EvoWiki/News

Online news resources
-
 * Science & Nature @ BBC News
 * New Scientist News
 * Science Daily
 * Science in Africa
 * EurekAlert!
 * Nature Science Update
 * Scientific American news
 * New York Times Complete Coverage - The Evolution Debate
 * HyperSuper.com - Evolution related articles
 * Wikinews
 * Cosmosmagazine.com

July
22 July: Paleontologists have discovered a complete skeleton belonging to the dinosaur Genus Tarbosaurus. 

15 July: Experts at a London museum unable to identify an unknown insect. This insect may be a new species that has evolved very recently.

6 July: Studies show that men like women undergo reproductive aging.

June
20 June: Eating certain foods makes you smarter.

10 June: A single horned unicorn-like deer has recently been spotted in italy.

3 June: A scientist Mark Changizi claims that humans see 1/10 of a second into the future.

May

 * 30 May: Monkey brain runs robotic arm.


 * 29 May: The largest pterosaurs hunted on foot.


 * 28 May: A recently discovered fossil of a fish embryo attached to its mother by an umbilical cord in 380 million year old Devonian strata provides the earliest fossil evidence of vertebrates giving live birth to their young.


 * 20 May: Stickleback fish in a once polluted river near Seattle have revolved armor to survive the influx of predators that occurred after the cleanup of the river in the mid 1960's.


 * 12 May: Albert Einstein said the bible is primitive and childish.

April
19 April:French anthropologist Germaine Tillion dies at age 100.

18 April: Swedish researchers find a spruce tree that is over 8000 years old. 

14 April: Physicist John Wheeler dies from pneumonia at 96 years old.

1 April: Climate change as the cause of a fatal frog fungus known as the chytrid fungus not conclusive. 

1 April: First Climate change then human activity may have driven the woolly mammoths extinct. 

February
27 February: Biological Encyclopedia website too popular on first day, crashes.

20 February: Modern humans may have interbreed with Homo erectus (subscription required).

13 February: Biologists have recently discovered that junk Rna may have played an important role in vertebrate evolution.

10 February: Scientists find Sparrow sized pterodactyl fossil in China. The fossil was discovered in China in 2004, and was dated to be 120 million years old (about 20 million years before the larger pterodactyls appeared. The discover, Dr. Xialoin Wang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his colleagues named the fossil Nemicoloperus crypticus. It is small, with a wingspan of just 25cm (9.8"), and because of features such as curved toes, is considered to have been a tree-dwelling, lending weight to the 'trees-down' hypothesis of pterosaur evolution.

9 February: Biologists have recently discovered giant sea spiders and a number of other large creatures in the Antarctic oceans.

9 February: An ancient Neanderthal tooth reveals that the Neanderthals may have been more mobile than once thought.

1 February: The remains of an fossilized crocodile thought to be a transitional fossil that bridges the gap between modern and prehistoric crocodiles recently displayed in Brazil. The fossil, discovered in 2004 near Monte Alto in Brazil, was dated to the late Cretaceous period (about 80 mya). The animal was 1.7m long, weight about 30-40kg and has been classified as a member of the Peirosauridae family. The skull structure shows eyes that were rather to the side, whereas aquatic crocodilians have eyes closer to the top of their heads. The discovery not only shows that crocodilians adapted for aquatic life later than expected, but also indicated that modern crocodilians may have evolved in the southern hemisphere. 

January
25 January: Dust samples from a comet Wild2 forces scientists to rethink the idea that comets are frozen time capsules that formed during the first billion years in our solar systems history. 

25 January: The Catholic church claims that the Human Fertilization and Embryology Bill that has recently been passed before parliament will allow and encourage scientists to create "half human half animal" hybrids. 

