Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Top o’ the morning to you on this Thursday, October 20, 2022: it’s National Eggo Day, celebrating a brand of frozen waffle (and probably created by the maker). Here’s the famous Eggo slogan in the first of many Eggo commercials. Posting will be light today as I am absolutely knackered from lack of sleep. It’s … Continue reading Thursday: Hili dialogue
On December 18 of last year, I wrote to Springer’s International Journal of Anthropology and Ethnology, which had published a loony creationist paper by one Sarah Umer, whose affiliation was listed as the “Department of Visual Arts & Graphic Designs at the Institute of Visual Arts & Designs at the Lahore College for Women University … Continue reading Springer “apparently” retracts a creationist paper, but it’s still on the website
by Matthew Cobb Last week (20-22 November) there was a paleogenomics jamboree at the Wellcome Genome Campus in Cambridge (the real one, in the UK). At the meeting, entitled “Human Evolution: Fossils, Ancient and Modern Genomes”, the great and the good of the ancient DNA and human evolution worlds got together to discuss the latest … Continue reading Svante Pääbo on human evolution – a must-watch lecture
The general view of human evolution among both scientists and laypeople is that “modern” Homo sapiens emerged from one single area in East Africa: perhaps from just a single population. That population supposedly evolved from an earlier ancestor of unknown identity—perhaps Homo erectus—underwent the transformation into the group of characters that identify our species, and … Continue reading Did modern Homo sapiens evolve in different parts of Africa?
by Matthew Cobb Back in October, we looked at the discovery of anatomically modern human teeth in China, from 100,000 years ago. This was surprising because although archaeological evidence suggested that Homo sapiens first came out of Africa perhaps 125,000 years ago, it was thought that they hung around the Middle East, maybe venturing into … Continue reading Human evolution: a tangled bank
This Gallup poll is about ten months old, but I don’t think I’ve posted it before, and I like to update the statistics since the same poll is given every year. The question, too, is always the same (see below) and deals specifically with human evolution. Here are the overall data: Gallup’s summary is this: … Continue reading Latest Gallup Poll on U.S. acceptance of evolution: flatlined, as usual
By Matthew Cobb One of the most important tools in evolutionary biology over the last thirty or so years has been the development of the ‘molecular clock’, which is a technique for measuring how long ago two organisms (or taxa or species) separated on the ‘tree of life’. This approach has been incredibly powerful, and … Continue reading Putting our DNA clocks back
by Greg Mayer One of the most exciting recent developments in paleoanthropology has been the discovery, based on just a few bones, of a previously unsuspected type of human called Denisovans (named for the cave where they were found in Siberia). Because of the paucity of skeletal evidence, our knowledge of them is based almost … Continue reading Denisovans are us
