Spokes 3: The Elements of Evolution Research References (Table of Contents)
Common knowledge for Spokes obtained from various encyclopedias and dictionaries, including Encyclopedia Britannica, Everipedia, New World Encyclopedia, Wikipedia, World Book Encyclopedia, Scholarpedia, Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, Oxford Dictionary, Dictionary.com, and the ever-evolving Internet.
Life’s History
Brian K. Hall & Benedikt Hallgrimsson, Strickberger’s Evolution, Jones and Bartlett Publishers (2008).
K.J. Willis & J.C. McElwain, The Evolution of Plants, Oxford University Press (2002).
Paul H. Ehrlich & Anne H. Ehrlich, The Dominant Animal, IslandPress (2008).
Marc W. Kirshner & John C. Gerhart, The Plausibility of Life, Yale University Press (2005).
Enrico Coen, Cells to Civilization, Princeton University Press (2012).
David Huddart & Tim Scott, Earth Environments: Past, Present and Future, Wiley-Blackwell (2010).
Michael J. Benton, The History of Life – A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press (2008).
Jody B. Wycech et al, “Comparison of d18O analyses on individual planktic foraminifer (Orbulina universa) shells by SIMS and gas-source mass spectrometry,” Chemical Geology 483: 119-130 (2018).
“When science goes wrong (II): shell shock,” The Economist (14 July 2016).
William E. Friedman, “The meaning of Darwin’s ‘abominable mystery’,” American Journal of Botany 96(1): 5-21 (2009).
Mass Extinctions
Norman Macleod, The Great Extinctions: What Causes Them and How They Shape Life, Firefly Books (2013).
Peter Ward & Joe Kirschvink, A New History of Life, Bloomsbury Press (2015).
Geerat J. Vermeij, “Temperature, tectonics, and evolution,” in Evolution on Planet Earth, Academic Press (2003).
Mats Dynesius & Roland Jansson, “Persistence of within-species lineages: a neglected control of speciation rates,” Evolution (11 December 2013).
“Extinctions reduce speciation,” ScienceDaily (4 April 2014).
Grzegorz Racki et al, “Mercury enrichments and the Frasnian-Famennian biotic crisis: a volcanic trigger proved?,” Geology 46(6): 543-546 (1 June 2018).
“Mercury rising: New evidence that volcanism triggered the late Devonian extinction,” Phys.org (1 May 2018).
Stilianos Louca et al, “Bacterial diversification through geological time,” Nature Ecology & Evolution (30 July 2018).
Steven M. Holland, “A history of give and take,” Nature 493: 308–309 (17 January 2013).
Shanan E. Peters et al, “Oceanographic controls on the diversity and extinction of planktonic foraminifera,” Nature 493: 398–401 (17 January 2013).
“Ancient mammal relatives cast light on recovery after mass extinction,” Phys.org (13 August 2013).
Marcello Ruta et al, “Decoupling of morphological disparity and taxic diversity during the adaptive radiation of anomodont therapsids,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B (14 August 2013).
Methodology
Rafal Nawrot et al, “Stratigraphic signatures of mass extinctions: ecological and sedimentary determinants,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B (12 September 2018).
“The walking dead: fossils on the move can distort patterns of mass extinctions,” ScienceDaily (14 September 2018).
Extinction Events
Norman MacLeod, The Great Extinctions, Firefly Books (2013).
Jon Erickson, Lost Creatures of the Earth, Checkmark Books (2001).
Richard A. Kerr, “More than one way for invaders to wreak havoc,” Science 335 (6069): 646 (10 February 2012).
Marine extinctions chart adapted from: D.M. Raup & J.J. Sepkoski, Jr., “Periodic extinction of families and genera,” 231 (4740): 833–836 Science (21 February 1986).
Stephen P. Hesselbo et al, “Massive dissociation of gas hydrate during a Jurassic oceanic anoxic event,” Nature 406: 392–395 (27 July 2000).
Stilianos Louca et al, “Bacterial diversification through geological time,” Nature Ecology & Evolution (30 July 2018).
“Do bacteria ever go extinct? New research says yes, bigtime” ScienceDaily (30 July 2018).
Causes
Shannon Hall, “Fire and ice,” Scientific American (August 2017).
Haley A. Lindsey et al, “Evolutionary rescue from extinction is contingent on a lower rate of environmental change,” Nature 494: 463–467 (28 February 2013).
Timeline
Nola Taylor Redd, “How a young Jupiter acted as both protector and destroyer,” Smithsonian (6 July 2016).
“New study challenges Jupiter’s role as planetary shield, protecting Earth from comet impacts,” Phys.org (3 February 2016).
Elizabeth Howell, “Jupiter’s movements made way for Earth,” Astrobiology Magazine (22 June 2015).
Konstantin Batygina & Greg Laughlin, “Jupiter’s decisive role in the inner Solar System’s early evolution,” PNAS (23 March 2015).
Kevin R. Grazier, “Jupiter: cosmic Jekyll and Hyde,” Astrobiology 16(1): 23-38 (January 2016).
Anne Minard, “Jupiter both an impact source and shield for Earth,” National Geographic News (27 August 2007).
“Life on Earth likely started 4.1 billion years ago—much earlier than scientists thought,” Phys.org (19 October 2015).
Elizabeth A. Bell et al, “Potentially biogenic carbon preserved in a 4.1 billion-year-old zircon,” PNAS 112(47): 14518-14521 (24 November 2015).
James O. McInerney & Mary J. O’Connell, “Mind the gaps in cellular evolution,” Nature 541: 297-298 (19 January 2017).
Kazumi Ozaki et al, “Effects of primitive photosynthesis on Earth’s early climate system,” Nature Geoscience (11 December 2017).
Alice Klien, “Ancient microbes caused Earth’s first ever global warming,” New Scientist (11 December 2017).
Jatarzyna Zaremba-Niedzwiedzka et al, “Asgard archaea illuminate the origin of eukaryotic cellular complexity,” Nature 541: 353-357 (19 January 2017).
Heather J. Goldsby et al, “Task-switching costs promote the evolution of division of labor and shifts in individuality,” PNAS 109(34): 13686–13691 (21 August 2012).
“How do plants make oxygen? Ask cyanobacteria,” Phys.org (30 March 2017).
Robert E. Blankenship, “How cyanobacteria went green,” Science 355(6332): 1372-1373 (31 March 2017).
Gustavo Caetano-Anolles et al, “Protein domain structure uncovers the origin of aerobic metabolism and the rise of planetary oxygen,” Structure 20(1): 67-76 (11 January 2012).
Rochelle M. Soo et al, “On the origins of oxygenic photsynthesis and aerobic respiration in cyanobacteria,” Science 355(6332): 1436-1440 (31 March 2017).
“Division of labor offers insight into the evolution of multicellular life,” ScienceDaily (7 August 2012).
William F. Martin, “The origin of mitochondria,” Nature Education 3(9): 58 (2010).
Timothy W. Lyons et al, “The rise of oxygen in Earth’s early ocean and atmosphere,” Nature 506: 307-315 (20 February 2014).
Daniel A. Stolper & C. Brenhin Keller, “A record of deep-ocean dissolved O2 from the oxidation state of iron in submarine basalts,” Nature (3 January 2018).
Anna Salleh, “Great Oxidation Event ‘a misnomer’,” ABC Science (20 February 2014).
Abderrazak El Albani et al, “Large colonial organisms with coordinated growth in oxygenated environments 2.1 Gyr ago,” Nature 466: 100–104 (1 July 2010).
Philip C. J. Donoghue & Jonathan B. Antcliffe, “Early life: origins of multicellularity,” Nature 466: 41-42 (1 July 2010).
“Complex, multicellular life from over two billion years ago discovered,” ScienceDaily (1 July 2010).
Richard Southwood, The Story of Life, Oxford University Press (2003).
Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, W.W. Norton & Company (1989).
“When did eukaryotic cells (cells with nuclei and other internal organelles) first evolve? What do we know about how they evolved from earlier life-forms?,” Scientific American (21 October 1999).
Derek E.G. Briggs & Rea-Alan Fortey, “Wonderful strife: Systematics, stem groups, and the phylogenetic signal of the Cambrian radiation,” Paleobiology 32(5): 94-112 (June 2005).
Gregory J. Retallack et al, “Archean coastal-plain paleosols and life on land,” Gondwana Research 40: 1–20 (December 2016).
Tamara L. Carley et al, “Iceland is not a magmatic analog for the Hadean: evidence from the zircon record,” Earth and Planetary Science Letters 405: 85–97 (1 November 2014).
“Ancient trapped water explains Earth’s first ice age,” Phys.org (5 June 2013).
Magali Pujol et al, “Argon isotopic composition of Archaean atmosphere probes early Earth geodynamics,” Nature 498: 87–90 (6 June 2013).
Robin Wordsworth & Raymond Pierrehumbert, “Hydrogen-nitrogen greenhouse warming in earth’s early atmosphere,” Science 339(64): 64–67 (4 January 2013).
“Life took hold on land 300 million years earlier than thought,” ScienceDaily (8 November 2016).
Sami Nabha et al, “Biogenic overgrowth on detrital pyrite in ca. 3.2 Ga Archean paleosols,” Geology (August 2016).
James F. Kasting,”How was early earth kept warm?,” Science 339(64): 44–45 (4 January 2013).
P. Chellapandi, “Molecular evolution of methanogens based on their metabolic facets,” Frontiers in Biology 6(6): 490–503 (December 2011).
Haiwei Luo et al, “Gene order phylogeny and the evolution of methanogens,” PLoS One (29 June 2009).
Bettina E. Schirrmeister et al, “Evolution of multicellularity coincided with increased diversification of cyanobacteria and the Great Oxidation Event,” PNAS 110(5): 1791-1796 (29 January 2013).
Catherine Brahic, “Meet the electric life forms that live on pure energy,” New Scientist (16 July 2014).
“Earth’s first ecosystems were more complex than previously thought, study finds,” Phys.org (27 November 2015).
Imran A. Rahman et al, “Suspension feeding in the enigmatic Ediacaran organism Tribrachidium demonstrates complexity of Neoproterozoic ecosystems,” Science Advances (27 November 2015).
Dennis Höning et al, “Biotic vs. abiotic Earth: a model for mantle hydration and continental coverage,” Planetary and Space Science (October 2013).
Eukaryotes Evolve
Traci Watson, “The trickster microbes that are shaking up the tree of life,” Nature (14 May 2019).
Anja Spang et al, “Proposal of the reverse flow model for the origin of the eukaryotic cell based on comparative analyses of Asgard archaeal metabolism,” Nature Microbiology (1 April 2019).
“One billion year old fungi found are Earth’s oldest,” Phys.org (22 May 2019).
Heidi Ledford, “Billion-year-old fossils set back evolution of earliest fungi,” Nature (22 May 2019).
Nicola Davis, “Ancient rock wiggles could be earliest trace of moving organisms,” The Guardian (11 February 2019).
Shenshen Lai et al, “Evolutionary ancestry of eukaryotic protein kinases and choline kinases,” Journal of Biological Chemistry (1 January 2016).
“Without ancestral gene life on Earth might not have evolved beyond slime,” Phys.org (3 March 2016).
Tanai Cardona, “Early Archean origin of heterodimeric Photosystem I,” Heliyon 4:e00548 (March 2018).
Tanai Cardona, “Origin of bacteriochlorophyll a and the early diversification of photosynthesis,” PLoS One (8 March 2016).
“Photosynthesis more ancient than thought, and most living things could do it,” ScienceDaily (15 March 2016).
Joshua S. Weitz et al, “Unveiling the viral ecology of Earth,” Nautilus (June 2017).
Ilya Bobrovskiy et al, “Ancient steroids establish the Ediacaran fossil Dickinsonia as one of the earliest animals,” Science 361(6408): 1246-1249 (21 September 2018).
Alice Klein, “Earliest known animal was a half-billion-year-old underwater blob,” New Scientist (20 September 2018).
Joydip Mukhopadhyay et al, “Oxygenation of the Archean atmosphere: new paleosol constraints from eastern India,” Geology (28 August 2014).
Bettina E. Schirrmeister et al, “Evolution of multicellularity coincided with increased diversification of cyanobacteria and the Great Oxidation Event,” PNAS 110(5): 1791–1796 (29 January 2013).
Richard K. Grosberg & Richard R. Strathmann, “The evolution of multicellularity: a minor major transition,” The Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 38: 621-654 (2007).
Laura Wegener Parfrey & Daniel J.G. Lahr, “Multicellularity arose several times in the evolution of eukaryotes,” BioEssays 35(4): 339-347 (April 2013).
Daniel J. Dickinson, “An epithelial tissue in Dictyostelium challenges the traditional origin of metazoan multicellularity,” BioEssays 34(10): 833-840 (October 2012).
Richard E. Michod et al, “Life-history evolution and the origin of multicellularity,” Journal of Theoretical Biology (2005).
Erik R. Hanschen, et al, “The Gonium pectorale genome demonstrates co-option of cell cycle regulation during the evolution of multicellularity,” Nature Communications (22 April 2016).
Karl J. Niklas, “The evolutionary-developmental origins of multicellularity,” American Journal of Botany (20 December 2013).
Robert Schuetz et al, “Multidimensional optimality of microbial metabolism,” Science 336: 601–604 (4 May 2012).
Michael Slezak, “Early life built Earth’s continents,” New Scientist (25 November 2013).
Esteban Gazel et al, “Continental crust generated in oceanic arcs,” Nature Geoscience (31 March 2015).
Jacqueline Howard, “How did the Earth’s continents form? Scientists move big step closer to solving mystery,” Huffington Post (3 April 2015).
William F. Martin, “The origin of mitochondria,” Nature Education 3(9): 58 (2010).
“Researchers discover missing link in the evolution of complex cells,” Uppsala University (6 May 2015).
Laurel Hamers, “One-celled life possessed tools for going multicellular,” Science News (13 October 2016).
Arnau Sebé-Pedrós et al, “High-throughput proteomics reveals the unicellular roots of animal phosphosignaling and cell differentiation,” Developmental Cell 39(2): 186–197 (24 October 2016).
Anja Spang et al, “Complex archaea that bridge the gap between prokaryotes and eukaryotes,” Nature (6 May 2015).
Shixing Zhu et al, “Decimetre-scale multicellular eukaryotes from the 1.56-billion-year-old Gaoyuzhuang Formation in North China,” Nature Communications (17 May 2016).
“Complex life on Earth began billion years earlier than previously thought, study argues,” The Guardian (17 May 2016).
Katherine L. French et al, “Reappraisal of hydrocarbon biomarkers in Archean rocks,” PNAS 112(19): 5915–5920 (12 May 2015).
David Biello, “How the first plant came to be,” Nature (16 February 2012).
Dana C. Price et al, “Cyanophora paradoxa genome elucidates origin of photosynthesis in algae and plants,” Science 335(6070): 843–847 (17 February 2012).
Takunari Kono et al, “A RuBisCO-mediated carbon metabolic pathway in methanogenic archaea,” Nature Communications (13 January 2017).
“Mechanism for photosynthesis already existed in primeval microbe,” Phys.org (31 January 2017).
“Origin of photosynthesis revealed: genome analysis of ‘living fossil’ sheds light on the evolution of plants,” ScienceDaily (21 February 2012).
Edgar M. Medina et al, “Punctuated evolution and transitional hybrid network in an ancestral cell cycle of fungi,” eLife (10 May 2016).
“Hijacked cell division helped fuel rise of fungi,” ScienceDaily (10 May 2016).
Spurring Multicellularity
Jennifer Carpenter, “Multicellularity driven by bacteria,” Science 337(6094): 510 (3 August 2012).
Marion Dejosez et al, “Safeguards for cell cooperation in mouse embryogenesis shown by genome-wide cheater screen,” Science 341(6153): 1511-1514 (27 September 2013).
“Stem cells are wired for cooperation, down to the DNA,” Phys.org (12 September 2013).
Elizabeth Pennisi, “The power of many,” Science 360(6396): 1388-1391 (29 June 2018).
Michael G. Hadfield, “Molecular clue links bacteria to the origin of animals,” eLife 1:e00242 (2012).
Carl Zimmer, “From single cells, a vast kingdom arose,” The New York Times (14 March 2011).
Rosanna A. Alegado et al, “A bacterial sulfonolipid triggers multicellular development in the closest living relatives of animals,” eLife 1:e00013 (15 October 2012).
“Did bacteria spark evolution of multicellular life?,” ScienceDaily (24 October 2012).
Walter Godchaux III & Edward R. Leadbetter, “Sulfonoids of gliding bacteria,” The Journal of Biological Chemistry 259(5): 2982–2990 (10 March 1984).
Eric Libby & William C. Ratcliff, “Ratcheting the evolution of multicellularity,” Science 346(6208): 426–427 (24 October 2014).
Eric Libby et al, “Geometry shapes evolution of early multicellularity,” PLoS Computational Biology (18 September 2014).
Sponges
Cara Giaimo, “A battle is raging in the tree of life,” The New York Times (2 August 2019).
Philip A.E. Pogge von Strandmann et al, “Selenium isotope evidence for progressive oxidation of the Neoproterozoic biosphere,” Nature Communications (18 December 2015).
“Oxygen: fuse behind animal life explosion on Earth?,” Nature World News (27 December 2015).
Joseph P.Botting & Lucy A.Muir, “Early sponge evolution: A review and phylogenetic framework,” Palaeworld 27(1): 1-29 (March 2018).
Roberto Feuda et al, “Improved modeling of compositional heterogeneity supports sponges as sister to all other animals,” Current Biology 27: 1-7(18 December 2017).
Nicola Davis, “Evolution row ends as scientists declare sponges to be sister of all other animals,” The Guardian (30 November 2017).
Davide Pisani et al, “Genomic data do not support comb jellies as the sister group to all other animals,” PNAS (1 December 2015).
“Animal evolution: sponges really are oldest animal phylum,” ScienceDaily (1 December 2015).
A. Riesgo et al, “The analysis of eight transcriptomes from all Porifera classes reveals surprising genetic complexity in sponges,” Molecular Biology and Evolution 31(5): 1102-1120 (May 2014).
“Largest evolutionary study of sponges sheds new light on animal evolution,” ScienceDaily (7 February 2014).
Sohei Nakayama et al, “Dynamic transport and cementation of skeletal elements build up the pole-and-beam structured skeleton of sponges,” Current Biology (17 September 2015).
Reproduction Isolation
Jonathan M. Chase, “A fool to do your dirty work?,” PLoS Biology (13 May 2014).
Heather J. Goldsby et al, “The evolutionary origin of somatic cells under the dirty work hypothesis,” PLoS Biology (13 May 2014).
“Delegating the dirty work is a key to evolution,” Phys.org (22 May 2014).
Arunas L. Radzvilavicius et al, “Selection for mitochondrial quality drives evolution of the germline,” PLoS Biology (20 December 2016).
“Sex cells evolved to pass on quality mitochondria,” Phys.org (20 December 2016).
Frédéric Berger & David Twell, “Germlien specification and function in plants,” Annual Review of Plant Biology 62: 461-484 (June 2011).
Susannah H. Kassmer et al, “Migration of germline progenitor cells is directed by sphingosine-1-phosphate signalling in a basal chordate,” Nature Communications (12 October 2015).
Cassandra G. Extavour & Michael Akam, “Mechanisms of germ cell specification across the metazoans: epigenesis and preformation,” Development 130: 5869-5884 (2003).
Andrew D Johnson et al, “Evolution of the germ line–soma relationship in vertebrate embryos,” Reproduction (12 January 2011).
E. Asselin et al, “Mammalian follicular development and atresia: role of apoptosis,” Biological Signals and Receptors 9(2): 87-95 (March-April 2000).
Fuko Matsuda et al, “Follicular growth and atresia in mammalian ovaries: regulation by survival and death of granulosa cells,” Journal of Reproduction and Development 58(10: 44-50 (2012).
J.K. Bhardwaj and R.K. Sharma, “Apoptosis and ovarian follicular atresia in mammals,” InTech (23 March 2012).
The Cryogenian Cooler
F.A. Macdonald & R. Wordsworth, “Initiation of Snowball Earth with volcanic sulfur aerosol emissions,” Geophysical Research Letters (8 February 2017).
“A perfect storm of fire and ice may have led to snowball Earth,” ScienceDaily (13 March 2017).
Breandán Anraoi MacGabhann, “Age constraints on Precambrian glaciations and the subdivision of Neoproterozoic time,” Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences, National University of Ireland (August 2005).
“Deep ocean is a safe haven ,” Nature (28 May 2014).
Doug Macdougall, Frozen Earth, University of California Press (2004).
Frank A. Corsetti et al, “A complex microbiota from Snowball Earth times: microfossils from the Neoproterozoic Kingston Peak Formation, Death Valley, USA,” PNAS (7 October 2002).
Francis A. Macdonald et al, “Calibrating the Cryogenian,” Science 327(5970): 1241–1243 (5 March 2010).
“Snowball Earth: new evidence hints at global glaciation 716.5 million years ago,” ScienceDaily (5 March 2010).
“A fertilizer dearth foiled animal evolution for eons?,” ScienceDaily (21 December 2016).
Christopher T. Reinhard et al, “Evolution of the global phosphorus cycle,” Nature (21 December 2016).
William T. Hyde et al, “Neoproterozoic ‘snowball Earth’ simulations with a coupled climate/ice-sheet model,” Nature 405: 425–429 (25 May 2000).
Bryan A. Killingsworth et al, “Sedimentary constraints on the duration of the Marinoan Oxygen-17 Depletion (MOSD) event,” PNAS 110(44): 17686–17690 (29 October 2013).
Thomas J. Crowley et al, “CO2 levels required for deglaciation of a “near-snowball” Earth,” Geophysical Research Letters 28(2): 283–286 (15 January 2001).
Alexandra Witze, “A snowball’s chance,” Science News (14 September 2011).
Jeff Hecht, “Why did evolution stall during the ‘boring billion’?,” New Scientist (1 May 2014).
Douglas H. Erwin et al, “The Cambrian conundrum: early divergence and later ecological success in the early history of animals,” Science 334 (6059): 1091–1097 (25 November 2011).
Patricia Sánchez-Baracaldo et al, “A Neoproterozoic transition in the marine nitrogen cycle,” Current Biology 24(6): 652-657 (17 March 2014).
“Ancient ‘great leap forward’ for life in the open ocean: Cyanobacteria sheds light on how complex life evolved on earth,” ScienceDaily (27 February 2014).
Francisco José Ayala et al, “Origin of the metazoan phyla: molecular clocks confirm paleontological estimates,” PNAS 95(2): 606–611 (20 January 1998).
“Animal evolution: sponges really are oldest animal phylum,” Science-Daily (1 December 2015).
Davide Pisani et al, “Genomic data do not support comb jellies as the sister group to all other animals,” PNAS (30 November 2015).
Daniel B. Mills et al, “Oxygen requirements of the earliest animals,” PNAS 111(11): 4168–4172 (18 March 2014).
Timothy M. Lenton et al, “Co-evolution of eukaryotes and ocean oxygenation in the Neoproterozoic era,” Nature Geoscience (3 March 2014).
Swapan K. Sahoo et al, “Ocean oxygenation in the wake of the Marinoan glaciation,” Nature 489: 546–549 (27 September 2012).
Thomas Sumner, “Fossils contain earliest signs of shells,” Science News (29 October 2016).
Ediacaran Life
Simon A. F. Darroch et al, “High ecological complexity in benthic Ediacaran communities,” Nature Ecology & Evolution (17 September 2018).
“Earth’s oldest animals formed complex ecological communities,” Phys.org (17 September 2018).
Rachel A. Wood, “The rise of animals,” Scientific American (June 2019).
Matt Kaplan, “Enigmatic fossils are neither animals nor bacteria,” Nature (22 December 2011).
“Why life on Earth first got big,” Phys.org (25 June 2018).
Bing Shen et al, “The Avalon explosion: evolution of Ediacara morphospace,” Science 319(5859): 81-84 (4 January 2008).
“Two explosive evolutionary events shaped early history of multicellular life,” ScienceDaily (4 January 2008).
Emily G. Mitchell & Charlotte G. Kenchington, “The utility of height for the Ediacaran organisms of Mistaken Point,” Nature Ecology & Evolution 2: 1218–1222 (25 June 2018).
Simon A.F. Darroch et al, “Biotic replacement and mass extinction of the Ediacara biota,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (2 September 2015).
S. Schroder, “Evidence for anoxia at the Ediacaran-Cambrian boundary: the record of redox-sensitive trace elements and rare earth elements in Oman,” Journal of the Geological Society 164(1):175 (2007).
D.A. Fike et al, “Multi-stage Ediacaran ocean oxidation and its impact on evolutionary radiation,” Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 70 (18S): 173–173 (2006).
J. Scott Turner, The Extended Organisms 82–84, Harvard University Press (2000).
Daniel Strain, Microbial mats may have given early animals breathing room,” Science News 179(13): 9 (18 June 2011).
R.A. Boyle et al, “Stabilization of the coupled oxygen and phosphorus cycles by the evolution of bioturbation,” Nature Geoscience (3 August 2013).
Gregory J. Retallack, “Ediacaran life on land,” Nature (12 December 2012).
Michael S.Y. Lee et al, “Rates of phenotypic and genomic evolution during the Cambrian explosion,” Current Biology 23: 1–7 (7 October 2013).
Xavier Fernández-Busquets et al, “Self-recognition and Ca2-dependent carbohydrate-carbohydrate cell adhesion provide clues to the Cambrian explosion,” Molecular Biology and Evolution 26 (11): 2551 (2009).
A. Yu. Zhuravlev et al, “Ediacaran skeletal metazoan interpreted as a lophophor,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B (4 November 2015).
Jon M. Husson & Shanan E. Peters, “Atmospheric oxygenation driven by unsteady growth of the continental sedimentary reservoir,” Earth and Planetary Science Letters 460: 68–75 (15 February 2017).
R. Tostevin et al, “Low-oxygen waters limited habitable space for early animals,” Nature Communications (23 September 2016).
“Oxygen levels were key to early animal evolution, strongest evidence now shows,” ScienceDaily (23 September 2016).
Jane Qiu, “Oxygen fluctuations stalled life on Earth,” Nature (11 July 2014).
“Fossil fuel formation: Key to atmosphere’s oxygen?,” ScienceDaily (30 December 2016).
Douglas H. Erwin, “Early metazoan life: divergence, environment and ecology,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (2015).
Rangeomorphs
Rangeomorph fossil photo courtesy of Jim Gehling.
Emily G. Mitchell et al, “Reconstructing the reproductive mode of an Ediacaran macro-organism,” Nature 524: 343–346 (20 August 2015).
“Earliest evidence of reproduction in a complex organism,” Phys.org (3 August 2015).
Jennifer F. Hoyal Cuthill & Simon Conway Morris, “Fractal branching organizations of Ediacaran rangeomorph fronds reveal a lost Proterozoic body plan,” PNAS (11 August 2014).
Jennifer F. Hoyal Cuthill & Simon Conway Morris, “Nutrient-dependent growth underpinned the Ediacaran transition to large body size,” Nature Ecology & Evolution (10 July 2017).
Dickinsonia
Dickinsonia drawing courtesy of Stanton F. Fink.
Ilya Bobrovskiy et al, “Ancient steroids establish the Ediacaran fossil Dickinsonia as one of the earliest animals,” Science 361(6408): 1246-1249 (21 September 2018).
Jeremy Rehm, “World’s first animal was a pancake-shaped prehistoric ocean dweller,” Nature (20 September 2018).
The Cambrian Explosion
Tianchen He et al, “Possible links between extreme oxygen perturbations and the Cambrian radiation of animals,” Nature Geoscience (6 May 2019).
“Oxygen linked with the boom and bust of early animal evolution,” Phys.org (6 May 2019).
Douglas Fox, “What sparked the Cambrian explosion?,” Nature 530: 268-270 (18 February 2016).
Ian W.D. Dalziel, “Cambrian transgression and radiation linked to an Iapetus-Pacific oceanic connection?,” Geology 42(11): 979-982 (November 2014).
“Massive geographic change may have triggered explosion of animal life,” ScienceDaily (1 November 2014).
Guang-Yi Wei et al, “Marine redox fluctuation as a potential trigger for the Cambrian explosion,” Geology (30 May 2018).
“Did extreme fluctuations in oxygen, not a gradual rise, spark the Cambrian explosion?,” ScienceDaily (4 June 2018).
Roger Lewin, “A lopsided look at evolution,” Science 241(4863): 291–293 (15 July 1988).
Luis A. Buatois et al, “Ediacaran matground ecology persisted into the earliest Cambrian,” Nature Communications (28 March 2014).
“The Cambrian explosion was caused by a lack of oxygen, not an abundance,” The Economist (7 June 2018).
Catherine Brahic, “Volcanic mayhem drove major burst of evolution,” New Scientist (15 January 2014).
Bob Holmes, “Evolution’s big bang: how life on Earth took off,” New Scientist (1 March 2015).
N. Ryan McKenzie et al, “Plate tectonic influences on Neoproterozoic–early Paleozoic climate and animal evolution,” Geology 42 (2): 127-130 (February 2014).
Shanan E. Peters & Robert R. Gaines, “Formation of the ‘Great Unconformity’ as a trigger for the Cambrian explosion,” Nature 484, 363–366 (19 April 2012).
M. Paul Smith & David A.T. Harper, “Causes of the Cambrian explosion,” Science 341: 1355–1356 (20 September 2013).
Elizbeth Pennisi, “Fossils, cells point to early appearance of the brain,” Science 350(6262): 729–730 (13 November 2015).
Timothy M. Lenton et al, “Co-evolution of eukaryotes and ocean oxygenation in the Neoproterozoic era,” Nature Geoscience (9 March 2014).
Catherine Brahic, “Were early seas transformed by sponge microbiome?,” New Scientist (23 February 2015).
Fan Zhang et al, “Phosphorus sequestration in the form of polyphosphate by microbial symbionts in marine sponges,” PNAS (23 Febru-ary 2015).
Stephanie Pain, “Seeing the light,” New Scientist (21 November 1998).
Erik A. Sperling et al, “Oxygen, ecology, and the Cambrian radiation of animals,” PNAS (31 July 2013).
Hallucigenia
Hallucigenia drawing courtesy of Apokryltaros.
Martin R. Smith & Javier Ortega-Hernández, “Hallucigenia’s onychophoran-like claws and the case for Tactopoda,” Nature (17 August 2014).
Fish Appear
John A. Long, The Rise of Fishes, 2nd edition, The John Hopkins University Press (2011).