24 January: Bacteria resistant to commonly used antibiotics have recently been found in Wild Arctic Birds.

17 January: Scientists in california claim to have cloned two human embryos. 

16 January: A fossil of a 130-million-year-old Psittacosaurus with preserved skin recently found in china. 

16 January: Giant rodent as large as a bull found in pliocene strata. 

14 January: Scientists grow a beating rat heart in the lab. 

December
28 December: New fossil evidence reveals that Pandas competed with giant apes for bamboo 500,000 years ago in southern china.

19 December: New scientific evidence suggests that whales evolved from small deer like animals known as Indohyus rather than from the wolf like animal Pakicetus as previously thought.

17 December:New Giant Rat, Pygmy Possum Discovered. 

14 December:A Giant human skeleton purportedly discovered by National Geographic has been found to be a hoax.

14 December: Creationist Alexander York, 33, is sentenced to maximum five years in prison for killing backpacker Rudi Boa, 28, after an argument about evolution. 

13 December: A group of paleontologists led by Alexander Schmidt from the Berlin Museum of Natural History recently discovered a Meat-Eating Fungus trapped in Amber dating from 145 million year old early Cretaceous period strata. 

13 December: Australian paleobiologist Gavin Young discovers 400 million year old placoderm (bone-covered fish) fossil with eye casings showing primitive vertebrate eye muscles, revealing the evolutionary history of this aspect of the eye. Press Release

12 December: Dr Darin Croft and team determine fossils found in the Andes of Chile represent a new species of glyptodont (extinct armadillo relatives), now named Parapropalaehoplophorus septentrionalis. 

6 December: German polar bear Knut turns one year old. 

1 December: Dr. Michael Bonsall at the University of Oxford has recently discovered that animals cannibalizing some of their own offspring may have been ancillary to the evolution of parental care. 

November
29 November: Christine Comer, former science teacher and director of Texas Education Agency, is forced to resign after forwarding an email message about a talk critical of intelligent design. The email message was from the National Center of Science Education, and concerned an talk by Barbara Forrest that was critical of the Intelligent Design Movement. The TEA has, since September, a new policy, put in place by the Chair of the State Board of Education - creationist Dr. Don McLeroy - where it must remain neutral in matters of evolution and creationism. Despite evolution being legally supported by the science standards in Texas, Ms. Comer was asked to resign because sending such an email was alleged to imply an endorsement of the evolution side. The pro-evolution bloggers have been in an uproar over this. One at Panda's Thumb has said "Why is it that ID is all in favor of teaching the controversy except when the controversy involves showing the history of ID, its demise at Dover, by one of the expert witnesses of the trial?" Texas Citzens for Science NY Times Article Austringer Blog Panda's Thumb Blog

21 November: A 390 million year old claw from an Eurypterid, or sea scorpion, has been discovered in Germany. It is so large that if the rest of the body could be recovered it would be largest "bug" ever with a length of around 8 feet. 

17 November:Dinosaur with vacuum cleaner like mouth found by paleontologist Paul serino. 

15 November :Parasites Might Spur Evolution Of Strange Amphibian Breeding Habits.

15 November :Ancient Retroviruses Spurred Evolution Of Gene Regulatory Networks In Humans And Other Primates. 

15 November: A fossilised bone dug up near Hastings 113 years ago has been recognised as a completely new family of dinosaur. 

13 November: A new hominid genus and species, Nakalipithecus nakayamai, described based on fossilised jaw found in Kenya. 

7 November: UK study finds another bird-like trait for theropod dinosaurs (like ' and '): avian air sacs. Dr Jonathan Codd and other researchers at Manchester University have noted uncinate processes, small bones on the ribcage that assist in breathing, on many theropod fossils. They found that the dinosaurs had uncinate processes that were very similar to that of diving birds, like penguins. Free Full Article

2 November: Geneticists in Washington Dc: have engineered a breed of mice whose human equivalent would have similar abilities to the U.S. bicycling champion Lance Armstrong, they say. The mice can run for 20 meters without stopping or slowing down and can reproduce at 2.5 years old which is almost unheard of in normal mice. 

