High School Biology Teachers in U.S. Reluctant to Endorse Evolution in Class, Study Finds

ScienceDaily for January 28, 2011 reported on classroom teaching of evolution.

The majority of public high school biology teachers in the U.S. are not strong classroom advocates of evolutionary biology, despite 40 years of court cases that have ruled teaching creationism or intelligent design violates the Constitution, according to Penn State political scientists. A mandatory undergraduate course in evolutionary biology for prospective teachers, and frequent refresher courses for current teachers, may be part of the solution, they say.

Hard-to-Find Fish Reveals Shared Developmental Toolbox of Evolution

ScienceDaily for January 11, 2011 reported on similarities between fish and mammals.

Elephant fish, a relative of sharks, utilize the same genetic process for forming skeletal gill covers that lizards and mammals use to form fingers and toes, researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of Cambridge found. The precise timing of when and where that gene is expressed during embryonic development produces dramatic anatomical differences between elephant fish and their close relatives, the dogfish.

Getting a Leg Up on Evolution, the Comic-Book Version

Scientific American for January 3, 2011 reported on the use of comic books to teach the principles of evolution.

Editor's note: The following is an excerpt of the graphic book, "Evolution:
The Story of Life on Earth" (Hill and Wang, 2011). It was written by noted comic-book author and professor of biology Jay Hosler and illustrated by the award-winning duo Kevin Cannon and Zander Cannon.

Report of ancient meat-fest by human ancestors disputed

World Science for November 15, 2010 reported on disagreements about claims that ancient humanoids butchered meat.

But in the new work, Man­u­el Dominguez-Rodrigo of Com­plutense Uni­vers­ity in Ma­drid and col­leagues con­clud­ed that the “tool marks” were more likely scratch­es caused by an­i­mals tram­pling across the bones, which at some point were bur­ied in shal­low, sandy soil. The re­search­ers com­pared the orig­i­nal find­ings with pre­vi­ous stud­ies that have ex­am­ined nat­u­ral pro­cesses, such as tram­pling, which of­ten leave marks on fos­sil sur­faces that can be mis­tak­en for tool marks.

Into Africa? Fossils Suggest Earliest Anthropoids Colonized Africa

ScienceDaily for October 28, 2010 reported on fossil evidence for anthropoids colonizing Africa.

A new discovery described by a team of international scientists, including Carnegie Museum of Natural History paleontologist Christopher Beard, suggests that anthropoids -- the primate group that includes humans, apes, and monkeys -- "colonized" Africa, rather than originally evolving in Africa as has been widely accepted. According to the paper published in the journal Nature, what is exceptional about these new fossils -- discovered at the Dur At-Talah escarpment in central Libya -- is the diversity of species present: the site includes three distinct families of anthropoid primates that lived in North Africa at approximately the same time.

Boa Constrictors Can Have Babies Without Mating, New Evidence Shows

ScienceDaily for November 4, 2010 reported on reproduction of Boa Constrictors.

More strikingly, the finding shows that the babies produced from this asexual reproduction have attributes previously believed to be impossible.

New Understanding of Bizarre Extinct Mammal: Shares Common Ancestor With Rodents, Primates

ScienceDaily for October 11, 2010 reported on new fossil evidence of an ancient mammal.

University of Florida researchers presenting new fossil evidence of an exceptionally well-preserved 55-million-year-old North American mammal have found it shares a common ancestor with rodents and primates, including humans.

Genetic Clues to Evolution of Jaws in Vertebrates Unearthed

ScienceDaily for September 27, 2010 reported on the possible development of jaws in vertebrates.

Lampreys are eel-like fish with no jaws and a "very strange skeleton compared to their cousins" with jaws, Medeiros said. But "when we looked carefully at how genes are used during the development of the lamprey head, we saw that the basic plan for a jaw is there, and that only a few genes likely had to be moved around to create full-blown jaws."

Evolution Rewritten, Again and Again

ScienceDaily for September 1, 2010 reported on fossiles and evolution.

This is especially true of the fossil record of human origins from their primate relatives. Even though early human fossils are immensely rare, and new discoveries make a big splash in the scientific literature and in the media, they sit randomly across the evolutionary tree of early humans. In other words, most discoveries of new fossil species simply fill in gaps in the fossil record that we already knew existed.

A World Science article is here.

'Mitochondrial Eve': Mother of All Humans Lived 200,000 Years Ago

ScienceDaily for August 17, 2010 reported on the age of "Mitochondrial Eve".

The most robust statistical examination to date of our species' genetic links to "mitochondrial Eve" -- the maternal ancestor of all living humans -- confirms that she lived about 200,000 years ago. The Rice University study was based on a side-by-side comparison of 10 human genetic models that each aim to determine when Eve lived using a very different set of assumptions about the way humans migrated, expanded and spread across Earth.

Mammal-Like Crocodile Fossil Found in East Africa, Scientists Report

ScienceDaily for August 4, 2010 reported on a crocodile with mammal-like teeth.

"If you only looked at the teeth, you wouldn't think this was a crocodile. You would wonder what kind of strange mammal or mammal-like reptile it is," said study lead author Patrick O'Connor, associate professor of anatomy in the Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine.

A Scientific American article is here.
A National Geographic Daily News article is here.
A LiveScience article is here.

Tracks may tell tale of reptilian land conquest

World Science for July 30, 2010 reported on tracks made by reptiles.

“At first life was re­strict­ed to coast­al swamps where lush rain­for­est ex­isted, full of gi­ant ferns and dra­gonflies. How­ev­er, when rep­tiles came on the scene they pushed back the fron­tiers, con­quering the dry con­ti­nen­tal in­te­ri­ors.”

Animal Connection: New Hypothesis for Human Evolution and Human Nature

ScienceDaily for July 20, 2010 reported on human attachments to animals as a factor in evolution.

Shipman suggests that the animal connection was prompted by the invention of stone tools 2.6-million years ago. "Having sharp tools transformed wimpy human ancestors into effective predators who left many cut marks on the fossilized bones of their prey," Shipman said. Becoming a predator also put our ancestors into direct competition with other carnivores for carcasses and prey. As Shipman explains, the human ancestors who learned to observe and understand the behavior of potential prey obtained more meat. "Those who also focused on the behavior of potential competitors reaped a double evolutionary advantage for natural selection," she said.