Simon Conway Morris & Jean-Bernard Caron, “A primitive fish from the Cambrian of North America,” Nature (11 June 2014).
D.G. Shu et al, “Head and backbone of the Early Cambrian vertebrate Haikouichthys,” Nature 421: 526–529 (30 January 2003).
Pikaia, Metaspriggina and Haikouichthys were among the first fish.
Philip S.L. Anderson et al, “Initial radiation of jaws demonstrated stability despite faunal and environmental change,” Nature (6 July 2011).
G.E. Budd & S. Jensen, “A critical reappraisal of the fossil record of the bilaterian phyla,” Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society 75 (2): 253–295 (2000).
Susan Milius, “Biology’s big bang had a long fuse,” Science News (28 November 2011).
Xiaoya Ma et al, “An exceptionally preserved arthropod cardiovascular system from the early Cambrian,” Nature Communications (7 April 2014).
“Ancient shrimp-like animals had ‘modern’ hearts and blood vessels,” Phys.org (7 April 2014).
Trilobites
Riccardo Levi-Setti, The Trilobite Book: A Visual Journey, University of Chicago Press (2014).
M. Gabriel Mangano et al, “Trilobites in early Cambrian tidal flats and the landward expansion of the Cambrian explosion,” Geology (13 December 2013).
Melanie J. Hopkins et al, “The oldest known digestive system consisting of both paired digestive glands and a crop from exceptionally preserved trilobites of the Guanshan Biota (Early Cambrian, China,” PLoS One (21 September 2017).
Richard Fortey, “Olenid trilobites: The oldest known chemoautotrophic symbionts?,” PNAS (6 June 2000).
Jonathan M. Adrain et al, “Post-Cambrian trilobite diversity and evolutionary faunas,” Science 280 (5371): 1922–1925 (19 June 1998).
Fish Tales
Lauren Sallan et al, “The nearshore cradle of early vertebrate diversification,” Science 362(6413): 460-464 (26 October 2018).
Catalina Pimiento, “Our shallow-water origins,” Science 362(6413): 402-403 (26 October 2018)
Birger Schmit et al, “Asteroid breakup linked to the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event,” Nature Geoscience 1: 49–53 (16 December 2007).
Alan Pradel et al, “A Palaeozoic shark with osteichthyan-like branchial arches,” Nature (16 April 2014).
Min Zhu et al, “A Silurian placoderm with osteichthyan-like marginal jaw bones,” Nature 502: 188–194 (10 October 2013).
Matt Friedman & Martin D. Brazeau, “A jaw-dropping fossil fish,” Nature 502: 175–176 (10 October 2013).
Shigeru Kuratani, “A muscular perspective on vertebrate evolution,” Science 341: 160–164 (12 July 2013).
Kate Trinajstic et al, “Fossil musculature of the most primitive jawed vertebrates,” Science 341: 139–40 (12 July 2013).
Sharks
Rodney Steel, Sharks of the World, Octopus Publishing Group (1998).
Michael Bright, Sharks, Firefly Books (2011).
Carol Clark, “The math of shark skin,” Phys.org (3 July 2015).
John A. Long et al, “First shark from the Late Devonian (Frasnian) Gogo formation, western Australia sheds new light on the development of tessellated calcified cartilage,” PLoS One (28 May 2015).
Danielle I. Ingle et al, “Mechanical behavior of shark vertebral centra at biologically relevant strains,” Journal of Experimental Biology (12 December 2018).
“Who’s tougher? Baby sharks or daddy sharks?,” ScienceDaily (3 January 2019).
Daniel Cressey, “Sharks can live a lot longer than researchers realized,” Nature (20 September 2017).
Oliver Milman, “‘Missing link’ in shark evolution found in 380m-year-old Australian fossil,” The Guardian (28 May 2015).
Johannes Oeffner & George V. Lauder, ” The hydrodynamic function of shark skin and two biomimetic applications,” The Journal of Experimental Biology 215: 785–795 (1 March 2012).
Ryan M. Kempster et al, “Survival of the stillest: predator avoidance in shark embryos,” PLoS One 8(1): e52551 (January 2013).
Johann Mourier et al, “Learning and robustness to catch-and-release fishing in a shark social network,” Biology Letters (15 March 2017).
“Smart sharks have robust social networks and learn to avoid capture,” Phys.org (15 March 2017).
Robert F. Marx, The History of Underwater Exploration, Courier Dover Publications (1990).
Bottom Up
Ben Thuy et al, “First glimpse into Lower Jurassic deep-sea biodiversity: in situ diversification and resilience against extinction,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (21 May 2014).
Mario Livio, Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to Einstein, Simon & Schuster (2013).
“Spawned in Davy Jones’s locker,” The Economist (24 May 2014).http://science.sciencemag.org/front
Ben Thuy et al, “Ancient origin of the modern deep-sea fauna,” PLoS One (10 October 2012).
“Sharks and humans: he’s behindhttp://science.sciencemag.org/front you!,” The Economist (14 December 2013).
Nicholas W. Bellano et al, “Molecular tuning of electroreception in sharks and skates,” Nature 558: 122–126 (30 May 2018).
“Even a shark’s electrical ‘sixth sense’ may be tuned to attack,” ScienceDaily (30 May 2018).
Verdure Venture
Elizabeth Pennisi, “Fossils push back origin of key plant groups millions of years,” Science 362(6421): 1340 (21 December 2018).
Pierre-Marc Delaux et al, “Ancient alga evolved to live on land before it left the ocean,” PNAS 112: 133390-13395 (27 October 2015).
Pierre-Marc Delaux et al, “Algal ancestor of land plants was preadapted for symbiosis,” PNAS (5 October 2015).
Sarah Griffiths, “How algae turned the world green: ancient slime knew how to survive on land before it left water and evolved into the first plant,” Daily Mail (16 December 2015).
“Plants colonized Earth 100 million years earlier than previously thought,” ScienceDaily (19 February 2018).
Meredith Blackwell, “Terrestrial life–fungal from the start?,” Science 289(5486): 1884-1885 (15 September 2000).
Jennifer L. Morris et al, “The timescale of early land plant evolution,” PNAS (20 February 2018).
Jesper Harholt et al, “Why plants were terrestrial from the beginning,” Trends in Plant Science 21(2): 96-101 (February 2016).
“Plants crawled onto land earlier than we give them credit, genetic evidence suggests,” ScienceDaily (16 December 2015).
Alexander J. Hetherington & Liam Dolan, “Stepwise and independent origins of roots among land plants,” Nature (22 August 2018).
Susannah Lydon, “Plant roots evolved at least twice, and step by step,” The Guardian (23 August 2018).
Paul Kenrick, “How land plant life cycles first evolved,” Science 358(6370): 1538-1539 (22 December 2017).
Sean Ross Stevenson et al, “Genetic analysis of Physcomitrella patens identifies ABSCISIC ACID NON-RESPONSIVE (ANR), a regulator of ABA responses unique to basal land plants and required for desiccation tolerance,” The Plant Cell (May 2016).
Linda E. Graham et al, “The origin of plants: body plan changes contributing to a major evolutionary radiation,” PNAS 97(9): 4535-4540(25 April 2000).
Dianne Edwards, “The role of Mid-Palaeozoic mesofossils in the detection of early bryophytes,” Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (29 June 2000).
Sid Perkins, “Did plants freeze the planet?,” Science (1 February 2012).
Christophe Calvaruso et al, “Influence of forest trees on the distribution of mineral weathering-associated bacterial communities of the Scleroderma citrinum mycorrhizosphere,” Applied and Environmental Microbiology (28 May 2010).
Andrea Bennici, “Origin and early evolution of land plants,” Communicative & Integrative Biology 1(2): 212–218 (October–December 2008).
Timothy M. Lenton et al, “First plants cooled the Ordovician,” Nature Geoscience (February 2012).
Ferns
Benjamin Bomfleur et al, “Fossilized nuclei and chromosomes reveal 180 million years of genomic statsis in royal ferns,” Science 343: 1376–1377 (21 March 2014).
Jonathan Shaw & Karen Renzaglia, “Phylogeny and diversification of bryophytes,” American Journal of Botany 91(10): 1557–1581 (October 2004).
Fay-Wei Li et al, “Horizontal transfer of an adaptive chimeric photoreceptor from bryophytes to ferns,” PNAS (14 April 2014).
Samuli Lehtonen et al, “Environmentally driven extinction and opportunistic origination explain fern diversification patterns,” Scientific Reports (6 July 2017).
Insects Emerge
Sandra R. Schachat et al, “Phanerozoic pO2 and the early evolution of terrestrial animals,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B (24 January 2018).
Ker Than, “Insects took off when they evolved wings,” Phys.org (24 January 2018).
Anna Salleh, “Insects evolved flight as plants grew taller,” ABC Science (7 November 2014).
Omar Rota-Stabelli et al, “Molecular timetrees reveal a Cambrian colonization of land and a new scenario for ecdysozoan evolution,” Current Biology 23(5): 392–398 (4 March 2013).
Elizabeth Pennisi, “All in the (bigger) family,” Science 347(6219): 220–221 (16 January 2015).
Chris G.C. Jacobs et al, “The extraembryonic serosa protects the insect egg against desiccation,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (19 June 2013).
Bernhard Misof et al, “Phylogenomics resolves the timing and pattern of insect evolution,” Science 346(6210): 763–767 (7 November 2014).
“Insects were first animals to develop wings more than 400 million years ago,” Entomology Today (7 November 2014).
André Nel et al, “The earliest known holometabolous insects,” Nature (16 October 2013).
Vertebrates Arrive on Land
Brian Switek, “The eyes have it: how spotting naive prey made fish walk on land,” New Scientist (19 July 2017).
“These fish are evolving right now to become land-dwellers,” New Scientist (30 March 2017).
Malcolm A. Maciver et al, “Massive increase in visual range preceded the origin of terrestrial vertebrates,” PNAS (7 March 2017).
“Vision, not limbs, led fish onto land 385 million years ago,” ScienceDaily (7 March 2017).
“Leap onto land saves ?sh from being eaten,” Phys.org (14 March 2017).
Terry J. Ord et al, “Ecological release from aquatic predation is associated with the emergence of marine blenny fishes onto land,” The American Naturalist (22 March 2017).
Camila Cupello et al, ” Allometric growth in the extant coelacanth lung during ontogenetic development,” Nature Commmunications (15 September 2015).
“Palaeontology: new fossils illuminate the route that led ultimately to human beings,” The Economist (10 December 2016).
Sophie Sanchez et al, “Life history of the stem tetrapod Acanthostega revealed by synchrotron microtomography,” Nature (7 September 2016).
Emily M. Standen et al, “Developmental plasticity and the origin of tetrapods,” Nature (27 January 2014).
Devin Powell, “Fossil pushes back land-animal debut,” Science News (5 March 2012).
Ritchie S. King, “A walk through water before reaching land,” The New York Times (19 December 2011).
Heather M. King et al, “Behavioral evidence for the evolution of walking and bounding before terrestriality in sarcopterygian fishes,” PNAS 108(52): 21146–21151 (27 December 2011).
Stephanie E. Pierce et al, “Vertebral architecture in the earliest stem tetrapods,” Nature (14 January 2013).
Brooke E. Flammang et al, “Tetrapod-like pelvic girdle in a walking cavefish,” Scientific Reports 6:23711 (24 March 2016).
Ian Sample, “Tiktaalik fossils reveal how fish evolved into four-legged land animals,” The Guardian (13 January 2014).
“From ocean to land: the fishy origins of our hips,” Science Daily (14 May 2013).
Devin Powell, “Fossil pushes back land-animal debut,” Science News (5 March 2012).
Plant Evolution
Karl J. Niklas, Plant Evolution: An Introduction to the History of Life, University of Chicago Press (2016).
Kathy Willis & Jennifer McElwain, The Evolution of Plants, Oxford University Press (2014).
Joseph E. Armstrong, How the Earth Turned Green: A Brief 3.8-Billion-Year History of Plants, University Of Chicago Press (2015).
Martin J. Ingrouille & Bill Eddie, Plants: Diversity and Evolution, Cambridge University Press (2006).
C. Jill Harrison, “Development and genetics in the evolution of land plant body plans,” Philosphical Transactions of the Royal Society B (19 December 2016).
Karl J. Niklas, “The evolution of plant body plans – a biomechanical perspective,” Annals of Botany 85: 411-438 (2000).
Susana Magallon et al, “A metacalibrated time-tree documents the early rise of ?owering plant phylogenetic diversity,” New Phytologist (January 2015).
Qiang Fu et al, “An unexpected noncarpellate epigynous flower from the Jurassic of China,” eLife (18 December 2018).
“Plant fossil from early Jurassic pushes back origin of flowers,” Sci News (25 December 2018).
Patrick Blomenkemper et al, “A hidden cradle of plant evolution in Permian tropical lowlands,” Science 362(6421): 1414-1416 (28 December 2018).
Elizabeth Pennisi, “Fossils push back origin of key plant groups millions of years,” Science 362(6421): 1340 (28 December 2018).
Qiang Fu et al, “An unexpected noncarpellate epigynous flower from the Jurassic of China,” eLife (18 December 2018).
“Fossils suggest flowers originated 50 million years earlier than thought,” ScienceDaily (18 December 2018).
Jose Barba-Montoya et al, “Constraining uncertainty in the timescale of angiosperm evolution and the veracity of a Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution,” New Phytologist (5 February 2018).
Joakim Näsvall et al, “Real-time evolution of new genes by innovation, amplification, and divergence,” Science 338(6105): 384-387 (19 October 2012).
Srikar Chamala et al, “Assembly and Validation of the Genome of the Nonmodel Basal Angiosperm Amborella,” Science 342(6165): 1516-1517 (20 December 2013).
“The origin of flowers: DNA of storied plant provides insight into the evolution of flowering plants,” ScienceDaily (19 December 2013).
Amborella Genome Project, “The Amborella genome and the evolution of flowering plants,” Science (20 December 2013).
Keith Adams, “Genomic clues to the ancestral flowering plant,” Science (20 December 2013).
Danny W. Rice et al, “Horizontal transfer of entire genomes via mitochondrial fusion in the angiosperm Amborella,” Science 342: 1468-1473 (20 December 2013).
Peter A. Hochuli & Susanne Feist-Burkhardt, “Angiosperm-like pollen and Afropollis from the Middle Triassic (Anisian) of the Germanic Basin (Northern Switzerland),” Frontiers in Plant Science (1 October 2013).
“New fossils push the origin of flowering plants back by 100 million years to the early Triassic,” ScienceDaily (1 October 2013).
Hervé Sauquet et al, “The ancestral flower of angiosperms and its early diversification,” Nature Communications (1 August 2017).
Nicola Davis, “Mother of all blooms: is this what the last common ancestor of flowers looked like?,” The Guardian (1 August 2017).
Susana Magallón, et al, “A metacalibrated time-tree documents the early rise of flowering plant phylogenetic diversity,” New Phytologist 207: 437–453 (January 2015).
Jeremy M. Beaulieu et al, “Heterogeneous rates of molecular evolution and diversification could explain the Triassic age estimate for angiosperms,” Systematic Biology 64 (5): 869-878 (4 May 2015).
Charles S.P. Foster et al, “Evaluating the impact of genomic data and priors on Bayesian estimates of the angiosperm evolutionary timescale,” Systematic Biology 66 (3): 338-351 (16 September 2016).
K.J. Willis & J.C. McElwain, The Evolution of Plants, Oxford University Press (2002).
David Beerling, The Emerald Planet, Oxford University Press (2007).
Sid Perkins, “Ancient forest kept good company,” Science (29 February 2012).
Yuannian Jiao et al, “Ancestral polyploidy in seed plants and angiosperms,” Nature 473: 97–101 (5 May 2011).
Daniel R. Scholes & Ken N. Paige, “Plasticity in ploidy underlies plant fitness compensation to herbivore damage,” Molecular Ecology (21 August 2014).
“Some plants regenerate by duplicating their DNA,” ScienceDaily (11 November 2014).
Trees
N.S. Davies & M.R. Gibling, “Evolution of fixed-channel alluvial plains in response to Carboniferous vegetation,” Nature Geoscience (21 Au-gust 2011).
Fire Ecology
James Lovelock, Gaia: The Practical Science of Planetary Medicine, Gaia Books (1991).
Robert A. Berner, “Atmospheric oxygen over Phanerozoic time,” PNAS 96(20): 10955–10957 (September 28, 1999).
Woodward W. Fischer, “Early plants and the rise of mud,” Science 359(6379): 994-995 (2 March 2018).
William J. McMahon & Neil S. Davies, “Evolution of alluvial mudrock forced by early land plants,” Science 359(6379): 1022-1024 (2 March 2018).
Amphibians & Reptiles
Robert R. Reisz & Jörg Fröbisch, “The oldest caseid synapsid from the late pennsylvanian of Kansas, and the evolution of herbivory in terrestrial vertebrates,” PLoS One (16 April 2014).
Hanneke Meijer, “Jump for joy: researchers make huge leap in understanding frog evolution,” The Guardian (2 August 2017).
Eedaphosaur drawing courtesy of Dmitry Bogdanov.
S.P. Modesto, “The skull of the herbivorous synapsid Edaphosaurus boanerges from the Lower Permian of Texas,” Palaeontology 38: 213–239 (1995).
G.A. Florides et al, “A thermal model for reptiles and pelycosaurs,” Journal of Thermal Biology 24(1): 1–13 (February 1999).
I.J. Glasspool & A.C. Scott, “Phanerozoic concentrations of atmospher-ic oxygen reconstructed from sedimentary charcoal,” Nature Geoscience 3: 627–630 (1 August 2010).
Snakes & Lizards
Asher Elbein, “A mysterious fossil points to the origins of lizards and snakes,” The New York Times (8 October 2018).
Michael Balter, “The ears have it: first snakes were burrowers, not swimmers,” Science 342: 683 (8 November 2013).
Allison Y Hsiang et al, “The origin of snakes: revealing the ecology, behavior, and evolutionary history of early snakes using genomics, phenomics, and the fossil record,” BMC Evolutionary Biology (18 May 2015).
“Oldest existing lizard-like fossil hints at scaly origins,” Phy.org (24 September 2013).
P.M. Dattaa & Sanghamitra Ray, “Earliest lizard from the late triassic (Carnian) of India,” Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 26(4) (2006).
P. Smaglik, “Retelling the tale of a two-legged snake,” Science News 151: 238 (19 April, 1957).
Michael S.Y. Lee et al, “Aquatic adaptations in the four limbs of the snake-like reptile Tetrapodophis from the Lower Cretaceous of Brazil,” Cretaceous Research (14 June 2016).
“Reptile is sometimes a victim of misinformation,” Science News Letter (25 May 1957).
Laurel Hamers, “Why the turtle got its shell,” Science News (6 August 2016).
Lizard Adaptability
Jonathan B. Losos, “Evolution: a lizard’s tale,” Scientific American 284: 64–69 (March 2001).
University Of Massachusetts, Amherst, “Lizards undergo rapid evolution after introduction to a new home,” ScienceDaily (18 April 2008).
Viviparity
Elizabeth Pennisi, “Lizard family tree solves 30-year-old mystery,” ScienceNow (24 June 2013).
R. Alexander Pyron & Frank T. Burbrink, “Early origin of viviparity and multiple reversions to oviparity in squamate reptiles,” Ecology Letters 17(1): 13–21 (January 2014).
Bridget F. Murphy & Michael B. Thompson, “A review of the evolution of viviparity in squamate reptiles: the past, present and future role of molecular biology and genomics,” Journal of Comparative Physiology B 181(5): 575-594 (July 2011).
Ginkgo
Peter Crane, Ginkgo: The Tree That Time Forgot, Yale University Press (2013).
J. C. McElwain, “The life and times of a living fossil,” Science 340(6134): 812–813 (17 May 2013).
The Great Dying
Jun Shen et al, “Evidence for a prolonged Permian–Triassic extinction interval from global marine mercury records,” Nature Communications (5 April 2019).
“Volcanic eruptions caused end-Permian extinction, new evidence confirms,” Sci-News (17 April 2019).
“Earth’s largest extinction event likely took plants first,” ScienceDaily (31 January 2019).
Lee Kump, “Climate change and marine mass extinction,” Science 362(6419): 1113-1114 (7 December 2018).
Michael W. Broadley et al, “End-Permian extinction amplified by plume-induced release of recycled lithospheric volatiles,” Nature Geoscience 11: 682–687 (27 August 2018).
S.D. Burgess et al, “Initial pulse of Siberian Traps sills as the trigger of the end-Permian mass extinction,” Nature Communiations (31 July 2017).
“What caused the world’s greatest extinction?,” ScienceDaily (31 July 2017).
Dana Nuccitelli, “Burning coal may have caused Earth’s worst mass extinction,” The Guardian (12 March 2018).
Oliver Milman, “The ‘great dying’: rapid warming caused largest extinction event ever, report says,” The Guardian (6 December 2018).
Daniel H. Rothman et al, “Methanogenic burst in the end-Permian carbon cycle,” PNAS (31 March 2014).
Stuart Gary, “Great Dying caused by ocean acidification,” ABC Science (10 April 2015).
Lowell Dingus & Timothy Rowe, The Mistaken Extinction, W.H. Freeman and Company (1998).
Seth D. Burgess et al, “High-precision timeline for Earth’s most severe extinction,” PNAS (10 February 2014).
Richard A. Kerr, “Mega-eruptions drove the mother of mass extinctions,” Science 342: 1424 (20 December 2013).
Yin Hon Fu & ASong Hai Jun, “Mass extinction and Pangea integration during the Paleozoic-Mesozoic transition,” Science China – Earth Sciences (29 July 2013).
Benjamin A. Black et al, “Acid rain and ozone depletion from pulsed Siberian Traps magmatism,” Geology (22 November 2013).
“Small but deadly,” The Economist (27 July 2013).
Stephan V. Sobolev et al, “Linking mantle plumes, large igneous provinces and environmental catastrophes,” Nature 477: 312–316 (15 September 2011).
E. Tohver et al, “Geochronological constraints on the age of a Permo–Triassic impact event: U–Pb and 40Ar/39Ar results for the 40 km Araguainha structure of central Brazil,” Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 86: 214–227 (1 June 2012).
M.O. Clarkson et al, “Ocean acidification and the Permo-Triassic mass extinction,” Science 348(6231): 229–232 (10 April 2015).
“Acid raid, ozone depletion contributed to ancient extinction,” Phys.org (22 November 2013).
Eric Hand, “Acid oceans cited in Earth’s worst die-off,” Science 348(6231): 165–166 (10 April 2015).
Daniel H. Rothman et al, “Methanogenic burst in the end-Permian carbon cycle,” PNAS (31 March 2014).
Chelsea Wald, “Archaeageddon: how gas-belching microbes could have caused mass extinction,” Nature (1 April 2014).
Carlo Romano et al, “Climatic and biotic upheavals following the end-Permian mass extinction,” Nature Geoscience (21 December 2012).
M.O. Clarkson et al, “Dynamic anoxic ferruginous conditions during the end-Permian mass extinction and recovery,” Nature Communications (19 July 2016).
Zhong-Qiang Chen & Michael J. Benton, “The timing and pattern of biotic recovery following the end-Permian mass extinction,” Nature Geoscience (27 May 2012).
S. Sahney & M.J. Benton, “Recovery from the most profound mass extinction of all time,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 275(1636): 759–65 (2008).
“After long-ago mass extinction, global warming hindered species’ recovery,” ScienceDaily (2 November 2012).
Arnaud Brayard et al, “Unexpected Early Triassic marine ecosystem and the rise of the Modern evolutionary fauna,” Science Advances 3(2) (15 February 2017).
Nicholas St. Fleur, “After Earth’s worst mass extinction, life rebounded rapidly, fossils suggest,” The New York Times (16 February 2017).
Kimberly V. Lau et al, “Marine anoxia and delayed Earth system recovery after the end-Permian extinction,” PNAS (1 March 2016).
The Triassic
Dicynodont drawing courtesy of Dmitry Bogdanov.
Tritylodon cynodont drawing courtesy of Nobu Tamura.
Gretchen Vogel, “Giant mammal cousin rivaled early dinosaurs,” Science 362(6417): 879 (23 November 2018).
Yadong Sun et al, “Lethally hot temperatures during the early Triassic greenhouse,” Science 338: 366–370 (19 October 2012).
David J. Bottjer, “Life in the Early Triassic ocean,” Science 338: 336–337 (19 October 2012).
Stephen Brusatte & Zhe-Xi Luo, “Ascent of the mammals,” Scientific American 314(6): 28–35 (June 2016).
Flowering Plants
Meng Chen et al, “Assembly of modern mammal community structure driven by Late Cretaceous dental evolution, rise of flowering plants, and dinosaur demise,” PNAS (29 April 2019).
Pollinating bee photo courtesy of Christels.
Shu-Miaw Chaw et al, “Dating the monocot–dicot divergence and the origin of core eudicots using whole chloroplast genomes,” Journal of Molecular Evolution 58(4): 424–441 (April 2004).
Mikkel H. Schierup et al, “Evolutionary dynamics of sporophytic self-incompatibility alleles in plants,” Genetics 147: 835-846 (October 1997).
William E. Friedman, “The evolution of double fertilization and endosperm: an ”historical” perspective,” Sexual Plant Reproduction 11(1): 6-16 (February 1998).
J.S. Carmichael & W.E. Friedman, “Double fertilization in Gnetum gnemon: the relationship between the cell cycle and sexual reproduction,” The Plant Cell 7: 1975-1988 (December 1995).
Deborah Charlesworth, “Self-incompatibility: how to stay incompatible,” Current Biology 12(12): R424-R426 (25 June 2002).
C.A. Furness et al, “Evolution of endoapertures in early-divergent eudicots, with particular reference to pollen morphology in Sabiaceae,” Plant Systematics and Evolution 263(1): 77–92 (January 2007).
Hélène L. Citerne et al, “Combining phylogenetic and syntenic analyses for understanding the evolution of TCP ECE genes in eudicots,” PLoS One (3 September 2013).
Louis P. Ronse De Craene, “Are petals sterile stamens or bracts? The origin and evolution of petals in the core eudicots,” Annals of Botany 100: 621-630 (2007).
David J. Hearn et al, “The evolution of growth forms with expanded root and shoot parenchymatous storage is correlated across the eudicots,” International Journal of Plant Sciences (7 August 2013).
Peter A. Hochuli & Susanne Feist-Burkhardt, “Angiosperm-like pollen and Afropollis from the Middle Triassic (Anisian) of the Germanic basin (northern Switzerland),” Frontiers in Plant Science (1 October 2013).
Scott Lidgard & Peter R. Crane, “Quantitative analyses of the early angiosperm radiation,” Nature 331: 344–346 (28 January 1988).
“Theory suggests root efficiency, independence drove global spread of flora,” ScienceDaily (21 February 2018).
Zeqing Ma et al, “Evolutionary history resolves global organization of root functional traits,” Nature 555: 94–97 (21 February 2018).
Methane Maelstrom
Roff Smith, “Dark days of the Triassic: lost world,” Nature 479: 287–289 (17 November 2011).
Claire M. Belcher et al, “Increased fire activity at the Triassic/Jurassic boundary in Greenland due to climate-driven floral change,” Nature Geoscience 3: 426–429 (May 2010).
Terrence J. Blackburn et al, “Zircon U-Pb geochronology links the end-Triassic extinction with the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province,” Science 340(6135): 941–945 (24 May 2013).
Dinosaur Dominion
Dinosaurs, Scientific American (June 2014).
Steve Parker, Dinosaurs, Firefly Books (2009).
David E. Fastovsky & David B. Weishampel, Dinosaurs : A Concise Natural History, Cambridge University Press (2016).
“How mass extinctions drove the evolution of dinosaurs,” Phys.org (3 January 2014).
John M. Grady et al, “Evidence for mesothermy in dinosaurs,” Science 344(6189): 1268–1272 (13 June 2014).
“The history of the dinosaurs: a new fossil find in Brazil rewrites the history of the dinosaurs,” The Economist (10 November 2016).
Sterling J. Nesbitt et al, “The oldest dinosaur? A Middle Triassic dinosauriform from Tanzania,” Biology Letters (23 February 2013).
Roger B. J. Benson et al, “Rates of dinosaur body mass evolution indicate 170 million years of sustained ecological innovation on the avian stem lineage,” PLoS Biology (6 May 2014).
Eoraptor drawing courtesy of Conty.
Steve C. Wang & Peter Dodson, “Estimating the diversity of dinosaurs,” PNAS (12 September 2006).
Meghan Rosen, “Feathered dinosaurs may have been the rule, not the exception,” Science News (24 July 2014).
Jasmina Wiemann et al, “Dinosaur egg colour had a single evolutionary origin,” Nature 563: 555–558 (21 November 2018).
Jonathan Lambert, “Ancient Mongolian nests show that dinosaurs protected their eggs,” Nature (15 July 2019).
Body Heat
Ferris Jabr, “What the supercool Arctic ground squirrel teaches us about the brain’s resilience,” Scientific American (26 June 2012).
Zoe Gough, “Arctic ground squirrels’ supercool slumber,” BBC Earth (18 February 2015).
Christina G. vonder Ohe et al, “Ubiquitous and temperature-dependent neural plasticity in hibernators,” The Journal of Neuroscience 26(41): 10590-10598 (11 October 2006).
Robert A. Eagle et al, “Isotopic ordering in eggshells reflects body temperatures and suggests differing thermophysiology in two Cretaceous dinosaurs,” Nature Communications (13 October 2015).
Sam Wong, “Some liked it hot: Dinosaurs evolved range of body temperatures,” New Scientist (13 October 2015).
“Body temperature of dinosaurs measured for the first time,” ScienceDaily (28 June 2011).
Robert A. Eagle et al, “Dinosaur body temperatures determined from isotopic (13c-18o) ordering in fossil biominera,” Science 333(6041): 443-445 (22 July 2011).
Tegu Lizards
Glenn J. Tattersall et al, “Seasonal reproductive endothermy in tegu lizards,” Science Advances (22 January 2016).
Colleen G. Farmer, “A lizard that generates heat,” Nature 529: 470-471 (28 January 2016).
Opah
Nicholas C. Wegner et al, “Whole-body endothermy in a mesopelagic fish, the opah, Lampris guttatus,” Science 348(6236): 786-789 (15 May 2015).
Susan Milius, “Deepwater dweller is first known warm-hearted fish,”
“Opah (Lampris guttatus): first known warm-blooded fish species,” Sci-News (15 May 2015).
