“It Will Rewrite Evolutionary Theory…” and “Prove Darwin Wrong…”

The title of this post are two common remarks one hears when the press covers evolution. Drives me straight up the wall. A study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B looks at these claims from the standpoint of paleontology and paleoanthropology.

The Independent Origins of Blood/Oxygen Transport Mechanisms

This is pretty cool. Science Daily PhysOrg mentions research in PNAS An extended excerpt from Science Daily PhysOrg:

Brain Size, Body Size, and Longevity

Science Daily mentions an interesting paper on the relationship between brain size, body, and longevity in mammals. From Science Daily:

Vestigial Organs and Relaxed Selection

On my view of descent with modification, the origin of rudimentary organs is simple. We have plenty of cases of rudimentary organs in our domestic productions,—as the stump of a tail in tailless breeds,—the vestige of an ear in earless breeds,—the reappearance of minute dangling horns in hornless breeds of cattle, more especially, according to [...]

Evolution of Nuclear Pore Elements

Science Daily mentions an interesting paper on Core Nuclear Pore Elements Likely Shared By All Eukaryotes:

Evolution: Education and Outreach Special Edition on Transitional Fossils

Evolution: Education and Outreach has a special edition on transitional fossils. Check it out! (Hat tip to The Panda’s Thumb)

Interesting Evolution News

There are a number of interesting pieces of evolutionary research in the news. Some are a little on the old side…

Interesting Evolutionary Research

There are are couple of interesting pieces of research in the news. The first concerns tail shedding in island lizards. PhysOrg has the story:

Megalodon and The Great White Shark: Transitional Fossil Found

But, it doesn’t link Great Whites and Megalodon. Longtime readers may remember this three part series on the subject. An interesting new fossil has been discovered that sheds some more light on the subject.

Interesting Science News

Some interesting news from around the internet. Jenifer Neils reviews a couple of books on looting – including one I reviewed – and provides an interesting take on both.

Evolutionary Processes and Disease

Back on the 17th I wrote about a study that was supposed to appear in BMC Evolutionary Biology. The study concerned the evolution of the MSX1 gene and its role in causing cleft lip and some skin derivative disorders.

Of Mice and Moths and Lizards Too

Earlier today I published an interesting picture. Here it is again for reference:

More Interesting Anthropology and Evolution News

There are some interesting pieces of research out there this week.

The Impact Of Blogging On The Creation-Evolution Debate

Aydin Orstan is one of the more interesting bloggers (something you don’t ordinarily expect from a malacologist) in the blogosphere, even if I don’t mention him as often as I should. One of his readers asked him about the impact of blogging on the evolution/creationism debate (and I use the word debate loosely because, well, [...]

Limb Loss in Scincid Lizards

I’m currently working on a long winded post about the new Homo erectus pelvis – which I hope to have up tomorrow – in the meantime it occurred to me that I had been meaning to mention a new paper in BMC Evolutionary Biology called Rapid and repeated limb loss in a clade of scincid [...]