Evolution
Category archives for Evolution
The Serengeti Rules: The Quest to Discover How Life Works and Why It Matters (Book Review)
Posted by Greg Laden on February 11, 2016 
Sean B. Carroll is coming out with a new book called The Serengeti Rules: The Quest to Discover How Life Works and Why It Matters. This is the molecular biologist Sean Carroll, as distinct from the physicist (who wrote this). Homeostasis is one of the basic principles of biology. The term can be applied broadly…
The Story Of Life in 25 Fossils by Don Prothero: Review
Posted by Greg Laden on December 2, 2015 
This is a review of The Story of Life in 25 Fossils: Tales of Intrepid Fossil Hunters and the Wonders of Evolution. Fossils are cool. Why? Two very big and complex reasons. First, fossils allow us to reconstruct species that don’t exist any more. This is usually done by studying species that do exist, and…
Books On Fossils and Evolution
Posted by Greg Laden on November 25, 2015 
Over the last several months, a lot of great books on fossils and evolution (as in paleontology) have come out. I’ve selected the best for your consideration. These are great gifts for your favorite science-loving nephew, life science teaching cousin, or local school library. Actually, you might like some of these yourself. Let’s start off…
What happened to the dinosaurs?
Posted by Greg Laden on May 26, 2015 
Did you ever wonder? And if you did wonder, did you Google it? And if you did google it, did you get the results shown above? And if you did, did you click “feedback” and do something like the following? No? Do so now, please. This is important. Why? Because we have been hearing rumors…
How do bird species compete with each other?
Posted by Greg Laden on March 23, 2015 
This is one of those great examples of research you can probably use in an advanced biology classroom (high school) or intro college bio pretty effectively. It includes birds. It includes hormones. It includes evolution. What else is there, really? I did a very brief writeup on it here, and you can get the original…
Evolution Book For Young Children: Grandmother Fish
Posted by Greg Laden on June 28, 2014 
In a previous life (of mine) my father-in-law, an evolutionary biologist, kept an oil painting of a fish on the wall of the living room. At every chance he would point out, to visitors or to anyone else if there were no visitors, that he kept a portrait of his distant ancestor hanging in a…
The Accidental Species
Posted by Greg Laden on December 7, 2013 
The Accidental Species by my friend and colleague Henry Gee is a new, and excellent, book on Human Evolution. I recommend it. I’ll even review it soon. But in the meantime, you can get a free chapter of it by clicking this link to download a PDF supplied by the NCSE.
Reproductive Success and Fitness are not the same thing
Posted by Greg Laden on July 19, 2013 
Reproductive Success (RS) is defined in many ways in different places by different people, but one of the most common definitions is simply the number of offspring an individual produces. This definition is further modified in most cases to mean only those individuals that will be fertile, i.e., capable of producing further offspring. RS is…
How do snails coil?
Posted by Greg Laden on May 29, 2013 Typically, snails coil as they grow. The exact shape and characteristics of the coil are known to be a combination of genetic and environmental factors, depending on the snail. There is an interesting story involving snails and the young Jean Piaget. Piaget is famous for his work in psychology, but before that, when he was…
If a spider is in an Oreo Cookie, then evolution is true!
Posted by Greg Laden on March 14, 2013 
You know about the Atheists Nightmare, right? Also known as the Evolutionists Nightmare. No? It goes like this: That’s pretty darn convincing. Until someone opens up some closed thing and there is some new species in there, then EVOLUTION IS MADE UP!!!1!!! Well, it turns out, Evolution is True. Some guy on the internet opened…