Evolution Diary

Mammalodon probably lived by sucking small animals up from the seafloor

An ancient “dwarf” whale appears to have fed by sucking small animals out of the seafloor mud with its short snout and tongue, experts say.

Researchers say the 25 million-year-old fossil is related to today’s blue whales – the largest animals on Earth. Keep reading →

Japanese marine researchers said on Tuesday they had found and successfully filmed a young coelacanth — a rare type of fish known as “a living fossil” — in deep water off Indonesia.

The creature was found on October 6 at a depth of 161 metres (528 feet) in Manado Bay off Sulawesi Island, where the Indonesian coelacanth was first discovered, according to the researchers. Keep reading →

Program Description

Where did we come from? What makes us human? An explosion of recent discoveries sheds light on these questions, and NOVA’s comprehensive, three-part special, “Becoming Human,” examines what the latest scientific research reveals about our hominid relatives.

Part 1, “First Steps,” examines the factors that caused us to split from the other great apes. The program explores the fossil of “Selam,” also known as “Lucy’s Child.” Paleoanthropologist Zeray Alemseged spent five years carefully excavating the sandstone-embedded fossil. NOVA’s cameras are there to capture the unveiling of the face, spine, and shoulder blades of this 3.3 million-year-old fossil child. And NOVA takes viewers “inside the skull” to show how our ancestors’ brains had begun to change from those of the apes.

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The government is ready to put evolution on the primary curriculum for the first time after years of lobbying by senior scientists.

The schools minister, Diana Johnson, has confirmed the plans will be included in a blueprint for a new curriculum to be published in the next few weeks.

It follows a letter signed by scientists and science educators calling on the government to make the change after draft versions of the new curriculum failed to mention evolution explicitly.

The open letter sent in July to Ed Balls, the children’s secretary, was signed by 25 leading figures from science and education, who urged the government to rewrite the curriculum before it was finalised.

Among the signatories were the Oxford University evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, three Nobel laureates and Reverend Professor Michael Reiss, the professor of science education at the Institute of Education in London.

The letter expressed alarm that the theory of evolution through natural selection, which it describes as “one of the most important ideas underlying biological science”, was ignored in the revamped curriculum.

“We consider its inclusion vital,” the letter said. Keep reading →