We all know the scene: a child, wrapped in his or her own imaginary world, fights off aliens while flying through space on a rocket fashioned from an empty box. But could such flights of fancy be critical…
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Articles on Evolution
Displaying 861 - 880 of 988 articles
What role have dogs played in human evolution? Woof … now there’s a question. Anthropologist Pat Shipman, in a recent issue of American Scientist, suggests dogs gave our human ancestors an advantage over…
Welcome to Peer Review, a series in which we ask leading academics to review books written by people working in the same field. Here Rob Brooks, Professor of Evolutionary Ecology at the University of New…
Changes to just three genetic “letters” among billions is said to have contributed to the evolution and development of mammalian…
A sensory organ in rorqual whales has been discovered that coordinates their signature lunge-feeding behaviour and may help…
Examination of mutant tomatoes has lead scientists to identify how the plant’s skin is assembled. Identifying the utility…
Two ink sacs from 160-million-year-old giant cephalopod fossils have been found to contain an identical melanin pigment to…
Palaeontology has gone high-tech: no more wax and plaster-cast models. Instead, 3D data from computed tomography (CT) scans is overturning long-held views of how the earliest land animals moved. Research…
In the last few years, several laboratory studies have shown that, to some extent, we can tell whether someone is gay or straight, just by glimpsing their face. When asked to categorise male and female…
When it comes to selecting a mate, females are traditionally thought of as the choosy sex; males, meanwhile, aren’t thought to be particularly picky. This makes sense for many species – the sex that invests…
Australian researchers have provided the first support for a 60-year-old evolution theory - that species with multiple colours in the same population evolve into new species faster than those with one…
Ancient land-crawling animals may have used the complex bone structures in their skin to process carbon dioxide, deterring…
The penis. It comes in so many different shapes and sizes … and that’s just in humans. As you would imagine, different species have very different penises. The males in most mammal species, including cats…
People often ask me whether natural selection continues to operate on modern humans in industrialised societies, even though technology has liberated so many from hunger and early death. My answer is always…
Geological features of the Great Rift Valley, birthplace of the human species, may be much older than previously believed…
Lying down and chewing cud is a crucial part of a cow’s digestive process, new research has confirmed, rather than a sign…
A report published today in Nature by Yohannes Hailie-Selassie and co-workers outlines the importance to our evolutionary story of some very ancient foot bones discovered recently in the Rift Valley of…
Fossilised teeth from a 200-million-year-old fish have been found to be the sharpest ever recorded. The conodont fish appeared…
The fossilised remains of three people found in southwest China could belong to an unknown species that was related to modern humans and survived until the end of the Ice Age 11,000 years ago. The discovery…
The origin of the human species remains one of the most fascinating and difficult topics of modern science. One of the main reasons for this is a continuing lack of agreement about how we should define…
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