October
25 October: A study conducted by biologists at the University of Utah demonstrates that the sexual orientation of nematode worms can be changed by modifying their genes. 

25 October: Some scientists suggest that Neanderthals may have had red hair and pale skin similar to some Modern humans. 

22 October: Microbiologists suggest that Variations in two key genes rather than the amount of HIV in the blood determines how quickly HIV progresses to AIDS in an individual. 

20 October: In a "fireside chat" at Yale University on Wednesday, prominent naturalists Edward O. Wilson and Peter H. Raven predicted dire consequences for the planet's biodiversity and habitability (including the fact that as many as 50% of species may go extenct by 2100 ce) unless current trends in consumption and environmental degradation are reversed. The two scientists were awarded the Addison Emery Verrill Medal by the Peabody Museum of Natural History for their contributions to natural science before a capacity crowd at Yale's Sprague Hall. Both are known for their environmental activism as well as extensive research and popular writing.



17 October: Oldest reptile tracks discovered in Canada, pushing the evolution of reptiles back slightly to 315 million years ago. British palaeontologist, Dr Howard Falcon-Lang, stumbled across the tracks in sea cliffs of New Brunswick. Dr Falcon-Lang adn his colleagues conclude that the tracks were probably made by a lizard-like reptile known as Hylonomus lyelli. These tracks were dated to be about 1-3 million years older than nearby skeletal fossils of the same creature that had been discovered previously. 

13 October: In September Kent Hovind's Creation Science Evangelism (CSE) ministry filed several DMCA copyright complaints on YouTube causing the video-sharing website to ban several users. On 27 September 2007 an IP address belonging to CSE Enterprises removed all mention of the controversy from the Wikipedia article about Kent Hovind. The editor of the whitewashing included the edit summary, "Removed because their is no evidence that CSE requested accounts to be suspended. It is not certain if videos were part of public domain. This section is pure speculation and gossip." 

12 October: The Council of Europe Parliamentary assembly (CoE) urged its member states to only teach creationism as nothing more than belief. The CoE stressed the potential threat to human rights that may result from creationist doctrines.

7 October: Researchers at Duke University believe that they have found the purpose of the vermiform appendix, long thought to be useless. The theory, published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology this week, is that the appendix creates and protects helpful microorganisms for a person's digestive system. 

2 October: David Vitter, a Republican United States Senator from Louisiana, has earmarked $100,000 for Louisiana Family Forum (LFF), a conservative creationist organization. Vitter put the earmark into the labor, health and education financing bill for fiscal year 2008. The bill specifies the Louisiana Family Forum received the money "to develop a plan to promote better science education." 

September
30 September: Chips from 10 million years ago have revealed new insights into fish diets and their influence on fish evolution, according to new research featured in this weekâ€™s issue of the journal Science. The chips were found, along with scratches, on the teeth of fossil stickleback fish and reveal for the first time how changes in the way an animal feeds control its evolution over thousands of years. 

30 September: DNA evidence suggests Neanderthals ranged as far as Siberia. Svante PÃ¤Ã¤bo and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, examined skeletal remains in the Okladnikov cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia. These bones were dated to 30,000-38,000 years old. The team succeeded in extracting some mitochondrial DNA, and compared this to similar sequences of western European Neanderthals and found a very close match. Archaeologists had previously thought Neanderthals had a range extending only to modern-day Uzbekistan. 

24 September: A teacher at a US community college in Red Oak, Iowa says he was fired after telling his students not to interpret the story of Adam and Eve as a literal account of events circa BC 4000.

20 September: Re-examination of Velociraptor fossils suggest the dinosaur species had feathers. Alan Turner at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, US, examined some Mongolian fossils of Velociraptor and noted that some of the bones featured 'quill knobs'. Quill knobs are locations on the bones where the ligaments of feathers attach to the bone. However, researchers also note that due to the large size of the Velociraptor, about 1m tall and 13kg in weight, and its short forelimbs, the feathers were unlikely to assist in flight. 