Leopard ground squirrel photo courtesy of Phil Myers.
Vanessa Matos-Cruz et al, “Molecular prerequisites for diminished cold sensitivity in ground squirrels and hamsters,” Cell Reports 21: 3329-3337 (19 December 2017).
Joanna Klein, “In winter, you might wish you had this rodent superpower scientists discovered a quirk in the proteins,” The New York Times (27 December 2017).
Dinosaur Classification
Matthew G. Barron et al, “A new hypothesis of dinosaur relationships and early dinosaur evolution,” Nature 543: 501-506 (23 March 2017).
Carolyn Gramling, “New fossils are redefining what makes a dinosaur,” Science News (21 February 2018).
Carolyn Gramling, “Ma, where did they put T. Rex?,” Science 355(6331): 1249 (24 March 2017).
“A new way to classify dinosaurs,” The Economist (23 March 2017).
“New study shakes the roots of the dinosaur family tree,” ScienceDaily (22 March 2017).
Rahcel Ehrenberg, “Anatomy analysis suggests new dinosaur family tree,” New Scientist (20 April 2017).
Darren Naish, “Ornithoscelida rises: a new family tree for dinosaurs,” Scientific American (22 March 2017).
James McNish and Lisa Hendry, “Dinosaur family tree radically rearranged,” Natural History Museum (22 March 2017).
Andy Coghlan, “Feathersaurus: plant-eating dinos had plumage too,” New Scientist (24 July 2014).
Brian Switek, “Palaeontology: The truth about T. rex,” Nature (23 October 2013).
Pascal Godefroit et al, “A Jurassic ornithischian dinosaur from Siberia with both feathers and scales,” Science 345(6195): 451–455 (25 July 2014).
Brian Switek, “Rise of the feathered dinosaurs,” Nature (2 July 2012).
Meghan Rosen, “All dinosaurs may have had feathers,” Science News (2 July 2012).
Zixiao Yang et al, “Pterosaur integumentary structures with complex feather-like branching,” Nature Ecology & Evolution (17 December 2018).
“New discovery pushes origin of feathers back by 70 million years,” Phys.org (17 December 2018).
Xing Xu, “A gigantic feathered dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous of China,” Nature 484: 92–95 (5 April 2012).
Henry Gee, “Birds and dinosaurs – the debate is over,” Nature News (2 July 1998).
John Roach, “Dinosaur tracks shed light on sauropod evolution,” National Geographic News (20 May 2002).
Ian Sample, “‘Bizarre’ Jurassic dinosaur discovered in remarkable new find,” The Guardian (27 April 2015).
Tom Mullen, “Sir Richard Owen: The man who invented the dinosaur,” BBC News (26 February 2015).
Tyrannosaurs
T. rex drawing courtesy of Zhao Chuang and the Pacific Northwest Site Office of the Office of Science of the US Department of Energy.
Carolyn Gramling, “Tyrannosaurus rex exhibit takes a deep dive into the iconic dinosaur,” Science News (27 April 2019).
W. Scott Persons et al, “An older and exceptionally large adult specimen of Tyrannosaurus rex, The Anatomical Record (21 March 2019).
“Paleontologists report world’s biggest Tyrannosaurus rex,” ScienceDaily (22 March 2019).
James Gorman, “Tyrannosaurus Rex: the once and future king,” The New York Times (4 March 2019).
Phil R. Bell et al, “Tyrannosauroid integument reveals conflicting patterns of gigantism and feather evolution,” Biology Letters (7 June 2017).
“T. rex was not feathery, study says,” Phys.org (7 June 2017).
Nicholas St. Fleur, “Tiny tyrannosaur hints at how T. Rex became king,” The New York Times (21 February 2019).
Sindya N. Bhanoo, “T. Rex’s relatives had more items on their menu,” The New York Times (20 December 2010).
Stephen Brusatte, “Rise of the tyrannosaurs,” Scientific American 312(5): 34–41 (May 2015).
“Colossal new predatory dino terrorized early tyrannosaurs,” Phys.org (22 November 2013).
Lindsay E. Zanno & Peter J. Makovicky, “Neovenatorid theropods are apex predators in the Late Cretaceous of North America,” Nature Communications (22 November 2013).
Stephen L. Brusatte et al, “New tyrannosaur from the mid-Cretaceous of Uzbekistan clarifies evolution of giant body sizes and advanced senses in tyrant dinosaurs,” PNAS (14 March 2016).
D.W.E. Hone & D.H. Tanke, “Pre- and postmortem tyrannosaurid bite marks on the remains of Daspletosaurus (Tyrannosaurinae: Theropoda) from Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta, Canada,” PeerJ (9 April 2015).
Carolyn Gramling, “T. rex pulverized bones with an incredible amount of force,” Science News (22 October 2018).
P.M. Gignac and G.M. Erickson, “The biomechanics behind extreme osteophagy in Tyrannosaurus rex,” Society for Vertebrate Paleontology annual meeting, Albuquerque (20 October 2018).
Robert A. DePalma II et al, “Physical evidence of predatory behavior in Tyrannosaurus rex,” PNAS (15 July 2013).
Stephan Lautenschlager et al, “Morphological and functional diversity in therizinosaur claws and the implications for theropod claw evolution,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (7 May 2014).
Thomas D. Carr et al, “A new tyrannosaur with evidence for anagenesis and crocodile-like facial sensory system,” Scientific Reports (30 March 2017).
Ian Sample, “Tyrannosaurus rex was a sensitive lover, new dinosaur discovery suggests,” The Guardian (30 March 2017).
“You could outrun a T. Rex,” The Week (4 August 2017).
Sebastián Apesteguía et al, “An unusual new theropod with a didactyl manus from the upper Cretaceous of Patagonia, Argentina,” PLoS One (13 July 2016).
Steven M. Stanley, “Evidence that the arms of Tyrannosaurus rex were not functionless but adapted for vicious slashing,” The Geological Society of America Annual Meeting (22 October 2017).
Carolyn Gramling, “T. rex’s silly-looking arms were built for slashing,” Science News (25 October 2017).
“Sharp-eared T. rex may have stalked the night like today’s owls,” New Scientist (4 November 2015).
Sarah Spickernell, “T. rex didn’t need proper arms thanks to its neck,” New Scientist (15 April 2014).
E. Snively et al, “The role of the neck in the feeding behaviour of the Tyrannosauridae: inference based on kinematics and muscle function of extant avians,” Journal of Zoology (1 April 2014).
Alok Jha & Dave Hone, “Lythronax argestes: ‘King of Gore’ joins T. rex family tree,” The Guardian (6 November 2013).
Anthony R. Fiorillo & Ronald S. Tykoski, “A diminutive new Tyrannosaur from the top of the world,” PLoS One (12 March 2014).
Dakotaraptor illustration courtesy of Emily Willoughby.
Robert A. DePalma et al, “The first giant raptor (Theropoda: Dromaeosauridae) from the Hell Creek Formation,” Paleontological Contributions 14 (30 October 2015).
Sarah Kaplan, “Meet the ‘Dakotaraptor,’ the freaky feathered dinosaur that once roamed South Dakota,” The Washington Post (5 November 2015).
Jon Tennant, “Giant raptor fossil discovered in South Dakota,” Discover (2 November 2015).
Ellen Brait, “Meet Dakotaraptor: the feathered dinosaur that was ‘utterly lethal’,” The Guardian (5 November 2015).
Paul M. Barrett et al, “A palaeoequatorial ornithischian and new constraints on early dinosaur diversification,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (6 August 2014).
Richard T. McCrea et al, ” A ‘terror of tyrannosaurs’: the first track-ways of tyrannosaurids and evidence of gregariousness and pathology in tyrannosauridae,” PLoS One (23 July 2014).
Gregory M. Erickson, “Breathing life into T. rex,” Dinosaurs, Scientific American (June 2014).
Halszkaraptor
Halszkaraptor drawing courtesy of Tomopteryx.
Andrea Cau et al, “Synchrotron scanning reveals amphibious ecomorphology in a new clade of bird-like dinosaurs,” Nature (6 December 2017).
“Halszkaraptor escuilliei: bizarre new dinosaur was a mix of aquatic bird and theropod,” Sci-News (8 December 2017).
Spinosaurs
Spinosaurus drawing courtesy of Bogdanov.
Spinosaurus skeletal image courtesy of the University of Chicago Fossil Lab.
Nizar Ibrahim et al, “Semiaquatic adaptations in a giant predatory dinosaur,” Science (11 September 2014).
Kenneth Chang, “A lost-and-found nomad helps solve the mystery of a swimming dinosaur,” The New York Times (11 September 2014).
Dominion
Forest Rohwer & Rebecca Vega Thurber, “Viruses manipulate the marine environment,” Nature 459: 207–212 (14 May 2009).
Brian Switek, “Why do we love dinosaurs so much?,” The Guardian (5 September 2014).
Sauropods
Alejandro Otero et al, “Ontogenetic changes in the body plan of the sauropodomorph dinosaur Mussaurus patagonicus reveal shifts of locomotor stance during growth,” Scientific Reports 9: 7614 (20 May 2019).
John Pickrell, “This early sauropod went from walking on four legs to two as it grew,” Science News (20 May 2019).
Fredric Heeren, “Rise of the titans,” Nature 475: 159-161 (14 July 2011).
James Morgan, “‘Biggest dinosaur ever’ discovered,” BBC News (16 May 2014).
Kristina A. Curry Rogers & Michael D. D’Emic, “Triumph of the titans,” Dinosaurs, Scientific American (June 2014).
Sara Reardon, “Giant dino lived in Antarctica,” Science (21 December 2011).
Henry C. Fricke et al, “Lowland–upland migration of sauropod dinosaurs during the Late Jurassic epoch,” Nature 480: 513–515 (22 December 2011).
“Prehistoric monsters may not have been as monstrous as once believed,” The Economist (24 June 2009).
“Dinosaurs ‘much lighter than previously thought’,” The Telgraph (6 June 2012).
David J. Button et al, “Cranial biomechanics underpins high sauropod diversity in resource-poor environments,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (8 October 2014).
Elsa Youngsteadt, “Could climate change alter lizard learning?,” Science (10 January 2012).
Ornithischians
Jordan C. Mallon & Jason S. Anderson, “Skull ecomorphology of megaherbivorous dinosaurs from the dinosaur park formation (Upper Campanian) of Alberta, Canada,” PloS One (10 July 2013).
Jenna Iacurci, “Stegosaurs dole out lethal strikes when necessary,” Nature World News (21 October 2014).
Gregory M. Erickson et al, “Complex dental structure and wear biomechanics in hadrosaurid dinosaurs,” Science 338: 98–101 (5 October 2012).
David B. Weishampel et al, The Dinosauria, University of California Press (2004).
John B. Scannella et al, “Evolutionary trends in Triceratops from the Hell Creek Formation, Montana,” PNAS (30 June 2014).
“Head decor linked to bigger dinos,” Science News (4 February 2017).
Dinosaur Fleas
“Jurassic pain: giant ‘flea-like’ insects plagued dinosaurs,” Oregon State University News (1 May 2012).
George O. Poinar Jr., “Palaeontology: the 165-million-year itch,” Current Biology 22(8): R278–R280 (24 April 2012).
Diying Huang et al, “Diverse transitional giant fleas from the Mesozoic era of China,” Nature 483: 201–204 (8 March 2012).
Christopher Joyce, “The dinosaurs’ nemeses: giant, jurassic fleas,” NPR (6 May 2012).
Ian Sample, “Giant Jurassic fleas drank the blood of dinosaurs and pterosaurs,” The Guardian (29 February 2012).
Brian Switek, “Super-sized fleas adapted to feed off dinosaurs,” Nature (29 February 2012).
David Derbyshire, “Riddle of how fleas can jump 100 times their height solved… they have ‘multi-jointed’ hind legs,” Mail Online (10 February 2011).
Water Fleas
Water flea photo courtesy of Paul Hebert.
“Study of the evolution of the micro-crustacean group Cladocera,” Phys.org (16 December 2016).
Kay Van Damme & ALexey A. Kotov, “The fossil record of the Cladocera (Crustacea: Branchiopoda): evidence and hypotheses,” Earth-Science Review 163:162-189 (December 2016).
Ellen Decaestecker et al, “Cyclical Parthenogenesis in Daphnia: sexual versus asexual reproduction,” Springer (September 2009).
Derek J. Taylor et al, “Phylogenetic evidence for a single long-lived clade of crustacean cyclic parthenogens and its implications for the evolution of sex,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B (22 April 1999).
Henri J. Dumont, “The evolution of groundwater Cladocera,” Hydrobiologia 307 (1): 69-74 (July 1995).
R. Rouger et al, “Effects of complex life cycles on genetic diversity: cyclical parthenogenesis,” Heredity 117: 226-347 (November 2016).
Ostrich Dinosaurs
Paul M. Barrett, “The diet of ostrich dinosaurs (Theropoda: Ornitho-mimosauria),” Palaeontology 48(2): 347–358 (March 2005).
Anzu
Anzu drawing courtesy of Mark A. Klingler.
Matthew C. Lamanna et al, “A new large-bodied oviraptorosaurian theropod dinosaur from the latest cretaceous of western North America,” PLoS One (19 March 2014).
“Dinos shook their tail feathers,” Science 339: 125 (11 January 2013).
In The Skies
“Baby pterodactyls could fly from birth,” Phys.org (12 June 2019).
David Michael Unwin & D. Charles Deeming, “Prenatal development in pterosaurs and its implications for their postnatal locomotory ability,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B (12 June 2019).
“Jurassic lark,” The Economist (11 May 2013).
Anurognathus image courtesy of Dmitry Bogdanov.
At Sea
Elasmosaurus drawing courtesy of Adam Smith.
Caroline Arnold, Giant Sea Reptiles, Clarion Books (2007).
Long Cheng et al, “A new marine reptile from the Triassic of China, with a highly specialized feeding adaptation,” Naturwissenschaften 101(3): 251–259 (March 2014).
Atopodentatus drawing courtesy of Nobu Tamura.
David W. Krause et al, “First cranial remains of a gondwanatherian mammal reveal remarkable mosaicism,” Nature (5 November 2014).
Valentin Fischer et al, “Extinction of fish-shaped marine reptiles associated with reduced evolutionary rates and global environmental volatility,” Nature Communications (8 March 2016).
Qiyue Zhang et al, “Nothosaur foraging tracks from the Middle Triassic of southwestern China,” Nature Communications (11 June 2014).
Nicholas St. Fleur, “The prehistoric puzzle of how plesiosaurs swam through the oceans,” The New York Times (29 August 2017).
Shiqiu Liu et al, “Computer simulations imply forelimb-dominated underwater flight in plesiosaurs,” PLoS Computational Biology (18 December 2015).
“Ancient 4—flippered reptile flapped like a penguin,” Eureka Alert (17 December 2015).
Mosasaurs
Mosasaur (Platecarpus tympaniticus) drawing courtesy of Dmitry Bogdanov.
Johan Lindgren et al, “Convergent evolution in aquatic tetrapods: insights from an exceptional fossil mosasaur,” PLoS One (9 August 2010).
T. Lynn Harrell Jr et al, “Endothermic mosasaurs? Possible thermoregulation of Late Cretaceous mosasaurs (Reptilia, Squamata) indicated by stable oxygen isotopes in fossil bioapatite in comparison with coeval marine fish and pelagic seabirds,” Palaeontology (1 April 2016).
“Scientists cite evidence that mosasaurs were warm-blooded,” ScienceDaily (6 May 2016).
Yucatan Big Bang
Ben Guarino, “Fossils show worldwide catastrophe on the day the dinosaurs died,” The New York Times (29 March 2019).
Alfio Alessandro Chiarenza et al, “Ecological niche modelling does not support climatically-driven dinosaur diversity decline before the Cretaceous/Paleogene mass extinction,” Nature Communications (6 March 2019).
“Dinosaurs were unaffected by climate change, flourished before asteroid strike, paleontologists say,” Sci News (6 March 2019).
“Dino-killing asteroid could have thrust Earth into 2 years of darkness,” Phys.org (21 August 2017).
Charles G. Bardeen et al, “On transient climate change at the Cretaceous- Paleogene boundary due to atmospheric soot injections,” PNAS (21 August 2017).
Laurel Hamers, “Dino-dooming asteroid impact created a chilling sulfur cloud,” Science News (2 November 2017).
Kunio Kaiho & Naga Oshima, “Site of asteroid impact changed the history of life on Earth: the low probability of mass extinction,” Scientific Reports (9 November 2017).
Ben Guarino, “Dinosaurs would have survived if asteroid hit Earth elsewhere, scientists claim,” The Washington Post (9 November 2017).
Thomas Sumner, “Devastation detectives,” Science News (4 February 2017).
“Dinosaurs fell victim to perfect storm of events, study shows,” ScienceDaily (28 July 2014).
Paul R. Renne et al, “Time scales of critical events around the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary,” Science 339(6120): 684–687 (8 February 2013).
Heiko Pälike, “Impact and extinction,” Science 339(6120): 655–656 (8 February 2013).
Robert Duncan, “Deadly combination,” Nature 527: 172 (12 November 2015).
Maria Popova, “‘Dark matter and the dinosaurs,’ by Lisa Randall,” The New York Times (24 November 2015).
Richard Ingham, “Dinosaur-killing impact acidified oceans,” Phys.org (9 March 2014).
Johan Vellekoop et al, “Rapid short-term cooling following the Chicxulub impact at the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary,” PNAS (12 May 2014).
Claire M. Belcher et al, “An experimental assessment of the ignition of forest fuels by the thermal pulse generated by the Cretaceous–Palaeogene impact at Chicxulub,” Journal of the Geological Society (22 January 2015).
Douglas S. Robertson et al, “K-Pg extinction: reevaluation of the heat-fire hypothesis,” Journal of Geophysical Research (26 March 2013).
Stephen L. Brusatte et al, “Dinosaur morphological diversity and the end-Cretaceous extinction,” Nature Communications (1 May 2012).
Manabu Sakamoto et al, “Dinosaurs in decline tens of millions of years before their final extinction,” PNAS (18 April 2016).
Nicola Davis, “Dinosaurs in decline long before asteroid catastrophe, study reveals,” The Guardian (18 April 2016).
Sindya N. Bhanoo, “Earlier mass extinction for most of marine life,” The New York Times (10 September 2012).
Blair Schoene et al, “U-Pb geochronology of the Deccan Traps and relation to the end-Cretaceous mass extinction,” Science (11 December 2014).
Richard Stone, “Back from the dead,” Science 346(6215): 1281–1283 (12 December 2014).
Sierra V. Petersen et al, “End-Cretaceous extinction in Antarctica linked to both Deccan volcanism and meteorite impact via climate change,” Nature Communications (5 July 2016).
Howard Lee, “Global warming implicated in dinosaur extinction,” The Guardian (13 July 2016).
Thomas S. Tobin et al, “Extinction patterns, d18 O trends, and magne-tostratigraphy from a southern high-latitude Cretaceous–Paleogene section: links with Deccan volcanism,” Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 350–352: 180–188 (15 September 2012).
Richard A. Kerr, “Before the dinosaurs’ demise, a clambake extinction?,” Science 337: 1280 (14 September 2012).
Stephen L. Brusatte et al, “The extinction of the dinosaurs,” Biological Reviews (28 July 2014).
Ian Sample, “Asteroid’s ‘bad timing’ killed off dinosaurs, new evidence shows,” The Guardian (28 July 2014).
Nicholas R. Longrich et al, “Mass extinction of lizards and snakes at the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary,” PNAS 109(52): 21396–21401 (26 December 2012).
Sid Perkins, “Why some species thrived when dinos died,” Science (24 July 2013).
Douglas S. Robertson et al, “K-Pg extinction patterns in marine and freshwater environments: the impact winter model,” Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences (11 July 2013).
Sandra M. Rehan et al, “First evidence for a massive extinction event affecting bees close to the K-T boundary,” PLoS One (23 October 2013).
Roger B.J. Benson et al, “Rates of dinosaur body mass evolution indicate 170 million years of sustained ecological innovation on the avian stem lineage,” PLoS Biology (6 May 2014).
Sheyna E. Gifford, “The incredible shrinking dinosaur,” Astrobiology Magazine (20 May 2014).
David Godkin, “Toothless beaks for the win,” Scientific American (August 2016).
Meghan Rosen, “The survivors,” Science News (4 February 2017).
N.R. Longrich et al, “Severe extinction and rapid recovery of mammals across the Cretaceous–Palaeogene boundary, and the effects of rarity on patterns of extinction and recovery,” Journal of Evolutionary Biology (11 May 2016).
“Mammals almost wiped out with the dinosaurs,” Phys.org (20 June 2016).
Birds
John Long & Peter Schouten, Feathered Dinosaurs: The Origin of Birds, Oxford University Press (2008).
Mark N. Puttick et al, “High rates of evolution preceded the origin of birds,” Evolution (2014).
“New insights into origin of birds focuses on key characteristics that preceded flight: body size, forelimb length,” ScienceDaily (23 February 2014).
Yi qi drawing courtesy of Nobu Tamura.
Susan Milius, “The lucky ones,” Science News (4 February 2017).
Alan Feduccia et al, “Do feathered dinosaurs exist? Testing the hypothesis on neontological and paleontological evidence,” Journal of Morphology (10 October 2005).
“Gross anatomy,” National Geographic (August 2012).
“Fossil egg links dinosaurs to modern birds,” ScienceDaily (12 July 2012).
Nieves López-Martínez & Enric Vicens, “A new peculiar dinosaur egg, Sankofa pyrenaica from the Upper Cretaceous coastal deposits of the Aren Formation, southcentral Pyrenees, Lleida, Catalonia, Spain,” Palaeontology (13 March 2012).
Stephen L. Brusatte et al, “Gradual assembly of avian body plan culminated in rapid rates of evolution across the dinosaur-bird transition,” Current Biology (25 September 2014).
Brian Stallard, “Shrinking dinosaurs survived, are now birds, claim experts,” Nature World News (31 July 2014).
“Shrinking dinosaurs evolved into flying birds,” University of Southampton (30 July 2014).
Andy Coghlan, “Dinosaurs shrank for 50 million years to become birds,” New Scientist (31 July 2014).
Michael S. Y. Lee et al, “Sustained miniaturization and anatomical innovation in the dinosaurian ancestors of birds,” Science 345(6196): 562–566 (1 August 2014).
Michael J. Benton, “How birds became birds,” Science 345(6196): 508–509 (1 August 2014).
Stephen L. Bursatte et al, “The origin and diversification of birds,” Current Biology 25(19): R888-R898 (5 October 2015).
“Clues to how birds began to fly,” ScienceDaily ScienceDaily (19 October 2018).
L. Christoffer Johansson et al, “Flight in ground effect dramatically reduces aerodynamic costs in bats,” Current Biology (18 October 2018).
John R. Horner et al, “Early birds,” Dinosaurs, Scientific American (June 2014).
Xing Xu et al, “A bizarre Jurassic maniraptoran theropod with preserved evidence of membranous wings,” Nature (29 April 2015).
Pascal Godefroit et al, “A Jurassic avialan dinosaur from China resolves the early phylogenetic history of birds,” Nature 498: 359–362 (20 June 2013).
Chris Woolston, “New contender for first bird,” Nature (29 May 2013).
Ian Sample, “Early bird beat Archaeopteryx to worm by 10m years,” The Guardian (29 May 2013).
Sid Perkins, “Peacock-sized creature predates the oldest known bird,” Science News (25 September 2009).
Pascal Godefroit et al, “Reduced plumage and flight ability of a new Jurassic paravian theropod from China,” Nature Communications (22 January 2013).
Michael Balter, “Bad birthday news for first bird?,” Science 333: 511 (29 July 2011).
Gregory M. Erickson et al, “Was dinosaurian physiology inherited by birds? Reconciling slow growth in Archaeopteryx,” PLoS One (9 October 2009).
Nicholas R. Longrich et al, “Primitive wing feather arrangement in Archaeopteryx lithographica and Anchiornis huxleyi,” Current Biology 22(23): 2262–2267 (21 November 2012).
Microraptor drawing courtesy of William Beebe (1915).
Nishad Karim, “Four-winged flying dinosaur unearthed in China,” The Guardian (15 July 2014).
Michael Balter, “Flying dinos and baby birds offer new clues about how avians took wing,” Science 338: 591–592 (2 November 2012).
Gang Han et al, “A new raptorial dinosaur with exceptionally long feathering provides insights into dromaeosaurid flight performance,” Nature Communications (15 July 2014).
“Four wings, good. Two wings, better,” The Economist (10 November 2012).
Xiaoting Zheng et al, “Hind wings in basal birds and the evolution of leg feathers,” Science 339: 1309–1312 (15 March 2013).
Min Wang et al, “The oldest record of ornithuromorpha from the early cretaceous of China,” Nature Communications (5 May 2015).
John Noble Wilford, “Paper challenges ideas about ‘early bird’ dinosaur,” The New York Times (8 October 2009).
Winfried S. Peters & Dieter Stefan Peters, “Life history, sexual dimorphism and ‘ornamental’ feathers in the mesozoic bird Confuciusornis sanctus,” Biology Letters 5(6): 817–820 (23 December 2009).
Luis M Chiappe et al, “Life history of a basal bird: morphometrics of the Early Cretaceous Confuciusornis,” Biology Letters 4(6): 719–723 (23 December 2008).
Lianhai Hou et al, “A beaked bird from the Jurassic of China,” Nature 377: 616–618 (19 October 2002).
Lianhai Hou et al, “A diapsid skull in a new species of the primitive bird Confuciusornis,” Nature 399: 679–682 (17 June 1999).
Lianhai Hou et al, “Early adaptive radiation of birds: evidence from fossils from northeastern China,” Science 274(5290): 1164–1167 (15 November 1996).
Robert L. Nudds & Gareth J. Dyke, “Narrow primary feather rachises in Confuciusornis and Archaeopteryx suggest poor flight ability,” Science 328(5980): 887–889 (14 May 2010).
Robert W. Meredith et al, “Evidence for a single loss of mineralized teeth in the common avian ancestor,” Science 346(6215): (12 December 2014).
John Long & Peter Schouten, Feathered Dinosaurs, Oxford University Press (2008).
Gareth Dyke, “Winged victory,” Dinosaurs, Scientific American (June 2014).
Nicholas R. Longrich et al, “Mass extinction of birds at the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) boundary,” PNAS 108(37): 15253–15257 (13 September 2011).
Stephen L. Bursatte, “Evolution: how some birds survived when all other dinosaurs died,” Current Biology 26(10): R415-R417 (23 May 2016).
Roger B. J. Benson & Jonah N. Choiniere, “Rates of dinosaur limb evolution provide evidence for exceptional radiation in Mesozoic birds,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (14 August 2013).
Denver W. Fowler et al, “The predatory ecology of Deinonychus and the origin of flapping in birds,” PLoS One (14 December 2011).
“Dinosaurs with killer claws yield new theory about evolution of flight,” ScienceDaily (15 December 2011).
Daniel J. Field et al, “Early evolution of modern birds structured by global forest collapse at the end-Cretaceous mass extinction,” Current Biology (24 May 2018).
Hannah Devlin, “Birds had to relearn flight after meteor wiped out dinosaurs,” The Guardian (24 May 2018).
Gerald Mayr & Volker Wilde, “Eocene fossil is earliest evidence of flower-visiting by birds,” Biology Letters (28 May 2014).
Susan Milius, “Bird family tree alters avian history,” Science News , 15 (1 December 2012).
Virginia Gewin, “‘Tree of life’ constructed for all living bird species,” Nature (31 October 2012).
“New species of ‘missing link’ between dinosaurs and birds identified,” Phys.org (23 October 2018).
Brian Switek, “Archaeopteryx was robed in black,” New Scientist (9 November 2011).
Michael Marshall, “The evolution of Archaeopteryx is stranger than anyone imagined,” New Scientist (29 May 2019).
Christian Foth, et al, “New specimen of Archaeopteryx provides insights into the evolution of pennaceous feathers,” Nature 511: 79–82 (3 July 2014).
Ryan M. Carney et al, “New evidence on the colour and nature of the isolated Archaeopteryx feather,” Nature Communications (24 January 2012).
Julia Clarke, “Feathers before flight,” Science 340: 690–692 (10 May 2013).
Richard O. Prum & Alan H. Brush, “Which came first, the feather or the bird?,” Dinosaurs, Scientific American (June 2014).
Marie-Claire Koschowitz et al, “Beyond the rainbow,” Science 346(6208): 416–418 (24 October 2014).
W. Scott Persons et al, “Oviraptorosaur tail forms and functions,” Acta Paleeontologica Polonica (4 January 2013).
“Sexual selection isn’t the last word on bird plumage,” ScienceDaily (27 March 2015).
J. Jordan Price & Muir D. Eaton, “Reconstructing the evolution of sexual dichromatism: current color diversity does not reflect past rates of male and female change,” Evolution (6 May 2014).
Susan Milius, “Drab female birds had more colorful evolution,” Science News (23 May 2014).
Bethany Brookshire, “Bright bird plumage resulted from natural, sexual selection,” Science News (27 March 2015).
Peter O. Dunn et al, “Natural and sexual selection act on different axes of variation in avian plumage color,” Science Advances (27 March 2015).
Natalie Angier, “The owl comes into its own,” The New York Times (25 February 2013).
“The secrets of owls’ near noiseless wings,” Phys.org (24 November 2013).
João Francisco Botelho et al, “New developmental evidence clarifies the evolution of wrist bones in the dinosaur–bird transition,” PLoS Biology (30 September 2014).
Gary W. Kaiser, The Inner Bird, UBC Press (2007).
Patrick M. O’Connor & Leon P.A.M. Claessens, “Basic avian pulmonary design and flow-through ventilation in non-avian theropod dinosaurs,” Nature 436: 253–256 (14 July 2005).
Jonathan Franzen, “Why birds matter,” National Geographic (January 2018).
Peter D. Ward, Out of Thin Air, Joseph Henry Press (2006).
Peter Ward, “Oxygen – the breath of life,” New Scientist (27 April 2006).
Patrick M. O’Connor & Leon P.A.M. Claessens, “Basic avian pulmonary design and flow-through ventilation in non-avian theropod dinosaurs,” Nature 436, 253–256 (14 July 2005).
Jingmai K. O’Connor et al, “A new enantiornithine from the Yixian formation with the first recognized avian enamel specialization,” Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology (8 Jan 2013).
