The Carnival of Evolution #3

Welcome to the Third Edition of the Carnival of Evolution. The previous edition of this web log 'carnival of the vanities' was at Jason Rosenhouse's Evolution Blog. The next edition will be written by Mike (TUIBG) and hosted here, at Clashing Cultures.

Please submit your web posts on Evolution for the next carnival, which is slated for Mid October! Use this handy dandy submission form. And now, on with the show:

i-508f476bb43a51fbfaaf5c1469b86ab9-neanderthal_face_thumbnail.jpg

Newly reconstructed Neanderthal female. (View larger image)
A Very Remote Period Indeed presents Fear and Loathing in the Pleistocene.

"... [the] narrator announces "Today, it's obvious who dominates the planet" and pauses, the video cues to a shot of John [Hawkes] standing in the middle of Times Square(?), looking straight into the camera!..."

"there's an especially great shot of the Neanderthal woman (nicknamed Wilma) thrusting a spear and sporting an extensive set of black tattoos on her back and upper chest. Now, why is this so neat (beyond being the closest thing to Neanderthal fetish/alterna-porn you're likely to ever see - I mean, it's a naked chick with tats and a weapon!)? Because..." Click here for the rest of this steamy story.

SES: Science, Education & Society addresses Science Vocab: Sexual Selection.

"The truth is there is much similarity between human social behavior and that of our other animal kingdom cousins. This seems especially true when I think about mating behaviors (courtship, sex, and relationship habits)."

Grrrrrrrrrl Scientist at Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted) reminds us of Ratite Flight: Lost But Not Forgotten.

i-8f3328a5ccb4ed72d84b7a1c5d240a87-Tinamus_guttatus..jpg"Contrary to the prevailing hypothesis regarding avian evolution and biogeography, ... data indicate that ratites lost the ability to fly at least three times; in ostriches, in rheas and in Australasian ratites. This is not as amazing as one might first think since several avian groups have evolved flightless members, particularly the rails"

This paper is an instance of Blogging Peer Reviewed Research.


The Whited Sepulchre
gives us How to teach Creationism, in which the following question is addressed:

"It's really a disgrace for the state school board to impose evolution on our students without teaching creationism," county school board member Jimmy Hobbs said at Tuesday's meeting. "The law says we can't have Bibles in schools, but we can have evolution, of the atheists."

i-bfeeeb76e67d53b566343a00af0a1896-raccoon_thumb.jpg

View larger image

Irradiatus at Biochemicalsoul asks: Are Human-Caused Ecological Invasions Good for Evolution and Diversity?

"Over the past eight years, a population of Burmese pythons has been exploding in the Florida everglades. As of 2007, the population had risen from essentially none (other than the occasional recaptured pet) to an estimated 30,000 pythons ..."

"We know that the vast majority of these invasions occurring in ecosystems across the planet are due to our own machinations. Ignorance and blindness to the challenges of caring long-term for enormous predatory reptiles led to the python population in Florida. Ballast water has deposited invertebrates and microorganisms in waters far flung from their original homes...."

Tetrapod Zoology on The skin of ichthyosaurs

"Ichthyosaurs are famous for preserving impressions of soft tissue; these are preserved as black, carbonaceous films, and are known for specimens that come from Solnhofen and Holzmaden in Germany, from Barrow-upon-Soar in England, and from the Wapiti Lake area of British Columbia."

SES: Science, Education & Society also gives us Science Vocab: Thrifty Genes

i-f314e872cb2b26bbb5c86daf2ad4f6a5-bit_of_dna.jpg"

"The Thrifty Gene Hypothesis was first presented in the 1960's. It basically says that the among some ethnicities, their genes for metabolism work differently.
People from ethnic groups like Africans, Native Americans, and Polynesians evolved in areas where there were routine food shortages, due to extended dry seasons or cyclic famines. "

"Those individuals who carried a little extra fat -- in the hips, stomach, thighs or where ever --survived hungry times better."

Hoxful Monsters amuses us with Acoel development provides insights for anal evolution.

"The evolutionary origin of the bilaterian mouth and anus, and their relationship to the blastopore can be explained by many hypotheses, but the most famous is the one, which begin with either a radially symmetric larva or a cnidarian polyp-like organism that elongates its body along the future anterior-posterior axis, followed by a lateral closure of the slit-like blastoporal opening with the ends giving rise to a mouth and anus simultaneously...."

From a Nadder! thinks Domestic Animals Tamed Us

"Let's pretend a bee has thoughts. She flies from flower to flower collecting sweet sweet nectar. She essentially farms them. She thinks she's got it good: all this free food out there. If she's religious she'd say such benevolence is proof the Great Queen Bee In the Sky must exist. From a certain perspective she's right (she does have it pretty good).

From another perspective it's bullshit...."

we overstep opines regarding cultural-braino-technological evolution regarding an Extremely Excellent Project By Google

"This project can cause a next step in evolution of our planet. They ask for submitting ideas that will have huge positive impact on the planet with relatively low effort. Google will sponsor top 5 ideas with 10 million dollars. Actually it is already a next step in human evolution because it is a global action of thinking, brainstorming and speculating ..."

Laelaps talks about A different kind of Dinomania.
i-2c4aadabbeddf467ba2f773abe3d61db-megalorestored.JPG

"Dinosaurs were in ample supply when I was a kid. There were enough documentaries, cartoons, books, trading cards, and misshapen plastic toys to keep me occupied for all my days. They were the ultimate brand; freely available to be printed on anything by anyone, and they most certainly were. (Why eat just any cereal when you can eat dinosaur-shaped cereal?)"

A Blog Around the Clock asks us to consider, and comment on, the odd possibility that Bats eat birds - join the discussion

"Starting today, and lasting a week, there will be a Journal Club on this PLoS ONE article - Bats' Conquest of a Formidable Foraging Niche: The Myriads of Nocturnally Migrating Songbirds by Ana G. Popa-Lisseanu, Antonio Delgado-Huertas, Manuela G. Forero, Alicia Rodriguez, Raphael Arlettaz and Carlos Ibanez"

And finally, Greg Laden's Blog gives you Aerosteon riocoloradensis: A Very Cool Dinosaur from Argentina.

"Perhaps the most interesting feature of Aerosteon riocoloradensis is that it demonstrates the evolution of a bird-like respiratory system in an animal that is definitely not bird-like in most other ways. Indeed, the authors of this paper imply that this dinosaur's respiratory system represents an early phase in the evolution of the bird's respiratory system. This is a case of an adaptation arising in one context and later being used in an entirely different context."

Categories

More like this

honored my posts made it. I look forward to bloggingm more about evolution --- I've got one in my head about lekking and men in bars.

All of the submissions are great.

later.