20 September:Evangelist Kent Hovind's ministry filed several DMCA copyright complaints on YouTube causing the video-sharing website to ban several users. Hovind, who is now serving ten years in federal prison, turned Creation Science Evangelism (CSE) over to his younger son, Eric Hovind, in January 2007.

20 September: Chimp-like wrist bones of Homo floresiensis strongly suggest the bones did not come from a malformed Homo sapiens. Matthew Tocheri, a palaeoanthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, a specialists in the evolution of the hand and wrist, performed a statistical analysis of wrist features of the 'Hobbit man'. The findings clearly showed the species had a wrist like that of an early hominid, like Australopithecus, rather than a modern human. This rules out microcephalic humans as the source of the fossils (most of the debate has so far been concerned with the skull of Homo floresiensis), as microcephaly does not cause abnormalities of the wrist. 

September 06:'Alien' Jaws Help Moray Eels Feed.

September 06: A new fossil suggests that miniturization in some species of dinosaurs was a preadaptation for the evolution of birds. The new species, named Mahakala omnogovae, is the smallest of theropod dinosaurs found yet and is in the family Dromaeosauridae which has been the focus of paleontologists studying bird evolution. The fossil was found in the Gobi Desert dates to 80 million years old and is about 70cm long. Although flightless it, like other theropod dinosaurs, has feathers and other features associated with modern birds. The paper, to be released on September 7th issue of Science, indicates that species of theropods in the Dromaeosaurid family evolved in different directions with the smaller species becoming the ancestors to modern birds and one of the larger species becoming the well known Velociraptor. Official News release, ,

September 04:Large scale gene transfer between single-celled and multicellular organisms reported. 

August
August 29: Discovery of the first fossil orchid reveals orchid flowers allows for an accurate evolutionary tree of the family to be created. With genetic material preserved in the amber fossil, researchers from Harvard University were able to compare the genetic information with those of modern day plants to construct an evolutionary scenario, with the origin of the Orchidaceae family suggested to be 84 million years ago - before the mass extinction that killed the dinosaurs. 

August 23: A new fossil primate, Chororapithecus abyssinicus, pushes the division between the common human and gorilla ancestor beyond 10 million years. A joint Ethiopian-Japanese team discovered the fossils 160 kilometers east of the Ethiopian capitol of Addis Ababa during February of 2006. Analyzing the molars with state-of-the-art 3D imaging it was determined that they shared similarities to modern day gorillas inferring a similar diet for the ancient apes. Researchers are excited with this and other recent finds and say that "...we're closing in on it (human evolution) from both ends." 

August 20: Structure of ancient protein sheds light on evolution at the molecular level. Joe Thornton and Jamie Bridgham of the University of Oregon used bioinformatics and molecular synthesis to recreated the ancient precursor protein to the glucocorticoid receptor, the protein that responds to the body's stress responses. Biochemists Eric Ortlund and Matthew Redinbo of University of North Carolina then used X-ray crystallography techniques to determine the precise atomic structure of the molecule. Using this data, it was found that just seven mutations would have been needed to allow the ancestral gene to respond to cortisol. 

August 20: The Turkish creationist Harun Yahya has successfully lobbied a Turkish court to block WordPress.com, claiming certain blogs were defamatory and slanderous. 

August 17: Fossil Fish Jaws Give Information On Our Own Remote Ancestors.

August 17: An amateur paleontologist's collection puts urban Maryland on the map as being one of the richest areas in the world for Cretaceous dinosaur tracks. Ray Stanford's collection contains over 300 specimens with 14 different types of animals from carnivorous and herbivorous dinosaurs to birds, mammals, and lizards. Because of the lack of bones, teeth, and other fossils it was thought that this area did not contain much life during this period, but the trace fossil tracks have changed how paleontologists view the history of life in the eastern United States of the Lower Cretaceous. 