“In birds’ development, researchers find diversity by the peck,” ScienceDaily (24 September 2012).
Peter Reuell, “How bird evolution swapped snouts for beaks,” Phys.org (19 August 2015).
Jen A. Bright et al, “The shapes of bird beaks are highly controlled by nondietary factors,” PNAS (28 April 2016).
“Birds of prey constrained in the beak evolution race,” ScienceDaily (29 April 2016).
William J. Cromie, “How Darwin’s finches got their beaks: a gene’s-eye view of evolution,” The Harvard Gazette (24 July 2006).
Nancy E. Johnston, “The avian tongue,” Golden Gate Audubon Society (June 2014).
Calidrid (red knot) photo courtesy of Jan van de Kam.
Matthew J. Greenwold et al, “Dynamic evolution of the alpha (a) and beta (ß) keratins has accompanied integument diversification and the adaptation of birds into novel lifestyles,” BMC Evolutionary Biology 14:249 (2014).
Ladder-back woodpecker photo courtesy of Alan D. Wilson.
N. Lee et al, “Hierarchical multiscale structure – property relation-ships of the red-bellied woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus) beak,” Interface (2014).
Giant moa drawing courtesy of Joseph Smit (1836 – 1929).
Kieren J. Mitchell et al, “Ancient DNA reveals elephant birds and kiwi are sister taxa and clarifies ratite bird evolution,” Science 344(6186): 898-900 (23 May 2014).
Matthew J. Phillips et al, “Tinamous and moa flock together: mitochondrial genome sequence analysis reveals independent losses of flight among ratites,” Systematic Biology (13 November 2009).
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“The shape of a bird’s wing determines where it lives,” Phys.org (13 December 2016).
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Grasses
Grass parts drawing courtesy of the University of Georgia.
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Dinosaurs & Early Mammals
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“Researchers discover first winged mammals from the Jurassic period,” Phys.org (9 August 2017).
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Qing-Jin Meng et al, “An arboreal docodont from the Jurassic and mammaliaform ecological diversification,” Science 347(6223): 764–768 (13 February 2015).
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Sid Perkins, “Dino deaths be damned,” Science (14 March 2012).
Qing-Jin Meng et al, “New gliding mammaliaforms from the Jurassic,” Nature (9 August 2017).
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True Beasts
Catopsbaatar multituberculate drawing courtesy of Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska & Jørn H. Hurum.
David M. Grossnickle & Elis Newham, “Therian mammals experience an ecomorphological radiation during the Late Cretaceous and selective extinction at the K–Pg boundary,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B (8 June 2016).
Stephen Brusatte & Zhe-Xi Luo, “Ascent of the mammals,” Scientific American (June 2016).
“Mammals began their takeover long before the death of the dinosaurs,” Phys.org (7 June 2016).
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Sid Perkins, “Ancestor of all placental mammals revealed,” Science (7 February 2013).
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Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum
Thomas Sumner, “Evidence mounts for ancient comet,” Science News (29 October 2016).
Gavin Schmidt & D.T. Shindell, “Atmospheric composition, radiative forcing, and climate change as a consequence of a massive methane release from gas hydrates?,” Paleoceanography 18(1): 1004 (31 Jan-uary 2003).
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Primates Ascendant
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Antarctica Isolated
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Tectonic Pulses
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Evolution
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Amit Goswami, Creative Evolution, Quest Books (2008).
“Island lizards are expert sunbathers, and researchers find it’s slowing their evolution,” ScienceDaily (22 April 2019).
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“Well established theories on patterns in evolution might be wrong,” Phys.org (28 September 2018).
Preformationism
Nicolas Malebranche, De la recherche de la vérité (The Search After Truth) (1674–1675).
Spermism
David M. Friedman, A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis, The Free Press (2001).
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
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Elizabeth Norton, “Elephants shaped their own evolution,” Science (26 June 2013).
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Charles Darwin
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Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859).
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871).
Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872).
Tim Radford, “Evolution and Darwin,” The Observer (27 April 2008).
Darwinism
Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, Simon & Schuster (1995).
Robert J. Richards, The Meaning of Evolution: The Morphological Construction and Ideological Reconstruction of Darwin’s Theory, University of Chicago Press (1992).
Competition
Kathryn M. Langin et al, “Islands within an island: Repeated adaptive divergence in a single population,” Evolution (5 February 2015).
Marlene Cimons, “Study suggests survival isn’t always about competition,” Phys.org (2 May 2014).
Seabird Colonies
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Guppy Love
Kimberly A. Hughes et al, “Mating advantage for rare males in wild guppy populations,” Nature 503: 108–111 (7 November 2013).
Genomic Symphony
Jeffrey S. McKinnon & Maria R. Servedio, “Novelty makes the heart grow fonder,” Nature 503: 44–45 (7 November 2013).
Richard Dawkin, The Selfish Gene, Oxford University Press (1976).
Christoph Adami & Arend Hintze, “Evolutionary instability of zero-determinant strategies demonstrates that winning is not everything,” Nature Communications (1 August 2013).
Selfish Genes
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Tina Hesman Saey, “‘Selfish’ DNA flouts rules of inheritance,” Science News (24 February 2016).
Random Mutation
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Iñigo Martincorena et al, “Evidence of non-random mutation rates suggests an evolutionary risk management strategy,” Nature (23 April 2012).
Richard Gawne, “The cultural evolution,” Science 350(6261): 639 (6 November 2015).
Markus Dieser et al, “Double-strand DNA break repair at -15°C,” Applied and Environmental Microbiology (27 September 2013).
“How microbes survive in freezing conditions,” ScienceDaily (10 October 2013).
“Far from random, evolution follows a predictable genetic pattern,” ScienceDaily (25 October 2012).
Nematode Timing
Tanita Casci, “Gene expression: genetic support network to the rescue,” Nature Reviews Genetics 13: 74 (February 2012).
Elizabeth Pennisi, “Is evolution predictable?,” Science (17 August 2011).
Mark Pagel, “The neighborly nature of evolution,” Nature 514: 34 (2 October 2014).
Selection’s Selector
Sindya N. Bhanoo, “A desert spider with astonishing moves,” The New York Times (4 May 2014).
Influenza
Duncan Graham-Rowe, “Racing against the flu,” Nature 480: 82–83 (8 December 2011).
Progress (Evolution’s Vector)
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Descent of man image courtesy of Richard Geer.
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Symbiogenesis
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Symbiogenesis
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Punctuated Evolution
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Lizard Oviparity
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Michael Le Page, “Lizards re-evolved eggs after thousands of years of live birth,” New Scientist (5 December 2017).
Wrasses
Brett R. Aiello et al, “Emcahosensation is evolutionarily tuned to locomotor mechanics,” PNAS (12 April 2017).
“As fins evolve to help fish swim, so does the nervous system,” ScienceDaily (12 April 2017).
The Science of Evolution
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Sandra Cortijo et al, “Mapping the epigenetic basis of complex traits,” Science 343(6175): 1145–1148 (7 March 2014).
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A New Trait
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Sex Ratios
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Hannah Devlin, “Female embryos more likely to die in pregnancy than males, study claims,” The Guardian (30 March 2015).
Melinda Beck, “Boys face more danger than girls in womb,” The Wall Street Journal (14 November 2013).
Saltation
Richard Goldschmidt, “Some aspects of evolution.” Science 78: 539-547 (15 December 1933).
Richard Goldschmidt, The Material Basis of Evolution, Yale University Press (1940).
Harlan Lewis, “Speciation in flowering plants,” Science 152: 167-171 (8 April 1966).
Stephen Jay Gould, “The return of hopeful monsters,” Natural History 86: 24,30 (1977).
Stephen Jay Gould & Niles Eldredge, “Puntuated equilibria: the tempo and mode of evolution reconsidered,” Paleobiology 3: 115-151 (1977).
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Michael Akam, “Hox genes, homeosis and the evolution of segment identity: no need for hopeless monsters,” International Journal of Developmental Biology 42: 445–451 (1998).
Tortoise photo courtesy of Bizarro.
Matamata turtle photo courtesy of Raymond L. Ditmars.
Rainer R. Schoch & Hans-Dieter Sues, “A Middle Triassic stem-turtle and the evolution of the turtle body plan,” Nature 523: 584-587 (30 July 2015).
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Behavior
Juan C. Santos et al, “Aposematism increases acoustic diversification and speciation in poison frogs,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (15 October 2014).
“Poisonous frogs safe to sing longer and louder,” New Scientist (15 October 2014).
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (1871).
Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872).
Edward O. Wilson, Sociobiology: A New Synthesis (1975).
Donald Symons, The Evolution of Human Sexuality (1979).
Jerome Barkow, Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, The Adapted Mind (1992).
Attitude Counts
Ashifa Kassam, “Eat, prey, love: bald eagles adopt baby hawk into their nest in Canada,” The Guardian (28 July 2017).
Kevin Griffin, “Nicknames abound for feisty red-tailed hawk in bald eagle family,” Vancouver Sun (21 July 2017).
Kevin Griffin, “Bird experts surprised by red-tailed hawk chick surviving in bald-eagle nest,” Vancouver Sun (07 July 2017).
Human Mating Strategies
Susan Milius, “Female infidelity may violate goose-gander parity principle,” Science News (14 June 2011).
Rafael Wlodarski et al, “Stay or stray? Evidence for alternative mating strategy phenotypes in both men and women,” Biology Letters (4 February 2015).
“Cads and dads,” The Economist (7 February 2015).
Parasitic Ants
Unni Pulliainen et al, “The possible role of ant larvae in the defence against social parasites,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B (2019).
Yvaine Ye, “Ant larvae defend their homes by eating eggs laid by intruders,” New Scientist (6 March 2019).
“Ant larvae fight the offspring of parasitic queens,” ScienceDaily (20 March 2019).
Caterpillar Bodyguards
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“Parasitoid turns its host into a bodyguard,” ScienceDaily (9 June 2008).
Laura Sanders, “Ghost of ancestor’s genes linger,” Science News 179 (9): 11 (23 April 2011).
T.S. Saey, “Live long, pass it on,” Science News (20 October 2011).
Baldwin Effect
James Mark Baldwin, “A new factor in evolution,” American Naturalist 30: 441-451, 536-553 (1896).
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House finch photo courtesy of Matthew Hunt.
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Genetic Inheritance
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“Does evolution select for faster evolvers?,” Phys.org (29 January 2007).
Maria C. Rivera et al, “Genomic evidence for two functionally distinct gene classes,” PNAS 5(11): 6239–6244 (26 May 1998).
Gene Flow
Norman C. Ellstrand, “Is gene flow the most important evolutionary force in plants?,” American Journal of Botany 101(5): 737–753 (May 2014).
Mutation
Nicolas Rohner et al, “Cryptic variation in morphological evolution: HSP90 as a capacitor for loss of eyes in cavefish,” Science 342(6164): 1372–1375 (13 December 2013).
P.I. Fields et al, “Mutants of Salmonella typhimurium that cannot survive within the macrophage are avirulent,” PNAS 83(14): 5189–5193 (1 July 1986).
Recombination
International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium, “Human Genome” Nature 409: 860–921 (15 February 2001).
K.A. Stacey, “Recombination,” in The Encyclopedia of Molecular Biology, edited by John Kendrew & Eleanor Lawrence, Blackwell Science, 945–950 (1994).
Gene Conversion
J. Berglund et al, “Hotspots of biased nucleotide substitutions in human genes,” PLoS Biology 7(1): e26 (2009).
Self-Splicing Elements
X.Q. Liu, “Protein-splicing intein: genetic mobility, origin, and evolution,” Annual Review of Genetics 34: 61–76 (2000).
Aubrey D.N.J de Grey, “Mitochondrial gene therapy: an arena for the biomedical use of inteins,” Trends in Biotechnology 18(9): 394–399 (1 September 2000).
Vinegar Flies
Henry Chung et al, “A single gene affects both ecological divergence and mate choice in Drosophila,” Science 343(6175): 1148–1151 (7 March 2014).
C. Lucas et al, “Role of cuticular hydrocarbons in the chemical recognition between ant species in the Pachycondyla villosa species complex,” Journal of Insect Physiology 51(10):1148–1157 (October 2005).
Cells
Guilhem Chalancon et al, “Reconfiguring regulation,” Science 335(6072): 1050–1051 (2 March 2012).
Marcel Méchali, “Eukaryotic DNA replication origins: many choices for appropriate answers,” Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 11: 728–738 (1 October 2010).
Leslie A. Grivell, “Mitochondrial DNA,” Scientific American 248(3): 78–89 (March 1983).
G. Burger et al, Mitochondrial genomes: anything goes,” Trends in Genetics 19: 709–716 (December 2003).
Bruce Demple & James Halbrook, “Inducible repair of oxidative DNA damage in Escherichia coli,” Nature 304: 466–468 (4 August 1983).
Evolution Eternal
Robert S. Pitcher et al, “NHEJ protects mycobacteria in stationary phase against the harmful effects of desiccation,” DNA Repair 6(9): 1271–1276 (1 September 2007).
“No peak in sight for evolving bacteria,” Phys.Org (14 November 2013).
Elizabeth Pennisi, “The man who bottled evolution,” Science 342: 790–793 (15 November 2013).
Ciliate Protozoa
Matthew Berriman & Arnab Pain, “Variety is the spice of eukaryotic life,” Nature Reviews Microbiology 5: 660–661 (September 2007).
David W. Morgens et al, “A model for the evolution of extremely fragmented macronuclei in ciliates,” PLoS One (21 May 2013).
James A. Shapiro, Evolution: A View from the 21st Century, FT Press Science (June 2011).
DNA Mavens
“In one of nature’s innovations, a single cell smashes and rebuilds its own genome,” ScienceDaily (8 September 2014).
Xiao Chen et al, “The architecture of a scrambled genome reveals massive levels of genomic rearrangement during development,” Cell 158(5): 1187–1198 (28 August 2014).
Alan M. Zahler et al, “Mating of the Stichotrichous ciliate Oxytricha trifallax induces production of a class of 27 nt small RNAs derived from the parental macronucleus,” PLoS One (10 August 2010).
Estienne C. Swart et al, ” The Oxytricha trifallax macronuclear genome: a complex eukaryotic genome with 16,000 tiny chromosomes,” PLoS Biology (29 January 2013).
Mary Hoff, “Tantalizing glimpses into a fragmented genome,” PLoS Biology (29 January 2013).
Greg Miller, “This bizarre organism builds itself a new genome every time it has sex,” Wired (17 September 2014).
Thomas G. Doak et al, “An Oxytricha trifallax micronuclear BAC library,” Genome.gov (undated).
Thomas G. Doak et al, “Sequencing the Oxytricha trifallax macronuclear genome: a pilot project,” Trends in Genetics 19(11): 603–607 (November 2003).
Microbes
Glen D’Souza & Christian Kost, “Experimental evolution of metabolic dependency in bacteria,” PLoS Genetics (4 November 2016).
Michael Marshall, “DNA-grabbing bacteria hint at early phase of evolution,” New Scientist (26 Septemer 2013).
Garry Myers et al, “The role of mobile DNA in the evolution of prokaryotic genomes,” in The Implicit Genome 121–137, edited by L.H. Caporale, Oxford University Press (2006).
B. Jesse Shapiro et al, “Population genomics of early events in the ecological differentiation of bacteria,” Science 336 (6077): 48–51 (6 April 2012).
Patrick J. Keeling & Jeffrey D. Palmer, “Horizontal gene transfer in eukaryotic evolution,” Nature Reviews Genetics 9: 605–618 (August 2008).
“Cross species transfer of genes has driven evolution,” Phys.org (9 July 2018).
Atma M. Ivancevic et al, “Horizontal transfer of BovB and L1 retrotransposons in eukaryotes,” Genome Biology 19:85 (9 July 2018).
Brian Owens, “Fungi borrowed bacterial gene again and again,” Nature (2 July 2014).
Adam L. Clayton et al, “A novel human-infection-derived bacterium provides insights into the evolutionary origins of mutualistic insect–bacterial symbioses,” PLoS Genetics (15 November 2012).
Seung Ho Chung et al, “Herbivore exploits orally secreted bacteria to suppress plant defenses,” PNAS (9 September 2013).
Robert M. Brucker & Seth R. Bordenstein, “The hologenomic basis of speciation: gut bacteria cause hybrid lethality in the genus Nasonia,” Science (18 July 2013).
Ed Yong, “Gut microbes keep species apart,” Nature (18 July 2013).
Matteo Fumagalli et al, “Signatures of environmental genetic adaptation pinpoint pathogens as the main selective pressure through human evolution,” PLoS Genetics (November 2011).
Dual-Track Bacteria
Patrick Kaiser et al, “Cecum lymph node dendritic cells harbor slow-growing bacteria phenotypically tolerant to antibiotic treatment,” PLoS Biology (18 February 2014).
K.Z. Abshire & F.C. Neidhardt, “Growth rate paradox of Salmonella typhimurium within host macrophages,” Journal of Bacteriology 175(12): 3744-3748 (June 1993).
Viral Infection
Leigh A. Baxt et al, “Bacterial subversion of host innate immune pathways,” Science 340: 697–701 (10 May 2013).
Luis P. Villarreal, “Viral ancestors of antiviral systems,” Viruses (20 October 2011).
John M. Coffin, “Virions at the gate: receptors and the host-virus arms race,” PLoS Biology 11(5): e1001574 (May 2013).
Ann Demogines et al, “Dual host-virus arms races shape an essential housekeeping protein,” PLoS Biology 11(5): e1001571 (May 2013).
“How cells are foiled by a herpes virus family member in the virus-host arms race,” Phys.org (4 December 2015).
Song Hee Lee et al, “Cellular defense against latent colonization foiled by human cytomegalovirus UL138 protein,” Science Advances (27 November 2015).
Evolvability
Joel Lehman & Kenneth O. Stanley, “Evolvability is inevitable: increasing evolvability without the pressure to adapt,” PLoS One (24 April 2013).
“Computer scientists suggest new spin on origins of evolvability,” Phys.org (26 April 2013).
“Evolution can select for evolvability, biologists find,” Phys.Org (14 November 2013).
Dustin Brisson et al, ” Biodiversity of Borrelia burgdorferi strains in tissues of lyme disease patients,” PloS One (4 August 2011).
Aditya Barve & Andreas Wagner, “A latent capacity for evolutionary innovation through exaptation in metabolic systems,” Nature (15 July 2013).
“Great exaptations: most traits emerge for no crucial reason, scientists find,” ScienceDaily (15 July 2013).
Metabolism
Aditya Barve & Andreas Wagner, “A latent capacity for evolutionary innovation through exaptation in metabolic systems,” Nature 500: 203–208 (8 August 2013).
Adaptation In Disguise
O.S. Platt et al, “Mortality in sickle cell disease. Life expectancy and risk factors for early death,” New England Journal of Medicine 330 (23): 1639–44 (June 1994).
Sandra Garrett & Joshua J.C. Rosenthal, “RNA editing underlies temperature adaptation in K+ channels from polar octopuses,” Science 335(6070): 848–851 (5 January 2012).
Jennifer L. Guler et al, “Asexual populations of the human malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, use a two-step genomic strategy to acquire accurate, beneficial DNA amplifications,” PLoS Pathogens 9(5): e1003375 (May 2013).
Evelien M. Bunnik et al, “Comparative 3D genome organization in apicomplexan parasites,” PNAS (February 2019).
“Genome structure of malaria parasites linked to virulence,” Phys.org (4 February 2019).
Adaptation
George C. Williams, Adaptation and Natural Selection: A Critique of Some Current Evolutionary Thought, Princeton University Press (1966).
Christopher H. Martin & Peter C. Wainwright, “Multiple fitness peaks on the adaptive landscape drive adaptive radiation in the wild,” Science 339(6116): 208-211 (11 January 2013).
David Gresham, “Fitness trackingS for adapting populations,” Nature 519: 164-165 (12 March 2015).
Sasha F. Levy et al, “Quantitative evolutionary dynamics using high-resolution lineage tracking,” Nature 519: 181-185 (12 March 2015).
Perception
Sergei Gepshtein et al, “Sensory adaptation as optimal resource allocation,” PNAS 110(11): 4368-4373 (12 March 2013).
Chris R. Sims, “Efficient coding explains the universal law of generalization in human perception,” Science 360(6389): 652-656 (11 May 2018).
Sea Snakes
Jenna M. Crowe-Riddell et al, “Phototactic tails: evolution and molecular basis of a novel sensory trait in sea snakes,” Molecular Ecology (15 February 2019).
“‘Seeing’ tails help sea snakes avoid predators,” ScienceDaily (15 February 2019).
Tropical Rainforest Spiders
Catherine R. Hoffman & Leticia Avilés, “Rain, predators, and spider sociality: a manipulative experiment,” Behavioral Ecology (15 February 2017).
“Survival instinct, not family bonds, weave massive spider colonies together,” ScienceDaily (7 March 2017).
Christopher Weiss-Lehman et al, “Rapid trait evolution drives increased speed and variance in experimental range expansions,” Nature Communications (27 January 2017).
“Rapid trait evolution crucial to species growth, study finds,” Phys.org (27 January 2017).
Blair G. Paul et al, “Targeted diversity generation by intraterrestrial archaea and archaeal viruses,” Nature Communications (23 March 2015).
Brian Stallard, “This virus can ‘choose’ how it mutates to live in a hostile world,” Nature World News (24 March 2015).
Frank Groenewoud et al, “Predation risk drives social complexity in cooperative breeders,” PNAS (28 March 2016).
Kevin Laland et al, “Does evolutionary theory need a rethink? Yes, urgently,” Nature (8 October 2014).
K. Kunte et al, “doublesex is a mimicry supergene,” Nature (5 March 2014).
Mathieu Joron et al, “Chromosomal rearrangements maintain a polymorphic supergene controlling butterfly mimicry,” Nature 477: 203–206 (8 September 2011).
Mark Rowland & Douglas J. Emlen, “Two thresholds, three male forms result in facultative male trimorphism in beetles,” Science 323(5915): 773–776 (6 February 2009).
Freezing
David A. Wharton & Sharyn Barclay, “Anhydrobiosis in the free-living antarctic nematode Panagrolaimus davidi (Nematoda: Rhabditida),” Fundamental and Applied Nematology 16(1): 17-22 (1993).
Mélianie R. Raymond & David A. Wharton, “The ability of the Antarctic nematode Panagrolaimus davidi to survive intracellular freezing is dependent upon nutritional status,” Journal of Comparative Physiology B 183(2): 181-188 (February 2013).
David A. Wharton et al, “Freezing survival and cryoprotective dehydration as cold tolerance mechanisms in the Antarctic nematode Panagrolaimus davidi,” The Journal of Experimental Biology 206: 215-221 (2003).
D.A. Wharton et al, “Ice-active proteins from the Antarctic nematode Panagrolaimus davidi,” Cryobiology 51(2): 198-207 (October 2005).
David A. Wharton, “Osmoregulation in the Antarctic nematode Panagrolaimus davidi,” The Journal of Experimental Biology 213: 2025-2030 (2010).
M. Danielle McDonald & Martin Grosell, “Maintaining osmotic balance with an aglomerular kidney,” Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part A: Molecular & Integrative Physiology 143(4): 447-458 (April 2006).
Island Animals
Lisa Gross, “Islands spark accelerated evolution,” PLoS Biology (12 September 2006).
Pasquale Raia & Shai Meiri, “The island rule in large mammals: paleontology meets ecology,” Evolution (8 May 2007).
Ann Gibbons, “How islands shrink people,” Science 361(6401): 439 (3 August 2018).
Carl Zimmer, “Bodies keep shrinking on this island, and scientists aren’t sure why,” The New York Times (2 August 2018).
Esther Inglis-Arkell, “Island gigantism: how islands really do breed giant creatures,” io9 (9 May 2014).
Peter Tyson, “Gigantism & dwarfism on islands,” Nova (8 January 2011).
Darren Naish, “Marmosets and tamarins: dwarfed monkeys of the South American tropics,” Scientific American (27 November 2012).
Erik Verheyen et al, “Origin of the superflock of cichlid fishes from Lake Victoria, East Africa,” Science 300(5617): 325-329 (11 April 2003).
Manuel Nores, “An alternative hypothesis for the origin of Amazonian bird diversity,” Journal of Biogeography (24 May 2002).
Kostas Sagonas et al, “Effects of insularity on digestion: living on islands induces shifts in physiological and morphological traits in island reptiles,” The Science of Nature (28 August 2015).
“Herpetology: veggies in the making,” The Economist (12 September 2015).
Island Plants
Patrick H. Kavanagh & Kevin C. Burns, “The repeated evolution of large seeds on islands,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (21 May 2014).
Gall Plumbing
Mayako Kutsukake et al, “An insect-induced novel plant phenotype for sustaining social life in a closed system,” Nature Communications (13 November 2012).
Dung Beetles
Leigh W. Simmons & Douglas J. Emlen, “Evolutionary trade-off between weapons and testes,” PNAS 103(44): 16346–16351 (31 October 2006).
Douglas J. Emlen, Animal Weapons: The Evolution of Battle, Henry Holt (2014).
Viviane Callier, “The animal arms race,” Science 346(6215): 1305 (12 December 2014).
Douglas Emlen, “The astonishing weaponry of dung beetles,” The New York Times (31 October 2014).
John Pickrell, “Horniest male beetles have tiniest testicles,” New Scientist (16 October 2006).
Richard Madewell & Armin P. Moczek, “Horn possession reduces maneuverability in the horn-polyphenic beetle, Onthophagus nigriventris,” The Journal of Insect Science (22 September 2006).
Feathers & Fur
Michael J. Benton et al, “The early origin of feathers,” Trends in Ecology & Evolution (1 June 2019).
“Fur and feathers keep animals warm by scattering light,” ScienceDaily (23 January 2014).
Priscilla Simonis et al, “Fur and feathers keep animals warm by scattering light,” Optics Express 22(2): 1940–1951 (2014).
Alexandra Witze, “Doing the wet-dog wiggle,” Science News (22 Friday 2010).
M.A. Owen et al, “An experimental investigation of chemical communication in the polar bear,” Journal of Zoology (3 November 2014).
James Gorman, “Length of lashes keeps eyes from drying, study finds,” The New York Times (24 February 2015).
Poison Avoidance
Calla Wahlquist, “Cockroaches could soon be almost impossible to kill with pesticides,” The Guardian (3 July 2019).
James Gorman, “A bitter/sweet shift in cockroach defenses,” The New York Times (23 May 2013).
Ayako Wada-Katsumata et al, “Changes in taste neurons support the emergence of an adaptive behavior in cockroaches,” Science 340(6135): 972–975 (24 May 2013).
Pig Litters
Marlène Gamelon et al, “Fluctuating food resources influence developmental plasticity in wild boar,” Biology Letters (31 July 2013).
Lusty Birds
Mike Webster, “Fickle fairies,” Scientific American, 26 (November 2012).
Planthopper Leap Gear
Planthopper photo courtesy of Richard Ling.
Planthopper nymph gears electron microscope photo courtesy of Malcolm Burrows.
Malcolm Burrows & Gregory Sutton, “Interacting gears synchronize propulsive leg movements in a jumping insect,” Science 341(6151): 1254–1256 (13 September 2013).
James Fenner, “Planthopper uses biological gears for pouncing,” Las Vegas Guardian Express (13 September 2013).
“Gears evolved in nature long before humans ‘invented’ them,” The Guardian (13 September 2013).
William Herkewitz, “Found: the first mechanical gear in a living creature,” Popular Mechanics (12 September 2013).
Trigonopterus oblongus
Trigonopterus photo courtesy of Alex2guess.
Thomas van de Kamp et al, “A biological screw in a beetle’s leg,” Science 333(6038): 52 (1 July 2011).
Susan Milius, “Weevils evolved nut-and-screw joint,” Science News (30 June 2011).
Harvester Ants
Balaji Prabhakar et al, “The regulation of ant colony foraging activity without spatial information,” PLoS Computational Biology 8(8): e1002670 (2012).
Deborah M. Gordon, “The rewards of restraint in the collective regulation of foraging by harvester ant colonies,” Nature 498: 91–93 (6 June 2013).
Rapid Adaptation
“Is evolution predictable?,” Phys.org (7 July 2016).
Richard A. Neher & Oskar Hallatschek, “Genealogies of rapidly adapting populations,” PNAS 110(2): 437-44 (8 January 2013).
Richard A Neher et al, “Predicting evolution from the shape of genealogical tree,” eLife (11 November 2014).
Richard A. Neher & Trevor Bedford, “nextflu: real-time tracking of seasonal influenza virus evolution in humans,” Bioinformatics (26 June 2015).
Fabio Zanini et al, “Population genomics of intrapatient HIV-1 evolution,” eLife (10 December 2015).
Natalja Strelkowa & Michael Lässig, “Clonal interference in the evolution of influenza,” Genetics 192(20: 671-682 (1 October 2012).
M. Szucs et al, “Rapid adaptive evolution in novel environments acts as an architect of population range expansion,” PNAS 114(51): 13501–13506 (19 December 2017).
Y.E. Stuart et al, “Rapid evolution of a native species following invasion by a congener,” Science 346(6208): 463–466 (24 October 2014).
Martin M. Turcotte et al, “The impact of rapid evolution on population dynamics in the wild: experimental test of eco-evolutionary dynamics,” Ecology Letters 14(11): 1084–1092 (November 2011).
“Chicken study reveals evolution can happen much faster than thought,” University of Oxford (28 October 2015).
Michelle Alexander et al, “Mitogenomic analysis of a 50-generation chicken pedigree reveals a rapid rate of mitochondrial evolution and evidence for paternal mtDNA inheritance,” Biology Letters (2015).
Shiping Liu et al, “Population genomics reveal recent speciation and rapid evolutionary adaptation in polar bears,” Cell 157(4): 785–794 (8 May 2014).
Sticklebacks
Helen Shen, “Stickleback genomes reveal path of evolution,” Nature (4 April 2012).
Felicity C. Jones et al, “The genomic basis of adaptive evolution in threespine sticklebacks,” Nature 484: 55–61 (5 April 2012).
Elizabeth Pennisi, “How evolution copies itself,” Science (4 April 2012).
Isaac Wirgin et al, “Mechanistic basis of resistance to PCBs in Atlantic tomcod from the Hudson River,” Science 1322–1325 (17 February 2011).
“Waters of change,” The Economist (29 October 2011).
Coywolves
Frank Hailer & Jennifer A. Leonard, “Hybridization among three native North American canis species in a region of natural sympatry,” PLoS One (8 October 2008).
