution of cellular life.
Centre for Geobiology (University of Bergen, Norway) by R.B. Pedersen
The discovery of a new winged dinosaur from more than 160 million years ago shows how they experimented with different forms of flight.
The discovery of the genes that influence the beak shape in the famous Galapagos finches highlight the underlying unity of all life.
Paul Krawczuk/Flickr
Darwin’s finches are known to be a paragon of evolution by natural selection, but a recent genetic discovery relating to their beaks highlights the evolutionary connectedness of all life.
The retina captures light signals and sends them to the brain.
from www.shutterstock.com
Erez Ribak, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology
The reverse-wiring of the eyeball has long been a mystery, but new research shows a remarkable structural purpose: increasing and sharpening our colour vision.
Artist’s reconstruction of the giant filter-feeding anomalocaridid Aegirocassis benmoulae from 480 million years ago.
Marianne Collins, ArtofFact
A 480 million year old fossil recently unearthed in Morocco fills in some of the evolutionary story for arthropods, members of the largest animal phylum on Earth.
Blooming marvellous: cacti are among the few plant species that can thrive in the desert.
Alan Levine/Flickr
Photosynthesis can be costly - but plants in hot and dry environments have evolved two special strategies for storing carbon dioxide, that could be used to protect crops against climate change.
What is it that makes Venus a hottie? Is it her hip-to-waist ratio, or just her slenderness?
"The Birth of Venus", Sandro Boticelli c1486.
Did you know that the sky isn’t actually blue? Perhaps in school you learned about how air scatters light, filtering out red light from the sun, but that is only half the story. While our eyes perceive…
Evolution is often perceived as being a “directional” or “adaptive” process. We often think of species evolving to become stronger or faster, or to have sharper teeth, for example. And we tend to see this…
Imagine you are asked to mentally arrange the numbers one to nine. Most people will place the numbers along a horizontal line from left to right, so that one is furthest left and nine is furthest right…
“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” is a common refrain. But usually it is not followed by the words “because your neighbours may kill you”. However, this is precisely the scenario faced by some female…