August 10: Discovery of a fossilised pectoral fin of a coelacanth sheds light on evolution of tetrapod limbs. Matt Friedman, a graduate student of University of Chicago, discovered the only known fossil of an ancestral coelacanth's fin in a cliffface in Wyoming. This ancestor of the living coelacanth, named Shoshonia arctopteryx, possessed asymmetrical fins (limbs are also assymetrical), whereas the living species has symmetrical fins. This means that the modern coelacanth must have evolved symmetrical fins in the 400 million years since Shoshonia, thus showing that the species is not a true 'living fossil' and that its limbs are not reflective of the precursor to limbs. Journal Article (Subscription Required)

July
July 31: Sixteen un-fossilized Cypress trees from the Upper Miocene, 8-11 million years old, have been discovered in an open lignite coal mine. The mine, in Bukkanbary northern Hungary, workers first discovered trees that had been turned to coal, but as they dug deeper the trunks were discovered to still be in an organic state. The swamp cypress were growing on the shores of a freshwater lake and estimated to be 300-400 years of age and 30-40 meters tall when a sandstorm covered the trees, killing and preserving them, to a height of 6 meters. After the sand encompassing them was removed the 1.5-3 meter in diameter trunks started to dry out and decay. Measures are being taken to preserve this unique discovery. A Video from the BBC & the original new release in Hungarian

July 31: DNA analysis of primates shows that humans have a useful set of duplicates of the aquaporin 7 (AQP7) gene, which codes for a protein that transports water and glycerol into the cell. The study showed that humans have five copies of the gene, whereas chimpanzees have two and other primates just one. The researchers hypothesize that this duplication yielded an evolutionary advantage in endurance exercise (eg long-distance running) allowing energy (in the form of glycerol) to be more rapidly mobilised. 

July 27: Variability within the trilobite species may have been the reason that they evolved so fast. Mark Webster, a palaeontologist at the University of Chicago, has analysed a number of trilobite fossils, and has found a greater variability in the Cambrian (500 million years ago) fossils than those in the early Permian (250 million years ago). He concludes that this variability allowed the trilobite to adapt to many varieties of environments. However, this increase in specialisation ultimately prevented them from being able to adapt to the changing climate, leading to their demise. Journal Article (Subscription Required)

July 21: Young Earth Creationist Menachem "Michael" Korn, suspected of sending death threats to various biology faculty and others at the University of Colorado at Boulder, is apparently missing or on the lam. Although the police said they will not name the individual in question until the person is arrested, previous reports and comments by faculty and staff at the university made it clear that Korn is the man in question. 

July 14:The Young Earth Creationist who sent threatening emails and letters to biologists at the University of Colorado at Boulder also sent threatening letters to the University chancellor G.P. Peterson as well as the vice-chancellor of undergraduate education and others.

The man who had sent the threats has been identified as Menachem "Michael" Korn, a former Orthodox Jew who converted to Messianic Judaism (no longer affiliated with either) and who now self-identifies as "Christian". Claimed excerpts of the threats were posted on The Panda's Thumb, a biology blog that focuses on "the claims of the anti-evolution movement.From wikinews and pandas thumb

July 14: Scientists reported that they had documented very fast evolution in the butterfly species Hypolimnas bolina. After infection by the bacterium Wolbachia, the male population dropped drastically to about one percent of the total population. However, after approximately ten generations (about a year) the male population had rebounded to about 39 percent of the overall population. 

July 11:On Friday, anonymous threats were sent to the evolutionary biology labs at the University of Colorado at Boulder by email and workers returned to their labs Monday morning to find threatening messages slipped under their doors. The threats mention a group affiliated with creationism, but police did not release the name of the group as it is still investigating if the threats were sent by them. 