Zachary Davies Boren, “Coywolf: new coyote-wolf hybrid sees explosion in numbers,” Indpendent (1 November 2015).
“Greater than the sum of its parts,” The Economist (31 October 2015).
Paul J. Wilson, “DNA profiles of the eastern Canadian wolf and the red wolf provide evidence for a common evolutionary history independent of the gray wolf,” Canadian Journal of Zoology 78(12): 2156–2166 (2000).
Tibetans
Burce Bower, “Foragers first settle Tibetan Plateau,” Science News (4 February 2017).
Emilia Huerta-Sánchez et al, “Altitude adaptation in Tibetans caused by introgression of Denisovan-like DNA,” Nature (2 July 2014).
Florida Lizards
“Florida lizards evolve rapidly, within 15 years and 20 generations,” ScienceDaily (23 October 2014).
Big-headed Ants
“Big-headed ants grow bigger when faced with fierce competitors,” Phys.org (2 October 2014).
Bill D. Wills et al, “Body size variation and caste ratios in geographically distinct populations of the invasive big-headed ant, Pheidole megacephala (Hymenoptera: Formicidae),” Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 113(2): 423–438 (October 2014).
Jessica Hua et al, “Pesticide tolerance in amphibians: Induced tolerance in susceptible populations, constitutive tolerance in tolerant populations,” Evolutionary Applications (25 July 2013).
Katrien Vandepitte et al, “Rapid genetic adaptation precedes the spread of an exotic plant species,” Molecular Ecology 23(9): 2157–2164, (May 2014).
Elizabeth Pennisi, “How evolution copies itself,” Science (4 April 2012).
Polluted Fish
Dina A Proestou et al, “Targeted approach to identify genetic loci associated with evolved dioxin tolerance in Atlantic Killifish (Fundulus heteroclitus),” BMC Evolutionary Biology (14 January 2014).
Adam M. Reitzel et al, “Genetic variation at aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) loci in populations of Atlantic killifish (Fundulus heteroclitus) inhabiting polluted and reference habitats,” BMC Evolutionary Biology (14 January 2014).
“Pollution triggers genetic resistance mechanism in a coastal fish,” Phys.org (17 February 2011).
“Solving an evolutionary puzzle,” Phys.org (12 February 2014).
Polluted People
Carina M. Schlebusch et al, “Human adaptation to arsenic-rich environments,” Molecular Biology and Evolution (3 March 2015).
Carl Zimmer, “An unlikely driver of evolution: arsenic,” The New York Times (12 March 2015).
Peppered Moths
Peppered moth photo courtesy of Cyndy Sims Parr.
Arjen E. van’t Hof et al, “The industrial melanism mutation in British peppered moths is a transposable element,” Nature 534: 102–105 (2 June 2016).
“Jumping to attention: peppered moths,” The Economist (4 June 2016).
Olivia C. Walton & Martin Stevens, “Avian vision models and field experiments determine the survival value of peppered moth camouflage,” Communications Biology (17 August 2018).
“Study confirms truth behind ‘Darwin’s moth’,” Phys.org (17 August 2018).
Mosquitofish
Justa L. Heinen-Kay et al, “Human-caused habitat fragmentation can drive rapid divergence of male genitalia,” Evolutionary Applications (31 October 2014).
Justa L. Heinen-Kay et al, “Mosquitofish genitalia change rapidly due to human impacts,” NC State University News (4 November 2014).
“Mosquitofish genital shape linked to presence of predators,” NC State University News (10 October 2013).
Malcolm D. Schug et al, “Isolation and genetic diversity of Gambusia hubbsi (mosquitofish) populations in blueholes on Andros Island, Bahamas,” Heredity 80: 336–346 (1998).
Birds
Roger B. J. Benson et al, “Rates of dinosaur body mass evolution indicate 170 million years of sustained ecological innovation on the avian stem lineage,” PLoS Biology (6 May 2014).
W. Jetz et al, “The global diversity of birds in space and time,” Nature 491: 444–448 Nature (15 November 2012).
Donald R. Griffin, Animal Minds: Beyond Cognition to Consciousness, University of Chicago Press (2001).
Sangeet Lamichhaney et al, “Rapid hybrid speciation in Darwin’s finches,” Science (23 November 2017).
“New species can develop in as little as two generations, Galapagos study finds,” ScienceDaily (24 November 2017).
Hanneke Meijer, “Origin of the species: where did Darwin’s finches come from?,” The Guardian (30 July 2018).
Sangeet Lamichhaney et al, “A beak size locus in Darwin’s finches facilitated character displacement during a drought,” Science 352(6284): 470–473 (22 April 2016).
Tina Hesman Saey, “Gene found that controls beak size in Darwin’s finches,” Science News (28 May 2016).
“Evolution in action detected in Darwin’s finches,” Phys.org (21 April 2016).
Peter R. Grant, Ecology and evolution of Darwin’s finches, 393 Princeton University Press (1986).
Elizabeth Pennisi, “Shedding light on avian iridescence,” Science 299(5606): 504 (24 January 2003).
Potato Whiteflies
Anna G. Himler et al, “Rapid spread of a bacterial symbiont in an invasive whitefly is driven by fitness benefits and female bias,” Science 332(6026): 254–256 (8 April 2011).
Hawaiian Crickets
Colin Barras, “Crickets rapidly evolve new mating call to evade their parasites,” New Scientist (29 October 2018).
Susan L. Balenger & Marlene Zuk, “Roaming romeos: male crickets evolving in silence show increased locomotor behaviours,” Animal Behavior 101: 213-219 (March 2015).
Phil McKenna, “Flying sex pest silences the crickets,” New Scientist (21 September 2006).
“Quick evolution leads to quiet crickets,” Understanding Evolution (June 2018).
Coral
C. Mark Eakin et al, “Caribbean corals in crisis: record thermal stress, bleaching, and mortality in 2005,” PLoS One (15 November 2010).
C. Mark Eakin, “Lamarck was partially right – and that is good for corals,” Science 344(6186): 798–799 (23 May 2014).
Andrew C. Baker et al, “Coral reefs: corals’ adaptive response to climate change,” Nature 430: 741 (12 August 2004).
Stephen R. Palumbi et al, “Mechanisms of reef coral resistance to future climate change,” Science 344(6186): 895–898 (23 May 2014).
Germ Plasm
Teri Evans et al, “Acquisition of germ plasm accelerates vertebrate evolution,” Science 344(6180): 200–203 (11 April 2014).
“Does germ plasm accelerate evolution?,” Phys.org (14 April 2014).
White-lipped tree frog photo courtesy of Bignoter.
Andrew D. Johnson et al, “Regulative germ cell specification in axolotl embryos: a primitive trait conserved in the mammalian lineage,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 358(1436): 1371–1379 (29 August 2003).
Coevolution
John N. Thompson, “The evolution of species interactions,” Science 284(5423): 2116-2118 (25 June 1999).
Jason P. Harmon et al, “Species response to environmental change: impacts of food web interactions and evolution,” Science 323(5919): 1347-1350 (6 March 2009).
Claire N. Spottiswoode & Martin Stevens, “Host-parasite arms races and rapid changes in bird egg appearance,” The American Naturalist 179(5): 633–648 (May 2012).
Fruit
JoAnna Klein, “Plants can’t talk. But some fruits say ‘eat me’ to animals.,” The New York Times (9 October 2018).
Omer Nevo et al, “Fruit scent as an evolved signal to primate seed dispersal,” Science Advances (3 October 2018).
Omer Nevo et al, “Frugivores and the evolution of fruit colour,” Biology Letters (26 September 2018).
Fred Babweteera et al, “Balanites wilsoniana: Regeneration with and without elephants,” Biological Conservation 134(1): 40-47 (January 2007).
A.D. Melin et al, “Why aye-ayes see blue,” American Journal of Primatology 74(3): 185-192 (March 2012).
Milkweed
Tatyana Livshultz et al, “Evolution of pyrrolizidine alkaloid biosynthesis in Apocynaceae: revisiting the defence de-escalation hypothesis,” New Phytologist (26 February 2018).
Frank Otto, “Plants evolve away from obsolete defenses when attacked by immune herbivores, study shows,” Drexel University (26 February 2018).
Parasitic Plants
Zhenxiang Xi et al, “Horizontal transfer of expressed genes in a parasitic flowering plant,” BMC Genomics 13(227) (2012).
“Parasitic plants steal genes from their hosts,” ScienceDaily (8 June 2012).
“Parasites: a gene thief,” The Economist (6 June 2012).
Red Queen Hypothesis
Indre Zliobaite et al, “Reconciling taxon senescence with the Red Queen’s hypothesis,” Nature (29 November 2017).
Charles R. Marshall, “A tip of the hat to evolutionary change,” Nature (29 November 2017).
Leigh Van Valen, “A new evolutionary law,” Evolutionary Theory 1: 1–30 (July 1973).
Michael A. Brockhurst, “Sex, death, and the Red Queen,” Science 333: 166-167 (8 July 20111).
Tigao B. Quental & Charles R. Marshall, “How the Red Queen drives terrestrial mammals to extinction,” Science 341(6143): 290-292 (19 July 2013).
Douglas Martin, “Leigh Van Valen, evolution revolutionary, dies at 76,” The New York Times (30 October 2010).
Symbiosis
J.M. Petersen et al, “Hydrogen is an energy source for hydrothermal vent symbioses,” Nature 476: 176–180 (11 August 2011).
“Bacteria in wasp antennae produce antibiotic cocktails,” ScienceDaily (April 12, 2011).
N. Muchhala et al, “A new species of anoura (Chiroptera: Phyllostomidae) from the Ecuadorian Andes,” Journal of Mammalogy 86(3): 457-461 (2005).
R. Simon et al, “Floral acoustics: conspicuous echoes of a dish-shaped leaf attract bat pollinators,” Science 333 (6042): 631–633 (29 July 2011).
“Faecal position,” The Economist (7 December 2013).
“Protect and suvive,” The Economist (25 January 2014).
Christopher J. Meehan et al, “Herbivory in a spider through exploita-tion of an ant–plant mutualism,” Current Biology 19(19): R892–R893, (13 October 2009).
Robecca Morelle, “‘Veggie’ spider shuns meat diet,” BBC News (12 Ocober 2009).
Frédéric Partensky & Laurence Garczarek, “Microbiology: arms race in a drop of sea water,” Nature 474: 582–583 (30 June 2011).
Sarit Avrani et al, “Genomic island variability facilitates Prochloro-coccus–virus coexistence,” Nature 474: 604–608 (30 June 2011).
Henry Fountain, “Jumping spider prefers green leaves to meat,” The New York Times (13 October 2009).
Bad Taste
John P. Dumbacher et al, “Melyrid beetles (Choresine): a putative source for the batrachotoxin alkaloids found in poison-dart frogs and toxic passerine birds,” PNAS 101(45): 15857–15860 (9 November 2004).
John P. Dumbacher et al, “Homobatrachotoxin in the genus Pitohui: chemical defense in birds?,” Science (30 October 1992).
Mathieu Chouteau & Bernard Angers, “The role of predators in maintaining the geographic organization of aposematic signals,” The American Naturalist 178 (6): 810 (2011).
Richard Wrangham, “The taste of birds: pitohui!,” Science (18 December 1992).
Market Against Predation
Rose Thorogood et al, “Social transmission of avoidance among predators facilitates the spread of novel prey,” Nature Ecology & Evolution (18 December 2017).
“Birds learn from each other’s ‘disgust,’ enabling insects to evolve bright colors,” ScienceDaily (18 December 2017).
False Eyespots
Oona M. Lönnstedt et al, “Predator-induced changes in the growth of eyes and false eyespots,” Scientific Reports 3:25 (25 July 2013).
Andrei Sourakova, “Two heads are better than one: false head allows Calycopis cecrops (Lycaenidae) to escape predation by a jumping spider, Phidippus pulcherrimus (Salticidae),” Journal of Natural History 47(15-16): 1047–1054 (2013).
Dispersal & Adaptation
Andrew Berdahl et al, “On the evolutionary interplay between dispersal and local adaptation in heterogeneous environments,” Evolution (22 April 2015).
“Species’ evolutionary choice: disperse or adapt?,” ScienceDaily (1 May 2015).
Éva Kisdi, “Dispersal: risk spreading versus local adaptation,” The American Naturalist 159(6): 579-596 (June 2002).
Dries Bonte et al, “Costs of dispersal,” Biological Reviews (19 September 2011).
Karin Johst & Roland Brandl, “The effect of dispersal on local population dynamics,” Ecological Modelling 104(1): 87-101 (1 December 1997).
“How does it feel to be like a rolling stone? Ten questions about dispersal evolution,” Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 38: 231-253 (December 2007).
Tuomas Nurmi et al, “The evolution of site-selection strategy during dispersal,” Journal Of Theoretical Biology 425: 11-22 (July 2017).
Else J. Fjerdingstad et al, “Evolution of dispersal and life history strategies – Tetrahymena ciliates,” BMC Evolutionary Biology (6 August 2007).
Global Microbes
Catherine Brahic, “The 19 superbugs that rule Earth’s hidden depths,” New Scientist (9 December 2013).
Colin Barras, “Deep life: Strange creatures living far below our feet,” New Scientist (24 April 2013).
Catherine Brahic, “Canadian mine may host 2.6-billion-year-old ecosystem,” New Scientist (15 May 2013).
Catherine Brahic, “Huge hidden biomass lives deep beneath the oceans,” New Scientist (22 May 2008).
Erwan G. Roussel et al, “Extending the sub-sea-floor biosphere,” Science 320(5879): 1046 (23 May 2008).
G. Borgonie et al, “Nematoda from the terrestrial deep subsurface of South Africa,” Nature 474: 79–82 (2 June 2011).
R.J. Parkes, et al, “Deep bacterial biosphere in Pacific Ocean sediments,” Nature 371: 410-413 (29 September 1994).
Patterns
Josef C. Uyeda et al, “The million-year wait for macroevolutionary bursts,” PNAS (20 September 2011).
“Not so fast: lasting evolutionary change takes about one million years, researchers find,” Phys.org (22 August 2011).
Brian Tilston Smith et al, “The drivers of tropical speciation,” Nature 515: 406–409 (20 November 2014).
“Darwin 2.0: New theory on speciation, diversity,” ScienceDaily (20 November 2014).
Conservation
Lionel F. Jaffe, “Calcium waves,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (12 April 2008).
Morgan Kelly, “In the early life of an embryo, a monster lurks,” Princeton University (22 August 2011).
R. Scott McIsaac et al, “Does the potential for chaos constrain the embryonic cell-cycle oscillator?,” PLoS Computational Biology (14 June 2011).
“Scale models: how patterns stay in sync with size as an embryo grows and develops,” ScienceDaily (23 August 2011).
Danny Ben-Zvi et al, “Expansion-repression mechanism for scaling the DPP activation gradient in Drosophila wing imaginal discs,” Current Biology (11 August 2011).
Aashiq H. Kachroo et al, “Systematic humanization of yeast genes reveals conserved functions and genetic modularity,” Science 348(6237): 921 – 925 (22 May 2015).
Tina Hesman Saey, “A billion years of evolution doesn’t change some genes,” Science News (22 May 2015).
Weak Linkage
James K Nuñez et al, “Cas1–Cas2 complex formation mediates spacer acquisition during CRISPR–Cas adaptive immunity,” Nature Structural & Molecular Biology (4 May2014).
Valda Vinson, “Cas proteins help acquire immunity,” Science 344(6186): 869 (23 May 2014).
Y.E. Zhang et al, “Accelerated recruitment of new brain development genes into the human genome,” PLoS Biology 9(10): e1001179 (2011).
Andy Coghlan, “ust 2.5% of DNA turns mice into men,” New Scientist (30 May 2002).
“Comparing the mouse and human genomes,” NIH Research Matters (8 December 2014).
Convergent Evolution
László G. Nagy, “Many roads to convergence,” Science 361(6398): 125-126 (13 July 2018).
Simon Conway Morris, Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe, Cambridge University Press (2003).
Plants
Maximilian Griesmann et al, “Phylogenomics reveals multiple losses of nitrogen-fixing root nodule symbiosis,” Science 361(6398) (13 July 2018).
Peter B. Reich et al, “From tropics to tundra: global convergence in plant functioning,” 94(25): 13730–13734 PNAS (9 December 1997).
Domingos Cardoso et al, “A molecular phylogeny of the vataireoid legumes underscores floral evolvability that is general to many early-branching papilionoid lineages,” American Journal of Botany (1 February 2013).
“Don’t be fooled: Flowers mislead traditional taxonomy,” Phys.org (4 March 2013).
Angela M. Hancock, “How conifers adapt to the cold,” Science 353(6306): 1362-1363 (23 September 2016).
Sam Yeaman et al, “Convergent local adaptation to climate in distantly related conifers,” Science 353(6306): 1431-1433 (23 September 2016).
“Different tree species use the same genes to adapt to climate change, researchers find,” ScienceDaily (22 September 2016).
Foraging
“Foraging patterns found in fossils,” Nature 511: 386 (24 July 2014).
Devin Powell, “Albatross forage with fractal-like flight,” Science News (23 April 2012).
Kejia Chen et al, “Memoryless self-reinforcing directionality in endosomal active transport within living cells,” Nature Materials (30 March 2015).
“The stupidly effective genius of nature: Researchers discover how nature enables cells to act intelligently,” ScienceDaily (12 May 2015).
Infant Distress
Lucas Laursen, “Predictable evolution trumps randomness of mutations,” Nature (19 February 2013).
Susan Lingle & Tobias Riede, “Deer mothers are sensitive to infant distress vocalizations of diverse mammalian species,” The American Naturalist 184(4): 510–522 (October 2014).
Blood Suckers
Natalie Angier, “A taste for blood,” The New York Times (21 October 2008).
Swimming Ants
S.P. Yanoviak & D.N. Frederick, “Water surface locomotion in tropical canopy ants,” The Journal of Experimental Biology (15 June 2014).
Rove Beetles
Rove beetle (Nyxetes bidens) photo courtesy of S.E. Thorpe.
Elizabeth Pennisi, “A new evolutionary classic,” Science 354(6314): 813 (18 November 2016).
High-Altitude Hummingbirds
Joana Projecto-Garcia et al, “Repeated elevational transitions in hemoglobin function during the evolution of Andean hummingbirds,” PNAS 110(51): 20669–20674 (17 December 2013).
Chandrasekhar Natarajan et al, “Predictable convergence in hemoglobin function has unpredictable molecular underpinnings,” Science 354(6310): 336–339 (21 October 2016).
Jamie T. Bridgham, “Predicting the basis of convergent evolution,” Science 354(6310): 289 (21 October 2016).
Insect Eusociality
Annette Van Oystaeyen et al, “Conserved class of queen pheromones stops social insect workers from reproducing,” Science 343: 287–290 (17 January 2014).
Aviva Hope Rutkin, “Insect minions banned from breeding by same signal,” New Scientist (16 January 2014).
Blue Tarantulas
Saoirse Foley et al, “The evolution of coloration and opsins in tarantulas,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B (23 September 2020).
Bor-Kai Hsiung et al, “Blue reflectance in tarantulas is evolutionarily conserved despite nanostructural diversity,” Science Advances 1(10): e1500709 (6 November 2015).
Tarantula photo courtesy of Claudio Giovenzana.
Susan Milius, “When tarantulas grow blue hair,” Science News (5 January 2016).
Susan Milius, ” Mystery deepens for what made tarantulas blue,” Science News (27 November 2015).
Dragonfish
Dragonfish drawing courtesy of G. Brown Goode and Tarleton H. Bean.
Dragonfish jaw image prototype courtesy of Nalani K. Schnell & G. David Johnson.
Audrey Velasco-Hogan et al, “On the nature of the transparent teeth of the deep-sea dragonfish, Aristostomias scintillans,” Matter (5 June 2019).
Ruby Prosser Scully, “Dragonfish have ‘invisible’ teeth to help them sneak up on their prey,” New Scientist (5 June 2019).
Nalani K. Schnell & G. David Johnson, “Evolution of a functional head joint in deep-sea fishes (Stomiidae),” PLoS One (1 February 2017).
“Spinal gap of barbeled dragonfishes mystery solved,” Phys.org (17 August 2010).
Jen Viegas, “Deep-sea dragonfish predators have a freakishly wide bite,” Seeker (1 February 2017).
Cassie Martin, “Dragonfish opens wide with flex neck joint,” Science News (1 February 2017).
“Sea creatures fight bioluminescence with the blackest materials known,” The Economist (4 October 2018).
Camouflage
P. George Lovell et al, “Egg-laying substrate selection for optimal camouflage by quail,” Current Biology (17 January 2013).
T.M. Jordan et al, “Non-polarizing broadband multilayer reflectors in fish,” Nature Photonics (21 October 2012).
“Fishy physics: Adaptation lets silvery fish reflect light without polarization, may help them evade predators,” ScienceDaily (21 October 2012).
Patrick Monahan, “How ‘colorblind’ cuttlefish may see in living color,” Science (6 July 2016).
“Cuttlefish masters of disguise despite colorblindness,” ScienceDaily (20 April 2006).
Adrien Jouary & Christian K. Machens, “A living display system resolved pixel by pixel,” Nature (17 October 2018).
Endogenous Retroviruses
Tokuji Tsuchiya & Thomas Eulgem, “An alternative polyadenylation mechanism coopted to the Arabidopsis RPP7 gene through intronic retrotransposon domestication,” PNAS 110(37): E3535–E3543 (10 September 2013).
Gkikas Magiorkinis et al, “Env-less endogenous retroviruses are genomic superspreaders,” PNAS 109(19): 7385–7390 (8 May 2012).
M.C. Cowperthwaite et al, “The ascent of the abundant: how mutational networks constrain evolution,” PLoS Computational Biology 4(7): e1000110 (2008).
Adipose Fins
Black bullhead catfish illustration courtesy of Duane Raver.
J.A. Buckland-Nicks et al, “Neural network detected in a presumed vestigial trait: ultrastructure of the salmonid adipose fin,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (6 July 2011).
Thomas A. Stewart et al, “The origins of adipose fins: an analysis of homoplasy and the serial homology of vertebrate appendages,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (5 March 2014).
Flight
Min Wang et al, “A new Jurassic scansoriopterygid and the loss of membranous wings in theropod dinosaurs,” Nature 569: 256-259 (8 May 2019).
David W. Murphy et al, “Underwater flight by the planktonic sea butterfly,” Journal of Experimental Biology 219: 535–543 (2016).
James Gorman, “A sea snail that moves like a flying insect,” The New York Times (22 February 2016).
“The belly of the beast,” The Economist (12 November 2011).
atjana Y. Hubel et al, “Wake structure and wing kinematics: the flight of the lesser dog-faced fruit bat, Cynopterus brachyotis,” Journal of Experimental Biology 213: 3427-3440 (2010).
Sindya N. Bhanoo, “Joints key to bats’ complicated flight,” The New York Times (11 October 2010).
Flightlessness
Laura M. Zahn, “Ruffling ancient ratite feathers,” Science 344(6186): 868 (23 May 2014).
Kieren J. Mitchell et al, “Ancient DNA reveals elephant birds and kiwi are sister taxa and clarifies ratite bird evolution,” Science 344(6186): 898-900 (23 May 2014).
Timothy B. Sackton et al, “Convergent regulatory evolution and loss of flight in paleognathous birds,” Science 364(6435): 74-78 (5 April 2019).
Tina Hesman Saey, “Bird’s flight loss tied to regulatory DNA,” Science News (11 May 2019).
Swimming
Yang Ding et al, “Emergence of the advancing neuromechanical phase in a resistive force dominated medium,” PNAS 110(25): 10123-1012 (18 June 2013).
“Common control patterns govern swimming animals,” ScienceDaily (4 June 2013).
Vocalization
C.P.H Elemans et al, “Universal mechanisms of sound production and control in birds and mammals,” Nature Communications (27 November 2015).
Janwillem van den Berg, “Myoelastic-aerodynamic theory of voice production,” Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 1: 227-244 (September 1958).
Ingo R. Titze & Fariborz Alipour, The Myoelastic-Aerodynamic Theory of Phonation, National Center for Voice and Speech (2006).
“A common mechanism for human and bird sound production,” Phys.org (27 November 2015).
“Humans and birds: different organs produce songs in same way,” Nature World News (27 November 2015).
“Birds’ voiceboxes are odd ducks,” ScienceDaily (24 September 2018).
Patrick M. O’Connor, “Ancient avian aria from Antarctica,” Nature 538: 468-469 (27 October 2016).
Julia A. Clarke et al, “Fossil evidence of the avian vocal organ from the Mesozoic,” Nature (12 October 2016).
Singing
Kirsten M. Bohn et al, “Social context evokes rapid changes in bat song syntax,” Animal Behaviour 86(6): 1485–1491 (June 2013).
Erin Wayman, “Bird, human tweets come from similar parts of the brain,” Science News (9 March 2013).
Erich Jarvis, “Learned birdsong and the neurobiology of human language,” AAAS Annual Meeting (15 February 2013).
Hearing
Ronald R. Hoy, “Convergent evolution of hearing,” Science 338(6109): 894-895 (16 November 2012).
Fernando Montealegre-Z et al, “Convergent evolution between insect and mammalian audition,” Science 338(6109): 968-971 (16 November 2012)
Toxic Adaptation
Susanne Dobler et al, “Community-wide convergent evolution in insect adaptation to toxic cardenolides by substitutions in the Na,K-ATPase,” PNAS 109(32): 13040-13045 (7 August 2012).
Noah K. Whiteman & Kailen A. Mooney, “Insects converge on resistance,” Nature 489: 376–377 (20 September 2012).
Ying Zhen et al, “Parallel molecular evolution in an herbivore community,” Science 337(6102): 1634–1637 (28 September 2012).
L.W. Smith et al, “Plant sources of hepatotoxic pyrrolizidine alkaloids,” Journal of Natural Products 44: 129–15 (1981).
Linzhu Wang et al, “Independent recruitment of a flavin-dependent monooxygenase for safe accumulation of sequestered pyrrolizidine alkaloids in grasshoppers and moths,” PLoS ONE 7(2): e31796 (2012).
Beata Ujvari et al, “Widespread convergence in toxin resistance by predictable molecular evolution,” PNAS (18 August 2015).
Vision
Thomas W. Cronin et al, Vision Ecology, Princeton University Press (2014).
Michael Le Page, “This single-celled bug has the world’s most extraordinary eye,” New Scientist (16 June 2015).
Przemyslaw Gorzelak et al, “Microlens arrays in the complex visual system of Cretaceous echinoderms,” Nature Communications (1 April 2014).
Sea Urchins
Kathryn Knight, “Sea urchins use whole body as eye,” Journal of Experimental Biology (2010).
D. Yerramilli & S. Johnsen, ” Spatial vision in the purple sea urchin Strongylocentrotus purpuratus (Echinoidea),” Journal of Experimental Biology 213: 249–255 (2010).
Susan Milius, “Strange visions,” Science News (28 May 2016).
Chiton
Chiton photo courtesy of Hans Hillewaert.
Elizabeth Pennisi, “Crystalline eyes of chitons inspire materials scientists,” Science 350(6263): 899 (20 November 2015).
Ling Li et al, “Multifunctionality of chiton biomineralized armor with an integrated visual system,” Science 350(6263): 952–956 (20 November 2015).
Susan Milius, “How to see with eyes made of rock,” Science News (26 December 2015).
Douglas J. Eernisse, “Chitons,” untitled book excerpt (undated) (web download from biology.fullerton.edu).
Daniel I. Speiser et al, “A chiton uses aragonite lenses to form images,” Current Biology 21(8): 665–670 (26 April 2011).
Ed Yong, “Chitons see with eyes made of rock,” Discover (14 April 2011).
Mona Hoppenrath et al, “Molecular phylogeny of ocelloid-bearing dinoflagellates (Warnowiaceae) as inferred from SSU and LSU rDNA sequences,” BMC Evolutionary Biology (25 May 2009).
Paper Wasps
Michael Sheehan et al, “Co-evolution of visual signals and eye morphology in Polistes paper wasps,” Biology Letters (30 April 2014).
“The big bad wolf was right: among wasps, bigger eyes evolved the better to see social cues,” Phys.org (29 April 2014).
Elizabeth A. Tibbetts et al, “Transitive inference in Polistes paper wasps,” Biology Letters (8 May 2019).
“Paper wasps are capable of logical thinking, suggests new study,” Sci News (9 May 2019).
Echolocation
Old World fruit bat drawing courtesy of Gustav Mützel (ca 1927).
Jessica Shugart, “Many genes in dolphins and bats evolved in the same way to allow echolocation,” Science News (6 September 2013).
“Narwhals are really, really good at echolocation,” Science News (10 December 2016).
Arjan Boonman et al, “Nonecholocating fruit bats produce biosonar clicks with their wings,” Current Biology (5 December 2014).
“Old world fruit bats use unique form of echolocation, researchers find,” Sci-News (4 December 2014).
Jenna Iacurci, “Fruit bats use wing clicks to find their way,” Nature World News (5 December 2014).
Jonathan H. Geisler et al, “A new fossil species supports an early origin for toothed whale echolocation,” Nature 508: 383–386 (17 April 2014).
Joe Parker et al, “Genome-wide signatures of convergent evolution in echolocating mammals,” Nature 502: 228–231 (10 October 2013).
“Genetic similarities between bats and dolphins discovered,” ScienceDaily (4 September 2013).
Andy Coghlan, “Zoologger: the blind fish that sucks it and ‘sees’,” New Scientist (4 April 2014).
Nervous Systems
Comb jelly photo courtesy of Marsh Youngbluth.
“Forget sponges: the earliest animals were marine jellies”, Vanderbilt University (10 April 2017).
Leonid L. Moroz et al, “The ctenophore genome and the evolutionary origins of neural systems,” Nature (21 May 2014).
Elizabeth Pennisi, “Nervous systems may have evolved twice,” Science 339: 391 (25 January 2013).
Ewen Callaway, “Jelly genome mystery,” Nature (21 May 2014).
“Comb jellies show there is more than one way to make a brain,” Nature World News (22 May 2014).
“New chemical language of neural systems is revealed,” University of Florida News (21 May 2014).
Brains
Nathan J. Emery & Nicola S. Clayton, “The mentality of crows: convergent evolution of intelligence in corvids and apes,” Science 306(5703): 1903–1907 (10 December 2004).
Reversion Evolution
Edwin Ray Lankester, Degeneration, Macmillan and Co. (1880).
