Science Is Constantly Evolving
Discover the latest in climate change and evolution education news.
This week on Fossil Friday we have an unusually colorful specimen. Take a look! I was really impressed by its vibrancy when the curator brought it out. Its preservation is slightly unusual for fossils in general, but typical for the location where this specimen was found. In terms of…
I love biology in general, and evolutionary science in particular. As a biology major in college, I came to understand how evolution truly ties together all branches of the biological sciences. I find great comfort and peace in the concept that we are connected to all of nature, and by extension,…
The evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, it’s simply not the case that I select my leisure reading with a keen eye to the possibility of developing a theme for a blog post from it. And yet here I am again, with a copy of Matthew Pearl’s historical novel The Dante Club (2003) at…
When you think of climate change and animals, what do you think of? Birds? Butterflies? Maybe if you’re a biologist. But most people think of… yes, you guessed it, polar bears. These bears have become the unwitting symbol of climate change, as the first mammals to ever become endangered because of…
John Holland The computer scientist John Holland died on August 9, 2015, at the age of 86, according to a memorial notice from the Santa Fe Institute (August 10, 2015). Holland, in the words of the memorial notice, was "a pioneer in the study of complex adaptive systems and the…
Do me a favor. Go to your favorite search engine and enter “vaccines.” Then click on “images.” Go ahead. I’ll wait. OMG HAVE YOU EVER SEEN SO MANY NEEDLES IN YOUR WHOLE LIFE!!!??!?!?!? Want to slap your forehead? Now search for images of “childhood vaccination.” I’ll wait again. You guessed it…
Josh Rosenau sent this to Glenn Branch who sent it to me. What is “this”? It’s The Cartoon Guide to Vertebrate Evolution by artist Albertonykus (real name Albert Chen), an undergraduate student in geology at the University of Maryland. About this amazing creation, he writes on his Deviant Art…
NCSE is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, so we can’t endorse candidates. Exactly what that entails is tricky, but it means we generally don’t jump in on campaign events. What happened at last week’s first Republican primary debate is so important as to make that moot. Because they simply didn’t talk about…
This week’s fossil comes from the Ediacara Hills in southern Australia. The so-called Ediacaran fauna are a strange set of multicellular organisms that date back, way back, to before the Cambrian “explosion” made famous by the Burgess Shale. The Ediacaran critters are about 560 million years old,…