July 7: Comparative genome analysis suggests that human gut flora may have originally lived as bacteria around deep-sea vents. The deep-sea bacteria genera Sulfurovumand Nitratiruptor, share many virulence genes, such as those for respiration and detoxification, with their pathogenic relatives, Helicobacter and Campylobacter. The authors propose that life around these vents may have lead to the origins of essential genes for life inside the body of an animal. 

July 3: Rats have been observed assisting other rats, especially if the other rat shows kindness first. Claudia Rutte and Michael Taborsky of the University of Berne in Switzerland had rats pull a lever to give food to another rat. Rats were more likely to pull the lever after the other rat had given them food than if they hadn't received any help. The researchers conclude that this is evidence for generalised reciprocity - a tit-for-tat strategy that doesn't require any knowledge of others, just general knowledge of the level of cooperation in the population. Full Article (Open-access)

June
June 22: Science academies urge teaching of evolution The Interacademy Panel on International Issues (IAP), a global network of the world's science academies, has released a statement urging parents and teachers to provide children with 'the facts about the origin and evolution of life on Earth'. The statement is signed by 67 of the 92 member academies of the organisation, and notes that in some schools around the world, "testable theories" about evolution are being "concealed, denied or confused by theories not testable by science".

June 16-20: The annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), the Society of Systematic Biologists (SSB), and the American Society of Naturalists (ASN) began in Christchurch, New Zealand. This meeting is unique in that it is the first time the convention has occurred outside of the USA or Canada. Official Website

June 15: Scientists at the University of Michigan have discovered that in an attempt to avoid predators, prey populations can decline due to detrimental adaptations that decrease the population. Studies in the Great Lakes on the interactions between invasive predators and the native prey populations show that adaptations allowing for prey species to avoid the new predators will, in some cases, lead to an overall less fit population. In the studies an exotic invasive species of water flea from Europe drove the native daphnia to adapt in overall detrimental ways. In one instance daphnia retreated to lower depths which decreased their reproductive rate due to a decrease in environmental temperature and in another the adaptation of defensive spines in Daphnia caused individuals to have a harder time obtaining food. &

June 14: A bulldozer preparing a site for new housing in Carlsbad, California uncovered a Mastodon that is presumed to be around 220,000 years old. Dubbed â€œCarlyâ€, the remains are most likely a young adult male and include the tusks, upper and lower jaws, teeth, a vertebrate, and fragments of other bones. Based on other fossils and the sediments where the animal was found scientists think its final resting place was an oxbow lake. &

June 13: A new type of dinosaur has been uncovered in the Gobi Desert dating from 85 million years ago (Late Cretaceous) that has added a completely new branch to bird evolution. Named Gigantoraptor elrianensis, it is the largest known specimen of oviraptor and the largest dinosaur with a beak instead of teeth. ,, , &

June 12: Johanna RÃ¶nn leading a team of evolutionary biologists at the University of Uppsala in Sweden has discovered a case of sexual selection in multiple species of seed beetle. The penises of males have a medieval-mace-like appearance allowing them to anchor themselves in the female increasing the chances of passing along their genetic load. This has lead to a â€œco-evolutionary arms raceâ€ says RÃ¶nn  in his paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in which the females are sometimes injured to the extent that cannot reproduce. But donâ€™t fear natural selection is still around and females of these species include extra protection compared with their un-spiked genital cousins in the form of padded and tougher genitals. &

June 11: A new type of gliding reptile was discovered in a quarry on the Virginia-North Carolina border and will be on display at the Virginia Museum of Natural History. This reptile, Mecistotrachelos apeoros, is a type of protorosaur and was found in Late Triassic sedimentary rock dating around 220 million years old. ,, , &

May
May 9: Screenshot of a demonstration page for Kiwa hirsuta.Today, some of the leading biologists in the world announced that they are starting a new project to write the Encyclopedia of Life, a project that aims to bring resources on all 1.8 million species together.