R. Collin & R. Cipriani, “Dollo’s law and the re-evolution of shell coiling,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 270 (1533): 2551–2555 (2003).
Katja Domes et al, “Reevolution of sexuality breaks Dollo’s law,” PNAS 104(17): 7139–7144 (24 April 2007).
Snakes
Filipe O. Da Silva et al, “The ecological origins of snakes as revealed by skull evolution,” Nature Communications (25 January 2018).
Hongyu Yi, “How snakes came to slither,” Scientific American (January 2018).
Bob Holmes, “Extreme evolution: how snakes became the über-eater,” New Scientist (5 June 2014).
Bob Holmes, “Snakes outpacing other vertebrates in race to evolve,” New Scientist (3 December 2013).
Jason J. Head & P. David Polly, “Evolution of the snake body form reveals homoplasy in amniote Hox gene function,” Nature (5 January 2015).
Todd A. Castoe et al, “The Burmese python genome reveals the molecular basis for extreme adaptation in snakes,” PNAS 110(51): 20645–20650 (17 December 2013).
Matthew T. Close et al, “Highly extensible skeletal muscle in snakes,” The Journal of Experimental Biology (6 May 2014).
Bryan G. Fry et al, “Early evolution of the venom system in lizards and snakes,” Nature 439: 584–588 (2 February 2006).
Michael Tennesen, “Snakes alive! What’s your poison?,” New Scientist (30 September 2006).
Baldomero M. Olivera & Russell W. Teichert, “Chemical ecology of pain,” Nature 479: 306–307 (17 November 2011).
Christopher J. Bohlen et al, “A heteromeric Texas coral snake toxin targets acid-sensing ion channels to produce pain,” Nature 479: 410–141 (17 November 2011).
Callum Lister et al, “Catch a tiger snake by its tail: Differential toxicity, co-factor dependence and antivenom efficacy in a procoagulant clade of Australian venomous snakes,” Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part C: Toxicology & Pharmacology 202: 39-54 (November 2017).
“Why tiger snakes are on a winner,” Phys.org (22 August 2017).
Jenna M. Crowe-Riddell et al, “The evolution of scale sensilla in the transition from land to sea in elapid snakes,” Open Biology (8 June 2016).
“Sea snakes have extra sense for water living,” ScienceDaily (8 June 2016).
Mites
Pavel B. Klimov & Barry OConnor, “Is permanent parasitism reversible? – critical evidence from early evolution of house dust mites,” Systematic Biology (15 February 2013).
Viruses
Arshan Nasir, Kyung Mo Kim & Gustavo Caetano-Anolles, “Giant viruses coexisted with the cellular ancestors and represent a distinct supergroup along with superkingdoms Archaea, Bacteria and Eukar-ya,” BMC Evolutionary Biology (24 August 2012).
Rachel Ehrenberg, “As evidence of the influence of viruses escalates, appreciation of these master manipulators grows,” Science News 176(8): 22–28 (10 October 2009).
“How ancient viruses became genomic ‘superspreaders’,” ScienceDaily (23 April 2012).
Patrick Forterre, “The origin of viruses and their possible roles in major evolutionary transitions,” Virus Research (Mendeley) 117(1): 5–16 (2008).
Patrick Forterre, “Defining life: the virus viewpoint,” Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere 40: 151–160 (3 March 2010).
Curtis A. Suttle, “Viruses in the sea,” Nature 437: 356–361 (15 September 2005).
Michael Slezak, “Origin of organs: thank viruses for your skin and bone,” New Scientist (27 February 2014).
“Study of giant viruses shakes up tree of life,” ScienceDaily (13 September 2012).
Bernard La Scola et al, “A giant virus in amoebae,” Science 299: 2033 (28 March 2003).
Patrick Forterre, “Defining life: the virus viewpoint,” Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere 40: 151–160 (3 March 2010).
Sex
Juliette Fedry et al, “The ancient gamete fusogen HAP2 is a eukaryotic class II fusion protein,” Cell (23 February 2017).
“New link found between sex and viruses,” University of Maryland (23 February 2017).
Christine L. Dudgeon et al, “Switch from sexual to parthenogenetic reproduction in a zebra shark,” Scientific Reports (16 January 2017).
Stuart Auld et al, “Sex as a strategy against rapidly evolving parasites,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B (21 December 2016).
Sarah P. Otto & Scott L. Nuismer, “Species interactions and the evolution of sex,” Science 304(5673): 1018-1020 (14 May 2004).
Julie G. Hussin et al, “Recombination affects accumulation of damaging and disease-associated mutations in human populations,” Nature Genetics (16 February 2015).
S. Scheu & B. Drossel, “Sexual reproduction prevails in a world of structured resources in short supply,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 274(1614): 1225–1231 (7 May 2007).
Mary Hoff, “Slithering toward clarity: snakes shed new light on the evolution and function of sex chromosomes,” PLoS Biology 11(8): e1001644 (August 2013).
Graham Bell, The Masterpiece of Nature: The Evolution and Genetics of Sexuality, University of California Press (1982).
Julia Böhm et al, “Sexual reproduction and mating-type–mediated strain development in the penicillin-producing fungus Penicillium chrysogenum,” PNAS 110(4): 1476–1481 (22 January 2013).
Jennifer C. Perry et al, “The ontogeny and evolution of sex-biased gene expression in Drosophila melanogaster,” Molecular Biology and Evolution (12 February 2014).
Peter W. Harrison et al, “Sexual selection drives evolution and rapid turnover of male gene expression,” PNAS (23 March 2015).
‘Most attractive’ male birds don’t have the best genes, Phys.org (23 March 2015).
Sarah M. Zala et al, “Female house mice initially shun infected males, but do not avoid mating with them,” Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology (14 February 2015).
C. Ruth Archer et al, “Sex-specific effects of natural and sexual selection on the evolution of life span and ageing in Drosophila simulans,” Functional Ecology (25 November 2014).
“Research finds clue to why females live longer than males,” University of Exeter (1 December 2014).
Bdelloidea rotifers
Bdelloidea rotifer electron microscope photo courtesy of Diego Fontaneto.
“We still don’t know how strange celibate animals evolve,” ScienceDaily (25 April 2018).
Rueban W. Nowell et al, “Comparative genomics of bdelloid rotifers: Insights from desiccating and nondesiccating species,” PLoS Biology (24 April 2018).
Seven Sexes
Marcella D. Cervantes et al, “Selecting one of several mating types through gene segment joining and deletion in Tetrahymena thermophila,” PLoS Biology 11(3): e1001518 (March 2013).
Beth Skwarecki, “Seven sexes on the menu,” Science (26 March 2013).
Andrea A. Cocucci et al, “The buck in the milkweed: evidence of male–male interference among pollinaria on pollinators,” New Phytologist (20 March 2014).
Diane L. Marshall et al, “Does interference competition among pollen grains occur in wild radish?,” Evolution 50(5): 1842–1848 (1 October 1996).
Tree Frogs
Mating gray tree frogs (Hyla versicolor) photo courtesy of Fredlyfish4.
Jessica L. Ward et al, “Multitasking males and multiplicative females: dynamic signalling and receiver preferences in Cope’s grey treefrog,” Animal Behavior 86(2): 231–243 (August 2013).
Marbled Crayfish
Frank Lyko, “The marbled crayfish (Decapoda: Cambaridae) represents an independent new species,” ZooTaxa 4363(4) (2017).
P. Martin et al, “The enigmatic Marmorkrebs (marbled crayfish) is the parthenogenetic form of Procambarus fallax,” Contributions to Zoology 79: 107–118 (2010).
Miku Kato et al, “The behavior of chromosomes during parthenogenetic oogenesis in marmorkrebs Procambarus fallax f. virginalis,” BioOne 33(4): 426-430 (August 2016).
Julian Gutekunst et al, “Clonal genome evolution and rapid invasive spread of the marbled crayfish,” Nature Ecology & Evolution (2018).
Carl Zimmer, “This mutant crayfish clones itself, and it’s taking over Europe,” The New York Times (5 February 2008).
“Marmorkrebs (Procambarus virginalis),” U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (27 February 2018).
Dominance
B.J. LeBoeuf, “Male-male competition and reproductive success in elephant seals,” American Zoologist 14: 163–176 (1974).
C.R. Cox & B.J. Be Boeuf, “Female incitation of mate competition: a mechanism of mate selection,” American Naturalist 111: 317–335 (1977).
R.V. Alatalo et al, “Female pied flycatchers choose territory quality not male characteristics,” Nature 323: 152–153 (11 September 1986).
Genitalia
Patricia L.R. Brennan et al, “Coevolution of male and female genital morphology in waterfowl,” PLoS One (2 May 2007).
Michael Marshall, ” Zoologger: gender-bending cave insects found in Brazil,” New Scientist (17 April 2014).
Liz Williams, “Duck genitals locked in arms race,” Cosmos (3 May 2007).
Kevin G. McCracken et al, “Sexual selection: are ducks impressed by drakes’ display?,” Nature 413: 128 (13 September 2001).
Alexander I. Arkhipkin & Vladimir V. Laptikhovsky, “Observation of penis elongation in Onykia ingens: implications for spermatophore transfer in deep-water squid,” Journal of Molluscan Studies (30 June 2010).
Lester R. Aronson & Madeline L. Cooper, “Penile spines of the domestic cat: their endocrine-behavior relations,” The Anatomical Record 157(1): 71–78 (January 1967).
Rowan Hooper, “Bat bugs turn transsexual to avoid stabbing penises,” New Scientist (19 September 2007).
Anne Minard, “Bat bugs evolved fake genitals to avoid sex injuries,” National Geographic News (25 September 2007).
“Papa pipefish’s pregnancy good for young’s immunity,” New Scientist (24 November 2012).
Pavel B. Klimov & Ekaterina A. Sidorchuk, “An enigmatic lineage of mites from Baltic amber shows a unique, possibly female-controlled, mating,” Biological Journal of the Linnean Society (10 February 2011).
Rejection
G. Shohat-Ophir et al, “Sexual deprivation increases ethanol intake in Drosophila,” Science 335(6074): 1351–1355 (16 March 2012).
Troy Zars, “She said no, pass me a beer,” Science 335(6074): 1309–1310 (16 March 2012).
Humans
Clellan S. Ford & Frank A. Beach, Patterns of Sexual Behavior Harper & Bros. (1951).
Steven R. Holen et al, “A 130,000-year-old archaeological site in southern California, USA,” Nature 544: 479-483 (27 April 2017).
Erella Hovers, “Archaeology: unexpectedly early signs of Americans,” Nature 544: 420-421 (27 April 2017).
Joseph Castro, “Do animals have menopause?,” Live Science (3 October 2017).
Development
François Jacob, “Evolution and tinkering,” Science 196(4295): 1161-1666 (10 June 1977).
Rudolf A. Raff & Belinda J. Sly, “Modularity and dissociation in the evolution of gene expression territories in development,” Evolution & Development 2(2): 102-13 (March 2000).
Martina Bradic et al, “Gene flow and population structure in the Mexican blind cavefish complex (Astyanax mexicanus),” BMC Evolutionary Biology (23 January 2012).
Diego Villar et al, “Enhancer evolution across 20 mammalian species,” Cell 160(3): 554-566 (29 January 2015).
Diego Villar Lozano, “We’re all mammals – so why do we look so different,” The Conversation (20 February 2015).
M.C. King & A.C. Wilson, “Evolution at two levels in humans and chimpanzees,” Science 188(4184): 107-116 (11 April 1975).
Giraffes
G. Mitchell & J.D. Skinner, “On the origin, evolution and phylogeny of giraffes Giraffa camelopardalis,” Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa 58(1) (2003).
Melinda Danowitz et al, “Fossil evidence and stages of elongation of the Giraffa camelopardalis neck,” Royal Society Open Science (7 October 2015).
Larua Geggel, “7-Million-year-old fossils show how the giraffe got its long neck,” LiveScience (30 November 2015).
“How giraffes became winners by a neck,” National Geographic (7 October 2015).
Karl Gruber, “Giraffes spend their evenings humming to each other,” New Scientist (17 September 2015).
Rachel Feltman, “This is what it sounds like when giraffes hum to each other at night,” The Washington Post (19 September 2015).
Laura Geggel, “Giraffes caught humming in the midnight hour,” Live Science (24 September 2015).
Metamorphosis
Hanna ten Brink et al, “The evolutionary ecology of metamorphosis,” The American Naturalist (5 December 2018).
“Why would an animal trade one body for another?,” The New York Times (25 March 2019).
Speciation
Colin D Meiklejohn et al, “Gene flow mediates the role of sex chromosome meiotic drive during complex speciation,” eLife (13 December 2018).
“What makes two species different?,” ScienceDaily (3 January 2019).
Anders Forsman & Lena Wennersten, “Inter-individual variation promotes ecological success of populations and species: evidence from experimental and comparative studies,” Ecography (22 September 2015).
Jeffrey B. Joy, “Symbiosis catalyses niche expansion and diversification,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B (6 February 2013).
Diane Lawrence, “Species interactions alter evolutionary responses to a novel environment,” PLoS Biology (15 May 2012).
Justin R. Meyer et al, “Ecological speciation of bacteriophage lambda in allopatry and sympatry,” Science 354(6317): 1301-1304 (9 December 2016).
Marianne Elias et al, “Evolutionary history and ecological processes shape a local multilevel antagonistic network,” Current Biology 23(14): 1355-1359 (22 July 2013).
“Why closely related species do not eat the same things,” Phys.org (24 June 2013).
Susan Milius, “Gut microbes may put barrier between species,” Science News (10 August 2013).
James Crampton, “What drives biodiversity changes?” Science 334 (6059): 10731074 (25 November 2011).
“More to biological diversity than meets the eye,” Phys.org (13 March 2014).
Marty A. Condon et al, “Lethal interactions between parasites and prey increase niche diversity in a tropical community,” Science 343(6176): 1240–1244 (14 March 2014).
Quinn R. Shurtliff et al, “Experimental evidence for asymmetric mate preference and aggression: behavioral interactions in a woodrat (Neotoma) hybrid zone,” BMC Evolutionary Biology (4 October 2013).
Quinn R. Shurtliff et al, “Ecological segregation in a small mammal hybrid zone: Habitat-specific mating opportunities and selection against hybrids restrict gene flow on a fine spatial scale,” Evolution (20 November 2013).
J.W. Boughman, “Divergent sexual selection enhances reproductive isolation in sticklebacks,” Nature 411: 944–948 (2001).
J.B.W. Wolf et al, “Tracing early stages of species differentiation: ecological, morphological, and genetic divergence of Galápagos sea lion populations,” BMC Evolutionary Biology 8:150 (2008) | doi:10.1186/1471-2148-8-150.
J. Ramsey et al, “Components of reproductive isolation between the monkeyflowers Mimulus lewisii and M. cardinali (Phrymaceae),” Evolution 57: 1520–1534 (2003).
E.C. Minkoff, Evolutionary Biology, Addison-Wesley (1983).
Dai-Yin Chao et al, “Polyploids exhibit higher potassium uptake and salinity tolerance in Arabidopsis,” Science 341: 658–659 (9 August 2013).
“Double or quits,” The Economist (28 June 2014).
Darren E. Irwin et al, “Speciation by distance in a ring species,” Science 307 (5708): 414–416 (21 January 2005).
Rachelle M.M. Adams et al, “Chemically armed mercenary ants protect fungus-farming societies,” PNAS 110(39): 15752–15757 (24 September 2013).
Niches
Elizabeth R. Dumont et al, “Morphological innovation, diversification and invasion of a new adaptive zone,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B (23 November 2011).
Trevor D. Price et al, “Niche filling slows the diversification of Himalayan songbirds,” Nature (30 April 2014).
Alex L. Pigot & Joseph A. Tobias, “Species interactions constrain geographic range expansion over evolutionary time,” Ecology Letters (11 December 2012).
“Competition for ecological niches limits the formation of new species,” Phys.org (30 April 2014).
Matthew D. McGee et al, “A pharyngeal jaw evolutionary innovation facilitated extinction in Lake Victoria cichlids,” Science 350(6264): 1077–1079 (27 November 2015).
Geerat Vermeij, “How Victoria’s fishes were knocked from their perch,” Science 350(6264): 1038 (27 November 2015).
“New species need new space,” Nature 509: 35 (1 May 2014).
Competition in Guadalupe Canyon
William H. Baltosser, “Nectar availability and habitat selection by hummingbirds in Guadalupe Canyon,” The Wilson Bulletin 101 (4): 559–578 (December 1989).
Hummingbirds
“Hummingbirds’ 22-million-year-old history of remarkable change is far from complete,” Phys.org (3 April 2014).
Jimmy A. McGuire et al, “Molecular phylogenetics and the diversifica-tion of hummingbirds,” Current Biology (3 April 2014).
“Hummingbird evolution soared after they invaded South America 22 million years ago,” Phys.org (4 April 2014).
E. Melendez-Ackerman et al, “Hummingbird behavior and mecha-nisms of selection on flower color in Ipomopsis,” Ecology 78 (8): 2532–2541 (1997).
Lake Constance Sticklebacks
David A. Marques et al, “Genomics of rapid incipient speciation in sympatric threespine stickleback,” PLoS Genetics (29 February 2016).
Michael Le Page, “Super-fast evolving fish splitting into two species in same lake,” New Scientist (2 March 2016).
N. Knowlton et al, “Direct evidence for reproductive isolation among the three species of the Montastrea annularis complex in Central America (Panama and Honduras),” Marine Biology 127 (4): 705–711 (1997).
Elna Bakker & Gordy Slack, An Island Called California, University of California Press (1985).
N. Apinwall, “Genetic analysis of North American populations of the pink salmon, Oncorhynucus gorbuscha,” Evolution 28: 295–305 (1974).
Orca Culture
Rudiger Riesch, “Species in the making,” Scientific American (November 2016).
Galápagos Islands
Giant tortoise photo courtesy of Mike Weston.
John M. O’Connor et al, “Migration of widespread long-lived volcanism across the Galápagos volcanic province: evidence for a broad hotspot melting anomaly?,” Earth and Planetary Science Letters 263(3-4): 339–354 (30 November 2007).
Harry Oduro et al, “Sulfur isotope variability of oceanic DMSP generation and its contributions to marine biogenic sulfur emissions,” PNAS 109(23): 9012-9016 (5 June 2012).
“Scents and sensibility,” The Economist (29 September 2012).
David Horwell & Pete Oxford, Galapagos Wildlife, The Globe Pequot Press (2011).
Hernan Vargas, “Penguins on the equator,” in Galápagos, edited by Tui De Roy, Firefly Books (2009).
Páramo
Carl Zimmer, “High above sea level, evolutionary hot spots,” The New York Times (7 November 2013).
Optimality
Colin P. Osborne & David J. Beerling, “Nature’s green revolution: the remarkable evolutionary rise of C4 plants,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (29 January 2006).
Stephanie J. Ellis et al, “Distinct modes of cell competition shape mammalian tissue morphogenesis,” Nature (15 May 2019).
Gregory J. Retallack, “Neogene expansion of the North American prairie,” PALAIOS 12:380-390 (1 August 1997).
Daniel Floryan et al, “Efficient cruising for swimming and flying animals is dictated by fluid drag,” PNAS (18 June 2018).
Christopher Packham, “How evolution builds the most efficient airfoils,” Phys.org (29 June 2018).
D. Bensasson et al, “Mitochondrial pseudogenes: evolution’s misplaced witnesses,” Trends in Ecology & Evolution 16(6):314-321 (1 June 2001).
“New species may arise from rapid mitochondrial evolution,” ScienceDaily (12 July 2018).
Johannes Baumgart & Benjamin M. Friedrich, “Swimming across scales,” Nature Physics 10: 711–712 (2014).
“The science behind swimming: from whales to larvae, common principles at work in swimming,” ScienceDaily (15 September 2014).
“The science behind swimming,” EurekAlert! (15 September 2014).
Dandelions
“Revealed: the extraordinary flight of the dandelion,” Nature 562: 307-308 (18 October 2018).
Cathal Cummin et al, “A separated vortex ring underlies the flight of the dandelion,” Nature 562: 414-418 (18 October 2018).
Manta Rays
Manta ray photo courtesy of Moesmand.
Raj V. Divi et al, “Manta rays feed using ricochet separation, a novel nonclogging filtration mechanism,” Science Advances (26 September 2018).
Philippa J. Benson, “Manta rays’ unique filtration system,” Science 361(6409): 1350-1351 (26 September 2018).
Laurel Hamers, “Manta ray filters food in inspiring way,” Science News (27 October 2018).
Deep-Sea Fish
Elizabeth Pennisi, “Jeepers, creatures, where’d you get those peepers?,” Science 364(6440): 520 (10 May 2019).
Evolution By Perception
Hamilton Farris, “Perception drives the evolution of observable traits,” Science 335(6320): 25-26 (6 January 2017).
Nectar
Vladislav Nachev et al, “Cognition-mediated evolution of low-quality floral nectars,” Science 335(6320): 75-78 (6 January 2017).
Steph Yin, “Bats like their plant nectar sweet — though maybe the plants know better,” The New York Times (6 January 2017).
Iridescence
Iberian emerald lizard photo courtesy of David Perez.
Guillem Peerz i de Lanuza & Enrique Font, “Now you see me, now you don’t: iridescence increases the efficacy of lizard chromatic signals,” Naturwissenschaften 101(10): 831-837 (October 2014).
“Coloring by structure,” National Geographic (January 2011).
“Animal colouration: now you see me… now you don’t,” The Economist (30 August 2014).
Thomas W. Pike, “Interference coloration as an anti-predator defence,” Biology Letters (15 April 2015).
“Iridescent animals shine to startle predators,” ScienceDaily (23 April 2015).
Peacock Spiders
Male peacock spider photo courtesy of Jürgen Otto, who has many lovely pictures of these exotic spiders.
Carolyn Wilke, “Peacock spiders’ superblack spots reflect just 0.5 percent of light,” Science News (14 May 2019).
Dakota E. McCoy et al, “Structurally assisted super black in colourful peacock spiders,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B (15 May 2019).
Doekele G. Stavenga et al, “Splendid coloration of the peacock spider Maratus splendens,” Interface (1 August 2016).
Helen Thompson, “Tiny structures give a peacock spider its radiant rump,” Science News (9 September 2016).
Ashley Yeager, “Why some birds of paradise have ultrablack feathers,” Science News (9 January 2018).
Stingers
Rakesh Das et al, “Biomechanical evaluation of wasp and honeybee stingers,” Scientific Reports 8: 14945 (8 October 2018).
“How wasp and bee stinger designs help deliver the pain,” ScienceDaily (9 October 2018).
Turning
Mandiyam Y. Mahadeeswara & Mandyam V. Srinivasan, “Scientific Reports (16 November 2018).
“How do flying bees make perfect turns,” ScienceDaily (21 November 2018).
Shore Crabs
Natasha Price et al, “Background matching and disruptive coloration as habitat-specific strategies for camouflage,” Scientific Reports (24 May 2019).
“Crabs’ camouflage tricks revealed,” ScienceDaily (24 May 2019).
Mimicry
Martin Stevens, Cheats and Deceits, Oxford University Press (2016).
María C. De Mársico et al, “Host–parasite coevolution beyond the nestling stage? Mimicry of host fledglings by the specialist screaming cowbird,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (30 May 2012).
Natalie Angier, “Surviving by disguising: nature’s game of charades,” The New York Times (6 September 2010).
Ernesto Gianoli & Fernando Carrasco-Urra, “Leaf mimicry in a climbing plant protects against herbivory,” Current Biology (24 April 2014).
Batesian Mimicry
Peter Forbes, “Masters of disguise,” Scientific American 80–83 (May 2011).
“Butterfly ball,” The Economist (2 November 2013).
Large blue butterfly photo courtesy of Chiswick Chap and PJC&Co.
Baharan Kazemi et al, “Stimulus salience as an explanation for imperfect mimicry,” Current Biology (10 April 2014).
Rufus A. Johnstone, “The evolution of inaccurate mimics,” Nature 418, 524–526 (1 August 2002).
Heather D. Penney et al, “A comparative analysis of the evolution of imperfect mimicry,” Nature 483: 461–464 (22 March 2012).
Baharan Kazemi et al, “Stimulus salience as an explanation for imperfect mimicry,” Current Biology (10 April 2014).
“Poor mimics can succeed as long as they mimic the right trait,” ScienceDaily (10 April 2014).
Michael Boppré et al, “A hypothesis to explain accuracy of wasp resemblances,” Ecology and Evolution (5 December 2016).
“Biologists expand on more than 150 years of textbook wisdom with a new explanation for wasp mimicry,” ScienceDaily (17 February 2017).
Christopher K. Akcali and David W. Pfennig, “Rapid evolution of mimicry following local model extinction,” Biology Letters (11 June 2014).
Aaron J. Corcoran et al, “Tiger moth jams bat sonar,” Science 325(5938): 325–327 (17 July 2009).
Christine L. Huffard et al, “The evolution of conspicuous facultative mimicry in octopuses: an example of secondary adaptation?,” Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 101(1): 68–77 (September 2010).
J.A. Thomas et al, “Successful conservation of a threatened Maculinea butterfly,” Science 325(5936): 80–83 (3 July 2009).
Dorit Eliyahu et al, “Jail baits: how and why nymphs mimic adult females of the German cockroach, Blattella germanica,” Animal Behaviour 78(5): 1097–1105 (November 2009).
Rose Thorogood & Nicholas B. Davies, “Cuckoos combat socially transmitted defenses of reed warbler hosts with a plumage polymorphism,” Science 337(6094): 578–580 (3 August 2012).
Altruism
Katherine S. Geist et al, “Family quarrels in seeds and rapid adaptive evolution in Arabidopsis,” PNAS (25 April 2019).
“‘Family quarrels’ in seeds reveal the ways parents and offspring sometimes evolve in conflicting directions,” ScienceDaily (25 April 2019).
Christina Kwapich & Bert Hölldobler, “Destruction of spider webs and rescue of ensnared nestmates by a granivorous desert ant (Veromessor pergandei),” The American Naturalist (May 2019).
“Rescue ants save the day for comrades entangled in spider silk,” Nature (22 May 2019).
Philip A. Downing et al, “Sex differences in helping effort reveal the effect of future reproduction on cooperative behaviour in birds,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B (22 August 2018).
“Birds help each other partly for selfish reasons,” ScienceDaily (10 September 2018).
Inclusive Fitness
Elizabeth Pennisi, “On the origin of cooperation,” Science 325: 1196–1199 (4 September 2009).
Patrick Kennedy et al, “Altruism in a volatile world,” Nature 555: 359–362 (15 March 2018).
Ronald A. Fisher, The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, Clarendon Press (1930).
W.D. Hamilton, “The genetical evolution of social behavior,” Journal of Theoretical Biology 7 (1): 1–16 (1964).
Stuart A. West et al, “Social evolution theory for microorganisms,” Nature Microbiology 4: 597–607 (August 2006).
D.W. Mock, “Flexibility in the development of heron sibling aggression: an intraspecific test of the prey-size hypothesis,” Animal Behaviour 35: 1386–1393 (1987).
Fitness Through Ignorance
David C. Queller & Joan E. Strassmann, “The veil of ignorance can favour biological cooperation,” Biology Letters (16 October 2013).
Giorgina Bernasconi & Joan E. Strassmann, “Cooperation among unrelated individuals: the ant foundress case,” Trends in Ecology & Evolution 14(12): 477–482 (1 December 1999).
Florence Débarre et al, “Social evolution in structured populations,” Nature Communications (6 March 2014).
Joan E. Strassmann et al, “Altruism and social cheating in the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum,” Nature 408: 965–967 (21 Decem-ber 2000).
Laurent Keller, “Indiscriminate altruism: unduly nice parents and siblings,” Trends in Ecology & Evolution 12(3): 99–103 (March 1997).
Altruism Innate
Pierre M. Durand et al, “Programmed death in a unicellular organism has species-specific fitness effects,” Biology Letters (26 February 2014).
Soyoung Q. Park et al, “A neural link between generosity and happiness,” Nature Communications 8: 15964 (11 July 2017).
“Generous people live happier lives,” University of Zurich (11 July 2017).
Alexander J. Stewart & Joshua B. Plotkin, “Small groups and long memories promote cooperation,” Scientific Reports (1 June 2016).
Katherine Unger Baillie, “Cooperation emerges when groups are small and memories are long, study finds,” Phys.org (1 June 2016).
Life-History Variables
Matthias Schleuning et al, “Specialization of mutualistic interaction networks decreases toward tropical latitudes,” Current Biology (13 September 2012).
“Teamwork in the tropics: pollinators and frugivores are less choosy at the equator,” ScienceDaily (14 September 2012).
Elad Noor & Ron Milo, “Efficiency in evolutionary trade-offs,” Science 336: 1114-1115 (1 June 2012).
O. Shoval et al, “Evolutionary trade-offs, pareto optimality, and the geometry of phenotype space,” Science 336: 1157-1160 (1 June 2012).
“How evolution shapes the geometries of life: scientists solve a longstanding biological puzzle,” Phys.org (17 February 2014).
Andrea Giometto et al, “Scaling body size fluctuations,” PNAS 110(12): 4646–4650 (19 March 2013).
James A. Foley, “Larger animals show greatest response to climate change,” Nature World News (22 January 2014).
Elizabeth M.A. Kern et al, “Correlated evolution of personality, morphology and performance,” Animal Behaviour 117: 79–86 (July 2016).
“Personality changes can affect fish body shape, locomotion,” ScienceDaily (3 June 2016).
Robert Lanfear et al, “Taller plants have lower rates of molecular evolution,” Nature Communications (21 May 2013).
Nicholas M. Caruso et al, ” Widespread rapid reductions in body size of adult salamanders in response to climate change,” Global Change Biology (25 March 2014).
Rachel Nuwer, “Climate change is shrinking species, research suggests” The New York Times (16 October 2011).
C.J. Clemente et al, “Optimal body size with respect to maximal speed for the yellow-spotted monitor lizard (Varanus panoptes; Varanidae),” Physiological and Biochemical Zoology 85(3):265–273 (May-June 2012).
Jordan G. Okie et al, “Effects of allometry, productivity and lifestyle on rates and limits of body size evolution,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (12 June 2013).
Eva A. Hoffman & Timothy B. Rowe, “Jurassic stem-mammal perinates and the origin of mammalian reproduction and growth,” Nature 561: 104–108 (29 August 2018).
Allometry
Geir H. Bolstad et al, “Complex constraints on allometry revealed by artificial selection on the wing of Drosophila melanogaster,” PNAS (18 September 2015).
“58,046 fruit flies shed light on 100-year old evolutionary question,” ScienceDaily (18 September 2015).
Lauren Sallan & Andrew K. Galimberti, “Body-size reduction in vertebrates following the end-Devonian mass extinction,” Science 350(6262): 812–815 (13 November 2015).
Jayanth R. Banavar et al, “Form, function, and evolution of living organisms,” PNAS 11(9): 3332–3337 (4 March 2014).
T. Ryan Gregorye et al, “The smallest avian genomes are found in hummingbirds,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (5 August 2009).
Rahcel Ehrenberg, “Tiny bird, tiny genome,” Science News (4 August 2008).
Chris L. Organ et al, “Origin of avian genome size and structure in non-avian dinosaurs,” Nature 446: 180–184 (8 March 2007).
Peter J. Wagner, “One era you are in – the next you are out,” Science 350(6262): 736–737 (13 November 2015).
Bat Echolocation
Lasse Jakobsen et al, “Convergent acoustic field of view in echolocating bats,” Nature 493: 93–96 (3 January 2013).
Lasse Jakobsen & Annemarie Surlykke, “Vespertilionid bats control the width of their biosonar sound beam dynamically during prey pursuit,” PNAS 107(31): 13930–13935 (3 August 2010).
Lasse Jakobsen et al, “Echolocation beam shape in emballonurid bats, Saccopteryx bilineata and Cormura brevirostris,” Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 66(11): 1493–1502 (November 2012).
Maria Sagot & Richard D. Stevens, “The evolution of group stability and roost lifespan: perspectives from tent-roosting bats,” Biotropica 44(1): 90–97 (January 2012).
Roger Lewin, Human Evolution: An Illustrated Introduction, Blackwell Publishing (2005).
Infanticide
“Baby monkeys grow faster to avoid being killed by adult males,” ScienceDaily (17 March 2016).
Iulia Badescu et al, “Infanticide pressure accelerates infant development in a wild primate,” Animal Behavior 114: 231–239 (April 2016).
Cicadas
Richard Monastersky, “Long-lived insects raise prime riddle,” Nature (28 May 2013).
Virginia Morell, “Cicadas’ cycles control their predators,” Science (14 December 2012).
Walter D. Koenig & Andrew M. Liebhold, “Avian predation pressure as a potential driver of periodical cicada cycle length,” The American Naturalist 181(1): 145–149 (January 2013).
Mammal Predators
Theodore Stankowich et al, “Ecological drivers of antipredator defenses in carnivores,” Evolution (23 February 2014).
SNV, “Skunky or social,” Science (21 March 2014).
Mammal Defecation
Chelsea Whyte, “Most mammals big or small take about 12 seconds to defecate,” New Scientist (3 May 2017).
Diving Birds
Penguin photo courtesy of Ken Funakoshi.
Kyle H. Elliott et al, “High flight costs, but low dive costs, in auks support the biomechanical hypothesis for flightlessness in penguins,” PNAS (20 May 2013).
“Flight of the penguin,” Science 340: 906 (24 March 2013).
“Sea and sky comes at a cost,” Nature (29 May 2013).
Sexuality
Nicholas J. Butterfield, “Bangiomorpha pubescens n. gen., n. sp.: implications for the evolution of sex, multicellularity, and the Meso-proterozoic/Neoproterozoic radiation of eukaryotes,” Paleobiology 26(3):386–404 (2000).
Ram Horns & Longevity
Soay ram photo courtesy of arjecahn.
Susan E. Johnston et al, “Life history trade-offs at a single locus maintain sexually selected genetic variation,” Nature (21 August 2013).
Lechwe Reproductive Strategy
Fred B. Bercovitch et al, “Age-specific changes in reproductive effort and terminal investment in female Nile lechwe,” Journal of Mammalogy 90(1): 40–46 (February 2009).
Lechwe photo courtesy of PanBk.
Jennifer S. Mascaro et al, “Testicular volume is inversely correlated with nurturing-related brain activity in human fathers,” PNAS 110(39): 15746–15751 (24 September 2013).
Megan L. Head et al, “Correlated evolution in parental care in females but not males in response to selection on paternity assurance behaviour,” Ecology Letters (2014).
Mating & Parental Care
Helmut Schaschl et al, “Sex-specific selection for MHC variability in Alpine chamois,” BMC Evolutionary Biology (15 February 2012).
Climate & Body Size (Bergmann’s rule)
Marta Zaraska, “Shrinking animals,” Scientific American 138(6): 49-52 (June 2018).
Kristina Riemer et al, “No general relationship between mass and temperature in endothermic species,” eLife (9 January 2018).
Joan Meiners, “Good news: animals won’t shrink as the climate gets warmer,” New Scientist (19 January 2018).
Henry Nicholls, “Withering heights: Why animals are shrinking,” New Scientist (6 February 2013).
Jack Forster & Andrew G. Hirst, “The temperature-size rule emerges from ontogenetic differences between growth and development rates,” Functional Ecology (27 January 2012).
Jennifer A. Sheridan & David Bickford, “Shrinking body size as an ecological response to climate change,” Nature Climate Change 1: 401-406 (16 October 2011).
Shuan S. Killen et al, “The intraspecific scaling of metabolic rate with body mass in fishes depends on lifestyle and temperature,” Ecology Letters (14 January 2010).
R.P. Freckleton et al, “Bergmann’s rule and body size in mammals” The American Naturalist 161(5): 821–825 (2003).
Hot Horse
Sifrhippus illustration courtesy of Danielle Byerley.
Miguel Á. Olalla-Tárraga et al, “Broad-scale patterns of body size in squamate reptiles of Europe and North America,” Journal of Bioge-ography 33(5): 791–793 (May 2006).
Ross Secord et al, “Evolution of the earliest horses driven by climate change in the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum,” Science 335(6071): 959–962 (24 February 2012).
Felisa A. Smith, “Some like it hot,” Science 335(6071): 924–925 (24 February 2012).
Wandering Albatross Winds
Wandering albatross photo courtesy of J.J. Harrison.
Henri Weimerskirch et al, “Changes in wind pattern alter albatross distribution and life-history traits,” Science 335 (6065): 211–214 (13 January 2012).
Brains
Patrik Lindenfors et al, “Primate brain architecture and selection in relation to sex,” BMC Biology (10 May 2007).
Brains
Sandra A. Heldstab et al, “Hibernation constrains brain size evolution in mammals,” Journal of Evolutionary Biology (21 July 2018).
Michael Marshall, “It may be impossible to evolve a large brain if you hibernate,” New Scientist (6 August 2018).
Colin Barras & Michael Marshall, “Our earliest primate cousin discovered in Asia,” New Scientist (5 June 2013).
Joshua J. Amiel et al, “Smart moves: effects of relative brain size on establishment success of invasive amphibians and reptiles,” PLoS One (6 April 2011).
Sociality
Margarita M. López-Uribe et al, “Reduced cellular immune response in social insect lineages,” Biology Letters (9 March 2016).
“More social insects have weaker immune response, highlights role of hygiene,” ScienceDaily (9 March 2016).
Intelligence
Dovid Y. Kozlovsky et al, “Problem-solving ability and response to novelty in mountain chickadees (Poecile gambeli) from different elevations,” Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 69(4): 635-643 (April 2015).
Carrie L. Branch et al, “Elevation-related differences in female mate preference in mountain chickadees: are smart chickadees choosier?,” Animal Behaviour (26 November 2014).
Eyesight to the Blind
Richard Held et al, “The newly sighted fail to match seen with felt,” Nature Neuroscience (10 April 2011).
Nicholas Bakalar, “Study of vision tackles a philosophy riddle,” The New York Times (23 April 2011).
Plants
Coconut drawing courtesy of Franz Eugen Köhler.
Michael J. Crawley, “Life history and environment,” in Plant Ecology, edited by Michael J. Crawley, Blackwell Science (1997).
“Study explains the worldwide variation in plant life-histories,” Phys.org (21 December 2015).
“Small but speedy: short plants live in the evolutionary fast lane,” ScienceDaily (21 May 2013).
Robert Lanfear et al, “Taller plants have lower rates of molecular evolution,” Nature Communications (21 May 2013).
Georges Kunstler et al, “Plant functional traits have globally con-sistent effects on competition,” Nature (23 December 2015).
Sandra Diaz et al, “The global spectrum of plant form and function,” Nature (23 December 2015).
“Trees employ similar strategies to outcompete their neighbors,” ScienceDaily (7 January 2016).
Seeds
Torbjørn Rage Paulsen et al, “Physical dormancy in seeds: a game of hide and seek?,” New Phytologist (20 February 2013).
Andrew M. Sugden, “A good hiding place,” Science (8 March 2013).
Locusts
Patrício M. V. Simões et al, “Phenotypic transformation affects associative learning in the desert locust,” Current Biology 23(23): 2407-2412 (2 December 2013).
Mary Bates, “How locusts learn to be part of a swarm,” Wired (19 December 2013).
“And that is how the desert locust lost its memory,” ScienceDaily (14 January 2014).
Patrício M. V. Simões et al, “A long-latency aversive learning mechanism enables locusts to avoid odours associated with the consequences of ingesting toxic food,” Journal of Experimental Biology (2012).
Rate of Living
Kevin Healy et al, “Metabolic rate and body size are linked with perception of temporal information,” Animal Behaviour 86(4): 685–696 (October 2013).
“Correction: hummingbird,” The Economist (19 April 2014).
John R. Speakman, “Body size, energy metabolism and lifespan,” The Journal of Experimental Biology 208: 1717–1730 (1 May 2005).
S.S. Ragland & R.S. Sohal, “Ambient temperature, physical activity and aging in the housefly, Musca domestica,” Experimental Gerontology 10(5): 279–289 (1975).
Kevin Healy et al, “Ecology and mode-of-life explain lifespan variation in birds and mammals,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (16 April 2014).
“Fly more, live longer,” Science News (16 May 2014).
Denham Harman, “Aging: a theory based on free radical and radiation chemistry,” Journal of Gerontology 11(3):298–300 (July 1956).
A.J. Hulbert, “Life, death and membrane bilayers,” The Journal of Experimental Biology 206: 2303–2311 (15 July 2003).
A.J. Hulbert et al, “Life and death: metabolic rate, membrane composition, and life span of animals,” Physiological Reviews 87: 1175–1213 (1 October 2007).
Chen Hou & Kaushalya Amunugama, “On the complex relationship between energy expenditure and longevity: Reconciling the contradictory empirical results with a simple theoretical model,” Mechanisms of Ageing and Development 149: 50-64 (July 2015).
“New mathematical model illustrates link between energy use and aging,” Phys.org (1 February 2016).
“Ming the clam is oldest mollusc,” BBC News (28 October 2007).
George the Lobster
“NY eatery frees ancient lobster,” BBC News (10 January 2009).
Full Lives
Jeffrey R. Stevens, “Evolutionary pressures on primate intertemporal choice,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (14 May 2014).
“Time is in the eye of the beholder: time perception in animals depends on their pace of life,” ScienceDaily (16 September 2013).
Owen R. Jones et al, “Diversity of ageing across the tree of life,” Nature 505: 169–173 (9 January 2014).
“Surprising diversity in aging revealed in nature,” ScienceDaily (8 December 2013).
Virginia Hughes, “Why do we age? A 46-species comparison,” National Geographic (8 December 2013).
Negligible Senescence
Abigail Zuger, “Secrets of the ages,” The New York Times (24 February 2014).
Miguel Coelho et al, “Fission yeast does not age under favorable conditions, but does so after stress,” Current Biology 23(19): 1844–1852 (7 October 2013).
Daniel E. Martínez, “Mortality patterns suggest lack of senescence in hydras,” Experimental Gerontology 33(3): 217–225 (1998).
Bob Yirka, “Soil beneath ocean found to harbor long lived bacteria, fungi and viruses,” Phys.org (29 August 2013).
Stanley D. Beck & R.K. Bharadwaj, “Reversed development and cellular aging in an insect,” Science 178(4066): 1210–1211 (15 December 1972).
“Quaking aspen,” Bryce Canyon, U.S. National Park Service (2014).
Humans Gracile
Christopher B. Ruff et al, “Gradual decline in mobility with the adoption of food production in Europe,” PNAS (18 May 2015).
“Agriculture, declining mobility drove humans’ shift to lighter bones,” ScienceDaily (18 May 2015).
Human Descent
Alice Roberts, Evolution: The Human Story, Dorling Kindersley Limited (2011).
Richard G. Klein, The Dawn of Human Culture, John Wiley & Sons (2002).
Chip Walter, Last Ape Standing, Walker Publishing Company (2013).
Glenn C. Conroy, Reconstructing Human Origins, W.W. Norton (2005).
Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Harper (2015).
Mark Grabowski & William L. Jungers, “Evidence of a chimpanzee-sized ancestor of humans but a gibbon-sized ancestor of apes,” Nature Communications (12 October 2017).
“The common ancestor of apes and hominids was small, weighing some 5.5 kg. It swung through the branches of trees, allowing it to get otherwise inaccessible fruit. Small size continued until the arrival of Homo erectus, long after hominids had taken to living on the ground rather than in the trees,” Phys.org (12 October 2017).
Louis-Jean Boë et al, “Evidence of a vocalic proto-system in the baboon (Papio papio) suggests pre-hominin speech precursors,” PLoS One (11 January 2017).
Marina Davila-Ross et al, “Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) produce the same types of ‘laugh faces’ when they emit laughter and when they are silent,” PLoS One (10 June 2015).
“Putting muscle into birdsong: wide range of pitch is due to vocal muscles more than air pressure,” ScienceDaily (30 June 2010).
Tobias Riede et al, “Sexual dimorphism of the zebra finch syrinx indicates adaptation for high fundamental frequencies in males,” PLoS One (29 June 2010).
Lauren A. Michel et al, “Remnants of an ancient forest provide ecological context for Early Miocene fossil apes,” Nature Communications (18 February 2014).
Chris Stringer & Peter Andrews, The Complete World of Human Evolution, Thames & Hudson (2005).
Yves Coppens et al, Human Origins, Hachette Illustrated (2004).
Ashley S. Hammond et al, “Middle Miocene Pierolapithecus provides a first glimpse into early hominid pelvic morphology,” Journal of Human Evolution 64(6): 658–666 (June 2013).
Tina Hesman Saey, “Human-ape split gets an earlier date,” Science News 186(1): 12 (12 July 2014).
“Evolution’s human and chimp twist,” BBC News (18 May 2006).
Caro-Beth Stewart & Todd R. Disotell, “Primate evolution — in and out of Africa,” Current Biology 8(16): PR582-R588 (30 July 1998).
“Human ancestors went out of Africa and then came back: researchers propose controversial new model for evolution of humans and apes,” ScienceDaily (7 August 1998).
Salvador Moyà-Solà et al, “Primate evolution — in and out of Africa,” Current Biology 9(15): PR547-R552 (12 August 1999).
A.E. Lebatard et al, “Cosmogenic nuclide dating of Sahelanthropus tchadensis and Australopithecus bahrelghazali: Mio-Pliocene hominids from Chad,” PNAS 105(9): 3226–3231 (8 March 2008).
Richard D. Wilkinson et al, “Dating primate divergences through an integrated analysis of palaeontological and molecular data,” Systems Biology 60(1): 16–31 (2011).
Jeff Hecht, “Ape fossils put the origin of humanity at 10 million years ago,” New Scientist (2 October 2015).
“Birds’ unique skulls linked to young dinosaur brains,” Phys.org (11 September 2017).
Colin Baras, “Did the ancestor of all humans evolve in Europe not Africa?,” New Scientist (16 April 2019).
Neoteny
Doug Jones et al, “Sexual selection, physical attractiveness and facial neoteny: cross-cultural evidence and implications,” Current Anthropology 136(5): 737-738 (December 1995).
Brian T. Shea, “Heterochrony in human evolution: The case for neoteny reconsidered,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 32: 69-101 (1989).
BipedlaismErin Wyman, “Human ancestors scrambled to their feet, a new explanation for bipedalism asserts,” Science News (1 July 2013).
David R. Carrier, “The advantage of standing up to fight and the evolution of habitual bipedalism in hominins,” PLoS One (18 May 2011).
Tracy L. Kivell & Daniel Schmitt, “Independent evolution of knuckle-walking in African apes shows that humans did not evolve from a knuckle-walking ancestor,” PNAS 106(34): 14241–14246 (25 August 2009).
Lindsey Bever, “Why two orphaned gorillas stood tall like humans in a park ranger’s selfie,” The Washington Post (23 April 2019).
Louis Buckley, “This chimp is made for walking,” Nature (16 July 2007).
Bruce Bower, “Ancient walking gets weirder,” Science News (19 May 2012).
Yohannes Haile-Selassie et al, “A new hominin foot from Ethiopia shows multiple Pliocene bipedal adaptations,” Nature 483: 565–570 (29 March 2012).
“For early hominins in Africa, many ways to take a walk,” Science 336: 538 (4 May 2012).
Daniel E. Lieberman, “Those feet in ancient times,” Nature 483: 550–551 (29 March 2012).
Meghan M. Cotter et al, “Human evolution and osteoporosis-related spinal fractures,” PloS One (19 October 2011).
Elizabeth Pennisi, “The burdens of being a biped,” Science 336: 974 (25 May 2012).
Jennifer Ackerman, “The downside of upright,” National Geographic (July 2006).
Dennis M. Bramble & Daniel E. Lieberman, “Endurance running and the evolution of Homo,” Nature 432: 345–352 (18 November 2004).
Neil T. Roach et al, “Elastic energy storage in the shoulder and the evolution of high-speed throwing in Homo,” Nature 498: 483-486 (27 June 2013).
Melissa Hogenboom, “Origins of human throwing unlocked,” BBC News (26 June 2013).
Brain Size
Natalia Fedorova et al, “Living in stable social groups is associated with reduced brain size in woodpeckers (Picidae),” Biology Letters 13(3) (March 2017).
Alex R. DeCasien et al, “Primate brain size is predicted by diet but not sociality,” Nature Ecology & Evolution (27 March 2017).
“Why are primates big-brained? Researchers’ answer is food for though,” Phys.org (27 March 2017).
Lauren A. Gonzales et al, “Cerebral complexity preceded enlarged brain size and reduced olfactory bulbs in Old World monkeys,” Nature Communications (3 July 2015).
“Old World monkey had a tiny complex brain,” Medical Express (3 July 2015).
Gretchen Reynolds, “Exercise and the ever-smarter human brain,” The New York Times (26 December 2012).
Timothy Noakes & Micheal Spedding, “Run for your life,” Nature 487: 295–296 (19 July 2012).
Dean Falk et al, “Metopic suture of Taung (Australopithecus africanus) and its implications for hominin brain evolution,” PNAS 109(22): 8467–8470 (29 May 2012).
Mo Costandi, “Bipedalism, birth and brain evolution,” The Guardian (8 May 2012).
Marc Srour, “Insect brains and animal intelligence,” BioTeaching (undated).
Lars Chittka & Jeremy Niven, “Are bigger brains better?,” Current Biology (17 November 2009).
Pierolapithecus
Pierolapithecus image courtesy of Catalaalatac.
Pliobates
Pilobates drawing courtesy of M. Palmero.
David M. Alba et al, “Miocene small-bodied ape from Eurasia sheds light on hominoid evolution,” Science 350(6260) (30 October 2015).
Colin Barras, “Fossil discovery could be the last common ancestor to all apes,” New Scientist (29 October 2015).
Bruce Bower, “Petite primate fossil could upend ideas about ape evolution,” Science News (29 October 2015).
Miquel Crusafont, “Pliobates cataloniae, a new primate species at the root of the tree of extant hominoids,” Institut Ctala de Paleontologia (2015).
“A new primate species at the root of the tree of extant hominoids,” Phys.org (29 October 2015).
Climate
Ewen Callaway, “Plant and animal DNA suggests first Americans took the coastal route,” Nature (10 August 2016).
Mikkel W. Pedersen et al, “Postglacial viability and colonization in North America’s ice-free corridor,” Nature (10 August 2016).
Eric J. Steig et al, “Recent climate and ice-sheet changes in West Antarctica compared with the past 2,000 years,” Nature Geoscience (14 April 2013).
M.A. Martínez-Botí et al, “Boron isotope evidence for oceanic carbon dioxide leakage during the last deglaciation,” Nature 518: 219–222 (12 February 2015).
H. Jesse Smith, “Mysterious rise,” Science (31 May 2013).
A.C. Tessin & D.C. Lund, “Isotopically depleted carbon in the mid-depth South Atlantic during the last deglaciation,” Paleoceanography (2013).
Michail I. Petaev et al, “Large Pt anomaly in the Greenland ice core points to a cataclysm at the onset of Younger Dryas,” PNAS 110(32): 12917–12920 (6 August 2013).
Mario Pino et al, “Sedimentary record from Patagonia, southern Chile supports cosmic-impact triggering of biomass burning, climate change, and megafaunal extinctions at 12.8 ka,” Scientific Reports (13 March 2019).
“Geologic evidence supports theory that major cosmic impact event occurred approximately 12,800 years ago,” Phys.org (13 March 2019).
Wallace S. Broecker et al, “Putting the Younger Dryas cold event into context,” Quaternary Science Reviews 29: 1078–1081 (2010).
T.V. Lowell et al, ” Testing the Lake Agassiz meltwater trigger for the Younger Dryas,” EOS Transactions 86(40): 365–373 (4 October 2005).
Marten Scheffer et al, “Anticipating critical transitions,” Science 328: 344–348 (19 October 2012).
Alan Condrona & Peter Winsorb, ” Meltwater routing and the Younger Dryas,” PNAS (5 November 2012).
R. Muscheler et al, “Tree rings and ice cores reveal 14C calibration uncertainties during the Younger Dryas,” Nature Geoscience (9 March 2008).
The Holocene Extinction
Christopher Sandom et al, “Global late Quaternary megafauna extinctions linked to humans, not climate change,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (4 June 2014).
Alexandra Witze, “How mammoths competed with other animals and lost,” Science News (13 November 2018).
“Humans blamed for loss of mammoths and other giants,” Science (5 June 2014).
Stephen Wroe et al, “Climate change frames debate over the extinction of megafauna in Sahul (Pleistocene Australia-New Guinea),” PNAS (6 May 2013).
Eske Willerslev et al, “Fifty thousand years of Arctic vegetation and megafaunal diet,” Nature 506: 47–50 (6 February 2014).
Michael Balter, “What killed the great beasts of North America?,” Science (28 January 2014).
Robin McKie, “What killed off the giant beasts – climate change or man?,” The Guardian (15 March 2014).
“Climate change, not human activity, led to megafauna extinction,” ScienceDaily (6 May 2013).
“Human history of extinction,” Science News (26 July 2014).
“Reign of the giant insects ended with the evolution of birds,” ScienceDaily (4 June 2012).
Matthew E. Clapham & Jered A. Karr, “Environmental and biotic controls on the evolutionary history of insect body size,” PNAS (4 June 2012).
“Dodos might have been quite intelligent, new research finds,” ScienceDaily (23 February 2016).
Maria Eugenia Leone Gold et al, “The first endocast of the extinct dodo (Raphus cucullatus) and an anatomical comparison amongst close relatives (Aves, Columbiformes),” Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society (23 February 2016).
Morten Erik Allentoft et al, “Extinct New Zealand megafauna were not in decline before human colonization,” PNAS (17 March 2014).
Richard N. Holdaway et al, “An extremely low-density human population exterminated New Zealand moa,” Nature Communications (7 November 2014).
Bipedalism
Vivek V. Venkataraman et al, “Tree climbing and human evolution,” PNAS 110(4): 1237-1242 (22 January 2013).
Erin Wayman, “Becoming human: the evolution of walking upright,” Smithsonian.com (6 August 2012).
Jeremy M. DeSilva et al, “A nearly complete foot from Dikika, Ethiopia and its implications for the ontogeny and function of Australopithecus afarensis,” Science Advances (4 July 2018).
“Our human ancestors walked on two feet but their children still had a backup plan,” ScienceDaily (4 July 2018).
“Foot of ‘world’s oldest child’ shows how our ancestors moved,” National Geographic (4 July 2018).
Teruo Hashimoto et al, “Hand before foot? Cortical somatotopy suggests manual dexterity is primitive and evolved independently of bipedalism,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (7 October 2013).
“What evolved first, a dexterous hand or an agile foot?,” ScienceDaily (6 October 2013).
Savannah Hypothesis
“Grassed up,” The Economist (16 February 2013).
Isabelle C. Winder et al, “Complex topography and human evolution: the missing link,” Antiquity 87(336): 333–349 (May 2013).
Hominids
Procounsul drawing courtesy of C. Tudge.
Bernard Wood, “Welcome to the family,” 311(3): 43–47 Scientific American (September 2014).
Bernard Wood, Encyclopedia of Human Evolution, Wiley-Blackwell (2013).
Ann Gibbons, “How a fickle climate made us human,” Science 341: 474–479 (2 August 2013).
Charles Lockwood, The Human Story, Sterling Publishing (2007).
L. de Bonis et al, “New hominid skull material from the late Miocene of Macedonia in Northern Greece,” Nature 345: 712–714 (21 June 1990).
Erksin Savas Gulec et al, “A new great ape from the late Miocene of Turkey,” Anthropological Science 115(2): 153-158 (2007).
George D. Koufos & Louis de Bonis, “The Late Miocene hominoids Ouranopithecus and Graecopithecus. Implications about their relationships and taxonomy,” Annales de Paléontologie 91(3): 227-240 (July-September 2005).
David W. Cameron, “The taxonomic status of Graecopithecus,” Primates 38(3): 293-302 (July 1997).
Jochen Fuss et al, “Potential hominin affinities of Graecopithecus from the Late Miocene of Europe,” PLoS One (22 May 2017).
“Scientists find 7.2-million-year-old pre-human remains in the Balkans,” Phys.org (22 May 2017).
Colin Barras, “Our common ancestor with chimps may be from Europe, not Africa,” New Scientist (22 May 2017).
Sarah Knapton, “Europe was the birthplace of mankind, not Africa, scientists find,” The Telegraph (22 May 2017).
Brice Bower, “European fossils may belong to earliest known hominid,” Science News (22 May 2017).
Sahelanthropus tchadensis image courtesy of Didier Descouens.
Orrorin
Sergio Almécija et al, “The femur of Orrorin tugenensis exhibits morphometric affinities with both Miocene apes and later hominins,” Nature Communications (3 December 2013).
Bruce Bower, “For ancient hominids, thumbs up on precision grip,” Science News 177(10) (8 May 2010).
Australopithecus
Douglas Palmer, Origins: Human Evolution Revealed, Octopus Publishing Group (2010).
Julia Lee-Thorp et al, “Isotopic evidence for an early shift to C4 resources by Pliocene hominins in Chad,” PNAS 109(50): 20369–20372 (11 December 2012).
Patricia J. Ash & David J. Robinson, The Emergence of Humans, Wiley-Blackwell (2010).
Sandi R. Copeland et al, “Strontium isotope evidence for landscape use by early hominins,” Nature 474: 76–78 (2 June 2011).
Nicholas Wade, “Teeth of human ancestors hold clues to their family life,” The New York Times (1 June 2011).
Fisticuffs
Jonathan Webb, “Male faces ‘buttressed against punches’ by evolu-tion,” BBC News (9 June 2014).
Michael H. Morgan & David R. Carrier, “Protective buttressing of the human fist and the evolution of hominin hands,” The Journal of Experimental Biology 216: 236–244 (15 January 2013).
David R. Carrier & Michael H. Morgan, “Protective buttressing of the hominin face,” Biological Reviews (9 June 2014).
David R. Carrier & Christopher Cunningham, “The effect of foot posture on capacity to apply free moments to the ground: implications for fighting performance in great apes,” Biology Open (2017).
“Study finds that heel-down posture in great apes and humans confers a fighting advantage,” Phys.org (15 February 2017).
Au. afarensis
Christopher B. Ruff et al, “Limb bone structural proportions and locomotor behavior in A.L. 288-1 (“Lucy”),” PLoS One (30 November 2016).
Joanna Klein, “Study Suggests 3.2 million-year-old Lucy spent a lot of time in trees,” The New York Times (30 November 2016).
David J. Green & Zeresenay Alemseged, “Australopithecus afarensis scapular ontogeny, function, and the role of climbing in human evolution,” Science 338: 514–517 (26 October 2012).
Susan Larson, “Did Australopiths climb trees?,” Science 338: 478–479 (26 October 2012).
Donald Johanson & Maitland Edey, Lucy, the Beginning of Mankind, Simon & Schuster (1983).
Ann Gibbons, “Lucy’s ‘child’ offers rare glimpse of an ancient toddler” Science 313( 5794): 171 (22 September 2006).
Bruce Bower, “Fossil puts Lucy’s kind up a tree,” Science News , 16, (1 December 2012).
Ann Gibbons, “Lucy’s toolkit? old bones may show earliest evidence of tool use,” Science 329(5993): 738–739 (13 August 2010).
Campbell Rolian & Adam D. Gordon, “Reassessing manual proportions in Australopithecus afarensis,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 152(3): 393–406 (November 2013).
Philip L. Reno & C. Owen Lovejoy, “From Lucy to Kadanuumuu: balanced analyses of Australopithecus afarensis assemblages confirm only moderate skeletal dimorphism,” PeerJ (28 April 2015).
“Not much size difference between male and female Australopithecines,” ScienceDaily (28 April 2015).
Lucy’s Northern Cousin
Yohannes Haile-Selassie et al, “A new hominin foot from Ethiopia shows multiple Pliocene bipedal adaptations,” Nature 483: 565–570 (28 March 2012).
Ian Sample, “This fossil foot was made for walking – and climbing trees,” The Guardian (28 March 2012).
John Noble Wilford, “Fossil foot indicates new prehuman species,” The New York Times (28 March 2012).
Lucy’s Next-Door Neighbor
Darryl E. Granger et al, “New cosmogenic burial ages for Sterkfontein Member 2 Australopithecus and Member 5 Oldowan,” Nature (1 April 2015).
Bruce Bower, ‘Little Foot’ pushes back age of earliest South African hominids, Science News (1 April 2015).
“New human ancestor species may have lived alongside ‘Lucy’,” Nature World News (27 May 2015).
Yohannes Haile-Selassie et al, “New species from Ethiopia further expands Middle Pliocene hominin diversity,” Nature 521: 483–488 (28 May 2015).