The website will take the form of a wiki-like environment, but in contrast to Wikimedia's project Wikispecies, only scientists will be allowed to edit. The information will be made freely available on the internet. "Sharing what we know, we can protect Earth's biodiversity and better conserve our natural heritage," said said Jonathan F. Fanton, President of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which has donated US$10 million to the project. Another US$2.5 million grant came from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

April
April 12: On Wednesday, NASA scientists said that, unlike green plants on the planet Earth, plants on other planets may be the color red or yellow.

Plants on Earth are green because they contain chlorophyll. The chlorophyll appears green because it absorbs mainly blue and red light in order to produce food for the plant via photosynthesis, while reflecting the green light frequency.

April 19: It was reported that 380 million year old trees have been found in New York that were more tree like than other "fossil trees" during that time.

November

 * Lizard Isles reveal natural selection at work

April
Apr 6: It was reported that yet another "missing link" has been found, Tiktaalik roseae, a transitional fossil, mostly fish but clearly on the way to evolving limbs for walking. "a team of scientists led by Neil H. Shubin of the University of Chicago say they have uncovered several well-preserved skeletons of the fossil fish in sediments of former streambeds in the Canadian Arctic".
 * "Two other paleontologists, commenting on the find in a separate article in the journal, said that a few other transitional fish had been previously discovered from approximately the same Late Devonian time period, 385 million to 359 million years ago. But Tiktaalik is so clearly an intermediate "link between fishes and land vertebrates," they said, that it "might in time become as much an evolutionary icon as the proto-bird Archaeopteryx," which bridged the gap between reptiles (probably dinosaurs) and today's birds."
 * and
 * "Dr. Shubin's team played down the fossil's significance in the raging debate over Darwinian theory, which is opposed mainly by some conservative Christians in this country, but other scientists were not so reticent. They said this should undercut the argument that there is no evidence in the fossil record of one kind of creature becoming another kind."

February
Feb 27: Utah House of Representatives votes down a bill to challenge evolution in high school science classes 

February 15: Evolution may occur faster than once thought, scientists claim. Two graduate students at Harvard claim to have shown that evolution can happen much faster than previously thought. Physics student Peter Lu and his former roommate, economist Motohiro Yogo, decided to apply an economics model to a well-known marine fossil record in order to predict how fast life can adapt to changes in the environment. The technique, vector autoregression, is used to predict the stock market based on its historical behavior.

November
Nov 18: "UK HIV drug resistance increasing"

Nov 18: "Vatican Official Refutes Intelligent Design" (AP)

Nov 9: "Pennsylvania Voters Oust School Board" (AP) [Dover, PA pro-Intelligent Design school board members replaced]

Nov 9: "Proponents of intelligent design score big victory in Kansas" (AP)

Nov 4: "A Vatican cardinal said Thursday the faithful should listen to what secular modern science has to offer, warning that religion risks turning into "fundamentalism" if it ignores scientific reason." 

August

 * DDT-resistant insects have additional genetic advantage that helps resistance spread

October

 * Catholic Church no longer swears by truth of the Bible:
 * Vertebrate and insect common ancestor could have had proto-eye
 * Human evolution: Human cousin species, Homo floresiensis, discovered
 * Duck-billed platypus has ten sex chromosomes
 * Genetics: Mice can survive without "Junk DNA"
 * Microbiology: Giant "virus" makes own proteins
 * Paleontology: Fossil dinosaur slept like a bird
 * Genetics: More evidence that homosexuality is example of kin selection
 * Molecular biology: Molecular clocks tied to fossil record
 * Abiogenesis: Did volcanoes help to create life?
 * Paleontology: Feathered ancestor of T. rex uncovered
 * Geneticist Maurice Wilkins dies ]
 * Human Evolution: Early man left a trail of lice

September

 * Paleontology: Ancient long-necked reptile was a suction feeder
 * Co-extinction
 * Paleontology: Fossils support case for dutiful dinosaur parenting
 * Human evolution: Case for 6myo upright-walking ancestor gets legs
 * RNA world: What Came Before DNA?
 * Getting Closer To Life's Dawn
 * Intelligent design paper published in peer reviewed journal

August

 * The Origin of Breathing: Protoglobin in Archaea
 * Paleontology: Early bird had the brains to fly
 * Paleontology: Growth study shows T. rex teens would have been a handfull

July

 * Happy 100th birthday Ernst Mayr!
 * Ethology: Male songbird selectively ignores long-term mate
 * Human evolution: Variation in colour vission genes may have helped ancestors see the fruit for the trees
 * Human evolution: Old age was secret to modern human's sucess
 * Biochemistry: Bacteria found to possess precision clocks

June

 * Ethology: Tropical primate found to hibernate
 * Neurology/Genetics: Gene linked to lasting love in Voles

April

 * Evolutionary psychology: Appetite may be hard-wired
 * Paleontology: Bridgwater Plesiosaur fossil found
 * Human evolution: Humans are different from chimps because of modifier genes
 * Gene theropy repairs damaged heart cells
 * Paleontology: fossil illuminates evolution of limbs from fins

March

 * Genome project: lab-rat genome sequenced
 * Birds share language gene with humans
 * Human evolution: Early humans traded bite for brain
 * Climate changes cause speciation
 * Astrobiology: Life on Mars
 * Microbiology: Virus blocks HIV
 * Human evolution: Fossilised human teeth found in Ethiopia
 * Entomology: Pushy ants avoid congestion
 * Primitive crustacean, Remipedia, is surprisingly brainy
 * Public education: Ohio evolution lesson plan includes intelligent design

February

 * Mammal mums can alter their offspring's gender
 * Evolutionary psychology: Hunger intesifies taste
 * Human evolution: humans are hardwired to feel other people's pain
 * Artificial selection: Geneological map reveals top 10 dogs
 * Paleoentimology: Oldest fossil insect found
 * Evolutionary psychology: Monkey mating requires a lot of brainpower

January

 * Public education: Georgia remove the word "evolution" from science standards
 * Human evolution: Primates trade smell for sight
 * Biogeography Human genetic map
 * Paleontology: Complete Mammoth skull found in southern England
 * Human evolution: Ancient DNA Mutations Permitted Humans To Adapt To Colder Climates
 * internal compass helps blind mole-rat find its way
 * Human evolution: Evolution of intelligence
 * Abiogenesis: Borax Minerals
 * Public education: HB 911 (Intelligent design in Missouri, USA)
 * Astrobiology: One tenth of stars may support life

December

 * Paleontology: fossil finds record Elephant evolution
 * Human evolution: Evolution of art
 * Sexual reproduction: oldest fossil penis found
 * Paleontology: Fossil ancestor of marsupials found
 * Oldest evidence of photosynthesis
 * Microbiology, genetics: Staphylococcus gains resistance by gene transfer

November

 * Behavioural science: Sociable Baboons are better mothers
 * Behavioural science: Gorillas teach offspring child care
 * Human evolution: Evolution of human customs
 * Primatology/Biology of Gender: A study conducted by American and Swedish biologists suggests that Females are the dominant sex in most primate communities.

October

 * Paleontology: Smart wings made Pterosaurs agile fliers
 * Primatology New scientific research may explain why some animals chose to care for other animals offspring before their own.
 * Abiogenesis: Clay could have encouraged first cells to form
 * Taxonomy: New frog family discovered
 * Embryology: Scaffold may help stem cells grow into organs

September

 * Biochemistry: Serine protease
 * Human evolution: Jawbone hints at Europe's earliest modern humans
 * Paleontology: Giant extinct rodent was Guinea Pig relative

August

 * Human evolution: Human hair
 * Public education: Texas textbooks, Vardy foundation
 * Human evolution: when humans became carnivores
 * Biogeography: First humans in America

August

 * Mosquitoes with a taste for bird blood evolve mammalian tastes