Au. bahrelghazali
J.H. Schwartz & Ian Tattersal, The Human Fossil Record, vol.4: Craniodental Morphology of Early Hominids (Genera Australopithecus, Paranthropus, Orrorin) and Overview, John Wiley and Sons (2005).
Au. africanus
Heidi Ledford, “How women bend over backwards for baby,” Nature (12 December 2007).
Sandi R. Copeland et al, “Strontium isotope evidence for landscape use by early hominins,” Nature 474: 76–78 (2 June 2011).
“New stratigraphic research makes Little Foot the oldest complete Australopithecus,” Phys.org (14 March 2014).
Travis Rayne Pickering et al, “The context of Stw 573, an early hominid skull and skeleton from Sterkfontein Member 2: taphonomy and paleoenvironment,” Journal of Human Evolution 46(3): 277–295 (March 2004).
Raymond A. Dart, “The adult female lower jaw from Makapansgat,” Nature 173: 286–287 (13 February 1954).
Raymond A. Dart, “A (?) Promethean Australopithecus from Maka-pansgat valley,” Nature 162: 375–376 (4 September 1948).
Matthew M. Skinner et al, “Human-like hand use in Australopithecus africanus,” Science 347(6220): 395–399 (23 January 2015).
Au. garhi
Berhane Asfaw et al, “Australopithecus garhi: a new species of early hominid from Ethiopia,” Science 284 (5414): 629–635 (23 April 1999).
Au. sediba
Lee R. Berger, “The mosaic nature of Australopithecus sediba,” Science 430: 163–164 (12 April 2013).
Bruce Bower, “Notorious bones,” Science News (25 July 2013).
Au. sediba illustration courtesy of American paleoanthropologist Lee R. Berger (1965 – ).
William H. Kimbel, “Hesitation on hominin history,” Nature 497: 573–574 (30 May 2013).
Steven E. Churchill et al, “The upper limb of Australopithecus sediba,” Science 340: 123477-1–123477-6 (12 April 2013).
Jermy M. DeSilva et al, “The lower limb and mechanics of walking in Australopithecus sediba,” Science 340: 1232999-1–122999-5 (12 April 2013).
Kristian J. Carlson et al, “The endocast of MH1, Australopithecus sediba,” Science (8 September 2011).
Amanda G. Henry et al, “The diet of Australopithecus sediba,” Nature 487: 90–93 (5 July 2012).
Paul H.G.M. Dirks et al, “Geological setting and age of Australopithecus sediba from southern Africa,” Science 328(5975): 205–208 (9 April 2010).
Bruce Bower, “Possible human ancestor in Australopithecus sediba,” Science News 183(9): 20 (4 May 2013).
Joel D. Irish et al, “Dental morphology and the phylogenetic ‘place’ of Australopithecus sediba,” Science 340: 1233062-1–1233062-4 (12 April 2013).
Darryl J. de Ruiter et al, “Mandibular remains support taxonomic validity of Australopithecus sediba,” Science 340: 1232997-1–1232997-4 (12 April 2013).
Kenyanthropus
Kenyanthropus image courtesy of the Bradshaw Foundation.
Meave G. Leakey et al, “New hominin genus from eastern Africa shows diverse middle Pliocene lineages,” Nature 410: 433–440 (22 March 2001).
“Flat-faced man is puzzle,” BBC News (21 March 2001).
Paranthropus
Paranthropus drawing courtesy of Jay Matternes.
Homo
“Origin of human genus may have occurred by chance,” ScienceDaily (4 August 2017).
W. Andrew Barr, “Signal or noise? A null model method for evaluating the significance of turnover pulses,” Paleobiology (31 July 2017).
“What makes us special,” Scientific American 311(3): 60–61 (September 2014).
Ian Tattersal, The Strange Case of the Rickety Cossack: And Other Cautionary Tales from Human Evolution, Macmillan (2015).
William Davies, “Human evolution: how we misread our own story,” Nature 522: 154–155 (11 June 2015).
Susan C. Antón et al, “Evolution of early Homo: an integrated biological perspective,” Science 345(6192) (4 July 2014).
Ann Gibbons, “Deep roots for the genus Homo,” Science 347(6226): 1056–1057 (6 March 2015).
Brian Villmoare et al, “Early Homo at 2.8 Ma from Ledi-Geraru, Afar, Ethiopia,” Science (4 March 2015).
The Paleolithic
Ewen Callaway, “Neanderthal settlements point to earlier extinction,” Nature News (4 February 2013).
Laura Spinney, “Cosy up with the Neanderthals, the first humans to make a house a home,” New Scientist (6 February 2019).
Shannon P. McPherron et al, “Evidence for stone-tool-assisted consumption of animal tissues before 3.39 million years ago at Dikika, Ethiopia,” Nature 466: 857–860 (12 August 2010).
Ewen Callaway, “Oldest stone tools raise questions about their creators,” Nature (21 April 2015).
Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo et al, “Configurational approach to identifying the earliest hominin butchers,” PNAS 107(49): 20929–20934 (7 December 2010).
“Scientists revise timeline of human origins,” Phys.org (3 July 2014).
H. habilis
Homo habilis image courtesy of W. Schnaubelt & N. Kieser, photographed by Lillyundfreya.
Bernard Wood, “Human evolution: fifty years after Homo habilis,” Nature (2 April 2014).
Not Homo?
Bernard Wood, “Homo who?,” PNAS 28 June 2011).
Simon Neubauer et al, “The evolution of modern human brain shape,” Science Advances (24 January 2018).
Splitting & Lumping
“Earliest humans had diverse range of body types, just as we do today,” University of Cambridge (27 March 2015).
Manuel Will & Jay T. Stark, “Spatial and temporal variation in the body size of early Homo,” 3rd Annual Meeting of the European Society for Human Evolution (20 September 2013).
“Significant skull differences between closely linked groups,” ScienceDaily (12 April 2012).
H. antiquus
Erin Wayman, “Four species of Homo you’ve never heard of, part II,” Smithsonian.com (10 December 2012).
Walter W. Ferguson, “Reconstruction and re-evaluation of the skull of Homo antiquus (hominoidea: Homininae) from Hadar,” Primates 28(3): pp 377–391 (July 1987).
Roger Lewin & Robert A. Foley, Principles of Human Evolution, Blackwell Publishing (2004).
Meave G. Leakey et al, “New fossils from Koobi Fora in northern Kenya confirm taxonomic diversity in early Homo,” Nature 488: 201–204 (9 August 2012).
Ann Gibbons, “A new face reveals multiple lineages alive at the dawn of our genus Homo,” Science 337: 635 (10 August 2012).
Matt Kaplan, “Fossils point to a big family for human ancestors,” Nature (8 August 2012).
H. rudolfensis
Ann Gibbons, “Who was Homo habilis– and was it really Homo?,” Science 32: 1370–1371 (17 June 2011).
H. helmei
T.F. Dreyer, “Archæology in South and East Africa,” Nature 136: 872 (30 November 1935).
T.F. Dreyer, “Early man in South Africa,” Nature 135: 620 (20 April 1935).
Matt Cartmill & Fred H. Smith, The Human Lineage, Wiley-Blackwell (2009).
Erin Wayman, “Four species of Homo you’ve never heard of,” Smithsonian.com (11 April 2012).
H. gautengensis
D. Curnoe, “A review of early Homo in southern Africa focusing on cranial, mandibular and dental remains, with the description of a new species (Homo gautengensis sp. nov.),” HOMO – Journal of Comparative Human Biology 61(3): 151–177 (June 2010).
Jennifer Viegas, “Toothy tree-swinger may be earliest human,” Discovery News (21 May 2010).
“Talking Neanderthals challenge the origins of speech,” ScienceDaily (2 March 2014).
H. erectus
Henry M. McHenry, Behavioral Ecological Implications Of Early Hominid Body Size, Academic Press Limited (1994).
Matt Kaplan, “Stone tools shed light on early human migrations,” Nature (31 August 2011).
Christopher J. Lepre et al, “An earlier origin for the Acheulian,” Nature 477: 82–85 (1 September 2011).
Josephine C. A. Joordens et al, “Homo erectus at Trinil on Java used shells for tool production and engraving,” Nature (3 December 2014).
Ann Gibbons, “Ancient island tools suggest Homo erectus was a seafarer,” Science 279 (5357): 1635–1637 (13 March 1998).
Reid Ferringa et al, “Earliest human occupations at Dmanisi (Georgian Caucasus) dated to 1.85–1.78 Ma,” PNAS (6 June 2011).
Colin Baras, “Have humans been sailors for a million years?,” New Scientist (30 May 2018).
H. georgicus
David Lordkipanidze et al, “A complete skull from Dmanisi, Georgia, and the evolutionary biology of early Homo,” Science 342 (6156): 326–331 (18 October 2013).
Ann Gibbons, “Stunning skull gives a fresh portrait of early humans,” Science 342 (6156): 297–298 (18 October 2013).
Abelsalom Vekua et al, “A new skull of early Homo from Dmanisi, Georgia,” Science 297: 85–88 (5 July 2002).
H. heidelbergensis
H. heidelbergensis drawing courtesy of Mauricio Anton.
Lumping, Take 2
Ann Margvelashvili et al, “Tooth wear and dentoalveolar remodeling are key factors of morphological variation in the Dmanisi mandibles,” PNAS 110(43): 17278–17283 (22 October 2013).
Sid Perkins, “Skull suggests three early human species were one,” Nature (17 October 2013).
Michael Marshall, “Complete skull of 1.8-million-year-old hominin found,” New Scientist (17 October 2013).
Carl Zimmer, “Christening the earliest members of our genus,” The New York Times (24 October 2013).
Fred Spoor, “Palaeoanthropology: small-brained and big-mouthed,” Nature 502, 452–453 (24 October 2013).
Fabrice Demeter, “Early modern humans and morphological variation in southeast Asia: Fossil evidence from Tam Pa Ling, Laos,” PLoS One (7 April 2015).
“Two ancient human fossils from Laos reveal early human diversity,” ScienceDaily (8 April 2015).
Tina Hesman Saey, DNA data offer evidence of unknown extinct human relative,” Science News (21 October).
Matthias Meyer et al, “A mitochondrial genome sequence of a hominin from Sima de los Huesos,” Nature 505: 403–406 (16 January 2014).
Robert Lee Hotz, “Early human interbreeding more widespread than thought, study suggests,” The Wall Street Journal (4 December 2014).
Ewen Callaway, “Hominin DNA baffles experts,” Nature 504: 16–17 (5 Deember 2013).
Diet
Juan Manuel Jiménez-Arenas et al, “On the relationships of postca-nine tooth size with dietary quality and brain volume in primates: implications for hominin evolution,” BioMed Research International article: 406507 (April 2014).
Peter S. Ungar & Matt Sponheimer, “The diets of early hominins,” Science 334(6053): 190–193 (14 October 2011).
Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo et al, “Earliest porotic hyperostosis on a 1.5-million-year-old hominin, Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania,” PLoS One (3 October 2012).
Bruce Bower, “Meat on human ancestors’ menu,” Science News 183(11): 13 (1 June 2013).
“Anthropologist finds evidence of hominin meat eating 1.5 million years ago: eating meat may have ‘made us human’,” ScienceDaily (3 October 2012).
Karen Hardy et al, “The importance of dietary carbohydrate in human evolution,” The Quarterly Review of Biology 90(3): 251–268 (September 2015).
Neil T. Roach et al, “Elastic energy storage in the shouRobert A. Koeth et al, “Intestinal microbiota metabolism of l-carnitine, a nutrient in red meat, promotes atherosclerosis,” Nature Medicine (7 April 2013).
Chris Woolston, “Red meat + wrong bacteria = bad news for hearts,” Nature News (7 April 2013).
Gina Kolata, “Culprit in heart disease goes beyond meat’s fat,” The New York Times (7 April 2013).
Nicholas Bakalar, “Risks: more red meat, more mortality,” The New York Times (12 March 2012).
Jennifer Couzin-Frankel, “Diet studies challenge thinking on proteins versus carbs,” Science 343(6175): 1068 (7 March 2014).
Matt Sponheimer et al, “Isotopic evidence for dietary variability in the early hominin Paranthropus robustus,” Science 314(5801): 980–982 (10 November 2006).
Stanley H. Ambrose, “A tool for all seasons,” Science 314(5801): 930–931 (10 November 2006).
Amanda G. Henry et al, ” The diet of Australopithecus sediba,” Nature 487: 90–93 (5 July 2012).
“Early human diet shows surprises,” ScienceDaily (27 June 2012).
“Homo ergaster,” Australian Museum (25 February 2013).
Richard W. Byrne & Lucy A. Bates, “Elephant cognition in primate perspective,” Comparative Cognition & Behavior Reviews 4: 65–79 (2009).
Yaowu Hu et al, “Stable isotope dietary analysis of the Tianyuan 1 early modern human,” PNAS 106(27): 10971–10974 (7 July 2009).
Marcello A. Mannino et al, ” Origin and diet of the prehistoric hunter-gatherers on the Mediterranean island of Favignana (Ègadi Islands, Sicily),” PNAS (28 November 2012).
Meat & Vegetables
Karen Hardy et al, “The importance of dietary carbohydrate in human evolution,” The Quarterly Review of Biology 90(3) (September 2015).
Dave Bry, “What Paleo diet experts think – and why they’re wrong,” The Guardian (18 August 2015).
“Big brains needed carbs—The importance of dietary carbohydrate in human evolution,” Phys.org (6 August 2015).
Yoel Melamed et al, “The plant component of an Acheulian diet at Gesher Benot Ya‘aqov, Israel,” PNAS (5 December 2016).
“Secrets of the paleo diet: discovery reveals plant-based menu of prehistoric man,” Phys.org (5 December 2016).
Katherine D. Zink & Daniel E. Lieberman, “Impact of meat and Lower Palaeolithic food processing techniques on chewing in humans,” Nature (9 March 2016).
“Food processing,” Nature (9 March 2016).
“Evolutionary psychology: thyme to touch,” The Economist (16 November 2013).
On the Hunt
Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser et al, “Evidence for close-range hunting by last interglacial Neanderthals,” Nature Ecology & Evolution (25 June 2018).
“Neanderthals practiced close-range hunting 120,000 years ago,” ScienceDaily (2 July 2018).
Neil T. Roach et al, “Elastic energy storage in the shoulder and the evolution of high-speed throwing in Homo,” Nature 498: 483–486 (27 June 2013).
Jayne Wilkins et al, “Evidence for early hafted hunting technology,” Science 338(942): 942–946 (16 November 2012).
“Complex tool find argues for early human smarts,” Discovery News (7 November 2012).
Henry Fountain, “Early humans used heat-treated stone for tools,” The New York Times (18 August 2009).
Kate Wong, “How hunting made us human,” Scientific American (18 May 2014).
Craig B. Stanford, “The predatory behavior and ecology of wild chimpanzee,” University of Southern California (~2000).
Fire
Steven R. James, “Hominid use of fire in the Lower and Middle Pleistocene,” Current Anthrolopology 30(1) (February 1989).
Ian Sample, “Cooking may be 1.9m years old, say scientists,” The Guardian (22 August 2011).
David M.J.S. Bowman et al, “The human dimension of fire regimes on Earth,” Journal of Biogeography 38(12):2223-2236 (September 2011).
Chris Organ et al, “Phylogenetic rate shifts in feeding time during the evolution of Homo,” PNAS (22 August 2011).
Kenneth Miller, “Archaeologists find earliest evidence of humans cooking with fire,” Discover (17 December 2013).
Bruce Bower, “Earliest evidence of fire making in Europe found,” Science News (2 June 2016).
Francesco Berna et al, “Microstratigraphic evidence of in situ fire in the Acheulean strata of Wonderwerk Cave, Northern Cape province, South Africa,” PNAS (2 April 2012).
Alok Jha, “Scientists find clue to human evolution’s burning question,” The Guardian (2 April 2012).
Naama Goren-Inbar et al, “Evidence of hominin control of fire at Gesher Benot Ya`aqov, Israel,” Science 304, 725 (2004).
Michael Williams, Deforesting the Earth, The University of Chicago Press (2006).
S.J. Pyne, “The keeper of the flame,” in Fire in the Environment, edited by P.J. Crutzen & J.G. Goldammer, John Wiley and Sons (1993).
H. antecessor
Y. Fernández-Jalvo et al, “Human cannibalism in the Early Pleistocene of Europe (Gran Dolina, Sierra de Atapuerca, Burgos, Spain),” Journal of Human Evolution 37 (34): 591–622 (September 1999).
José-Miguel Carretero et al, “Stature estimation from complete long bones in the Middle Pleistocene humans from the Sima de los Huesos, Sierra de Atapuerca (Spain),” Journal of Human Evolution 62(2): 242–255 (February 2012).
“The mystery of the pit of bones, Atapuerca, Spain,” Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (undated).
Controversy
Michael Balter, “RIP for a key Homo species?,” Science 345(6193): 129 (11 July 2014).
Michael Balter, “The killing ground,” Science 344(6138): 1080–1083 (6 June 2014).
H. rhodesiensis
G.J. Sawyer & Viktor Deak, The Last Human, Yale University Press (2011).
Neanderthal
Aida Gómez-Robles “Dental evolutionary rates and its implications for the Neanderthal–modern human divergence,” Science Advances (15 May 2019).
“Neanderthals and modern humans diverged at least 800,000 years ago,” Phys.org (15 May 2019).
Clive Finlayson, The Smart Neanderthal: Bird Catching, Cave Art, and the Cognitive Revolution, Oxford University Press (2019).
Carl Zimmer, “A new theory on how Neanderthal DNA spread in Asia,” The New York Times (19 February 2015).
Neanderthal drawing by Hermann Schaaffhausen in 1888.
Pat Shipman, The Invaders, Belknap Press (2015).
J.L. Arsuaga et al, “Neandertal roots: cranial and chronological evidence from Sima de los Huesos,” Science 344(6190): 1358–1363 (20 June 2014).
Rachel Ehrenberg, “Neaderthals evolved in fits and starts,” Science News (26 July 2014).
Eiluned Pearce et al, “New insights into differences in brain organization between Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B (13 March 2013).
Melissa Hogenboom, “The mystery of Neanderthals’ massive eyes,” BBC Earth (6 August 2015).
Jean-Jacques Hublin, “How to build a Neandertal,” Science 344(6190): 1338–1339 (20 June 2014).
“Early man: probing the chamber of secrets,” Economist (21 June 2014).
Colin Barras, “Neanderthals evolved their teeth before big brains,” New Scientist (19 June 2014).
Anne Gibbons, “Neandertals, like humans, may have had long childhoods,” Science (21 September 2017).
Virginie Volpato et al, “Hand to mouth in a Neandertal: right-handedness in Regourdou 1,” PLoS One (22 August 2012).
Bruce Bower, “Running past Neandertals,” Science News (12 March 2011).
Michelle L. Sauther et al, “Limestone cliff-face and cave use by wild ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta) in southwestern Madagascar,” Madagascar Conservation & Development 8(2) (2013).
Camilo J. Cela-Conde & Francisco J. Ayala, Human Evolution: Trails from the Past, Oxford University Press (2007).
Ruggero D’Anastasio et al, “Micro-biomechanics of the Kebara 2 hyoid and its implications for speech in Neanderthals,” PLoS One 8(12): e82261 (December 2013).
Dan Dediu & Stephen C. Levinson, “On the antiquity of language: the reinterpretation of Neandertal linguistic capacities and its consequences,” Frontiers in Language Sciences (5 July 2013).
Ruggero D’Anastasio et al, “Micro-biomechanics of the Kebara 2 hyoid and its implications for speech in Neanderthals,” PLoS One (18 December 2013).
Thomas Wynn & Frederick L. Coolidge, How to Think Like a Neanderthal, Oxford University Press (2012).
Davorka Radovcic et al, “Evidence for Neandertal jewelry: modified white-tailed eagle claws at Krapina,” PLoS One (11 March 2015).
Ana Majkic et al, “A decorated raven bone from the Zaskalnaya VI (Kolosovskaya) Neanderthal site, Crimea,” PLoS One (29 March 2017).
“Decorated bird bone suggests Neanderthals had eye for esthetics,” Phys.org (30 March 2017).
Paul Mellars, “Neanderthal symbolism and ornament manufacture: The bursting of a bubble?,” PNAS 107(47): 20147–20148 (23 November 2011).
Kate Wong, “Twilight of the Neandertals,” Scientific American (August 2009).
Joaquín Rodríguez-Vidal et al, “A rock engraving made by Neanderthals in Gibraltar,” PNAS (2 September 2014).
Ewen Callaway, “Neanderthals made some of Europe’s oldest art,” Nature (1 September 2014).
Tim Appenzeller, “Old masters,” Nature 497: 302–304 (16 May 2013).
Ker Than, “World’s oldest cave art found – made by Neanderthals?,” National Geographic Daily News (14 June 2012).
Kate Wong, “Neanderthal notes,” Scientific American 27–28 (September 1997).
William Rendu et al, “Evidence supporting an intentional Neandertal burial at La Chapelle-aux-Saints,” PNAS 111(1): 81–86 (7 January 2014).
Harold L. Dibble et al, “A critical look at evidence from La Chapelle-aux-Saints supporting an intentional Neandertal burial,” Journal of Archaeological Science (14 May 2014).
John Noble Wilford, “Neanderthals and the dead,” The New York Times (16 December 2013).
“Did Neandertals truly bury their dead?,” Science 337: 1433-1434 (21 September 2012).
Ian Sample, “Neanderthals were not less intelligent than modern humans, scientists find,” The Guardian (30 April 2014).
Marta Mirazón Lahr, “The not-so-dangerous lives of Neanderthals,” Nature (14 November 2018).
Paola Villa & Wil Roebroeks, “Neandertal demise: an archaeological analysis of the modern human superiority complex,” PLoS One (30 April 2014).
Eiluned Pearce et al, “New insights into differences in brain organiza-tion between Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans,” Pro-ceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (13 March 2013).
Marcia S. Ponce de León et al, “Neanderthal brain size at birth provides insights into the evolution of human life history,” PNAS (8 September 2008).
Sindya N. Bhanoo, “Life span of early man same as Neanderthals’,” The New York Times (10 January 2011).
Bruce L. Hardy et al, “Impossible Neanderthals? Making string, throwing projectiles and catching small game during Marine Isotope Stage 4 (Abri du Maras, France),” Quaternary Science Reviews 82: 23–40 (15 December 2013).
Colin Barras, “World’s oldest string found at French Neanderthal site,” New Scientist (3 November 2013).
Laëtitia Demay et al, “Mammoths used as food and building resources by Neanderthals: zooarchaeological study applied to layer 4, Molodova I (Ukraine),” Quaternary International 276–277: 212–226 (25 October 2012).
Julien Riel-Salvatore et al, “A spatial analysis of the late mousterian levels of Riparo Bombrini (Balzi Rossi, Italy),” Canadian Journal of Archaeology 37(1): 70–92 (2013).
“Neanderthals produced wooden spears advanced enough to kill at distance,” Sci News (28 January 2019).
“Complexity of Neanderthal tools,” BBC News (26 August 2008).
Seiji Kadowaki et al, “Variability in Early Ahmarian lithic technology and its implications for the model of a Levantine origin of the Proto-aurignacian,” Journal of Human Evolution (25 April 2015).
E. Boeda et al, “Bitumen as hafting material on Middle Paleolithic artifacts from the El Kowm bsin, Syria,” in Neandertals and Modern Humans in Western Asia, edited by T. Azakawa et al, Plenum (1998).
Kearn Reubens, “Regional behaviour among late Neanderthal groups in Western Europe: a comparative assessment of late Middle Palaeolithic bifacial tool variability,” Journal of Human Evolution (6 August 2013).
Ian Sample, “Neanderthals may have invented a tool that is still in use today,” The Guardian (12 August 203).
Marie Soressi et al, “Neandertals made the first specialized bone tools in Europe,” PNAS (12 August 2103).
Bruce Bower, “Fiery re-creations show how Neandertals could have easily made tar,” Science News (31 August 2017).
Friedemann Schrenk and Stephanie Muller, The Neanderthals, Routledge (2005).
Michael P. Richards & Erik Trinkaus, “Isotopic evidence for the diets of European Neanderthals and early modern humans,” PNAS (11 August 2009).
Christoph Wißing et al, “Isotopic evidence for dietary ecology of late Neandertals in North-Western Europe,” Quaternary International (15 December 2015).
Laura T. Buck & Chris B. Stringer, “Having a stomach for it: a contribution to Neanderthal diets?,” Quaternary Science Reviews (29 September 2013).
C.B. Stringer et al, “Neanderthal exploitation of marine mammals in Gibraltar,” PNAS (22 September 2008).
Ainara Sistiaga et al, “The Neanderthal meal: a new perspective using faecal biomarkers,” PLoS One 9(6): e101045 (June 2014).
Matt Kaplan, “Neanderthals ate their greens,” Nature (18 July 2012).
Amanda G. Henry et al, “Microfossils in calculus demonstrate consumption of plants and cooked foods in Neanderthal diets (Shanidar III, Iraq; Spy I and II, Belgium),” PNAS (27 December 2010).
Sarah Kaplan, “Neanderthal microbes reveal surprises about what they ate — and whom they kissed,” The Washington Post (8 March 2017).
Laura S. Weyrich et al, “Neanderthal behaviour, diet, and disease inferred from ancient DNA in dental calculus,” Nature (8 March 2017).
Michael P. Richards et al, “Neanderthal diet at Vindija and Neanderthal predation: The evidence from stable isotopes,” PNAS (13 June 2000).
A.G. Henry et al, “Microfossils in calculus demonstrate consumption of plants and cooked foods in Neanderthal diets (Shanidar III, Iraq; Spy I and II, Belgium),” PNAS 108 (2): 486–491 (12 November 2010).
Karen Hardy et al, “Neanderthal medics? Evidence for food, cooking, and medicinal plants entrapped in dental calculus,” Naturwissen-schaften 99(8): 617–626 (August 2012).
Marina Lozano et al, “Toothpicking and periodontal disease in a Neanderthal specimen from Cova Foradà Site (Valencia, Spain),” PLoS One (16 October 2013).
Hervé Bocherens et al, ” Evidence for a 15N positive excursion in terrestrial foodwebs at the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition in south-western France: implications for early modern human pal-aeodiet and palaeoenvironment,” Journal of Human Evolution (13 March 2014).
Bruce Bower, “Human-Neanderthal mating gets a new date,” Science News (5 October 2012).
Benjamin Vernot & Joshua M. Akey, “Complex history of admixture between modern humans and Neandertals,” The American Journal of Human Genetics (12 February 2015).
Matt Ridley, “Did your ancestor date a Neanderthal?,” The Wall Street Journal (17 August 2012).
Ann Gibbons, “Oldest Homo sapiens genome pinpoints Neandertal input,” Science 343: 1417 (28 March 2014).
“Neanderthals and humans had ‘ample time’ to mix,” Phys.org (20 August 2014).
Ann Gibbons, “Neandertals and moderns made imperfect mates,” Science 343: 471–472 (31 January 2014).
Sriram Sankararaman et al, “The genomic landscape of Neanderthal ancestry in present-day humans,” Nature 507: 354–357 (20 March 2014).
Benjamin Vernot & Joshua M. Akey, “Resurrecting surviving Neandertal lineages from modern human genomes,” Science 343: 1017–1018 (28 February 2014).
Ian Sample, “Fifth of Neanderthals’ genetic code lives on in modern humans,” The Guardian (29 January 2014).
Robert L. Hotz, “Most people carry Neanderthal genes,” The Wall Street Journal (6 May 2010).
Mathias Currt & Laurent Excofier, “Strong reproductive isolation between humans and Neanderthals inferred from observed patterns of introgression,” PNAS 108(37): 15129–15134 (13 September 2011).
Sriram Sankararaman et al, “The date of interbreeding between Neandertals and modern humans,” PLoS Genetics 8(10): e1002947 (2012).
Kate Wong, “Our inner Neanderthal,” Scientific American 18–20 (July 2010).
“A gift from the Neanderthals,” The Week (8 September 2011).
Benjamin A. Black et al, “Campanian Ignimbrite volcanism, climate, and the final decline of the Neanderthals,” 43(4) Geology (April 2015).
Robin McKie, “Why did the Neanderthals die out?,” The Guardian (1 June 2013).
Michael Staubwasser, “Impact of climate change on the transition of Neanderthals to modern humans in Europe,” PNAS (27 August 2018).
“Cold climates contributed to the extinction of the Neanderthals,” ScienceDaily (29 August 2018).
Kenneth Chang, “Neanderthals in Europe died out thousands of years sooner than some thought, study says,” The New York Times (20 August 2014).
Tom Higham et al, “The timing and spatiotemporal patterning of Neanderthal disappearance,” Nature (20 August 2014).
William Davies, “Palaeoanthropology: the time of the last Neanderthals,” Nature 512: 260–261 (21 August 2014).
Ewen Callaway, “Neandertals disappeared from Europe earlier than thought,” Scientific American (20 August 2014).
Denisovans
Fahu Chen et al, “A late Middle Pleistocene Denisovan mandible from the Tibetan Plateau,” Nature (1 May 2019).
Ann Gibbons, “Ancient jaw gives elusive Denisovans a face,” Science 364(6439): 418-419 (3 May 2019).
Hannah Devlin, “‘Spectacular’ jawbone discovery sheds light on ancient Denisovans,” The Guardian (1 May 2019).
Ann Gibbons, “A room with a view—for three kinds of humans,” Science 363(6426): 438 (1 February 2019).
Zenobia Jacobs et al, “Timing of archaic hominin occupation of Denisova Cave in southern Siberia,” Nature 565: 594–599 (31 January 2019).
Viviane Slon et al, “A fourth Denisovan individual,” Science Advances (7 July 2017).
Bruce Bower, “Fossil tooth pushes back record of mysterious Neandertal relative,” Science News (7 July 2017).
David Reich et al, “Genetic history of an archaic hominin group from Denisova Cave in Siberia,” Nature (22 December 2010).
Matthias Meyer et al, “A high-coverage genome sequence from an archaic Denisovan individual,” Science 338: 222–226 (12 October 2012).
Bruce Bower, “DNA unveils enigmatic Denisovans,” Science News (30 August 2012).
Jamie Shreeve, “Our missing ancestor,” National Geographic 224(1): 90–101 (July 2013).
Michael Marshall, “Denisovans: the lost humans who shared our world,” New Scientist (3 April 2014).
Michael Marshall, “Mystery human species emerges from Denisovan genome,” New Scientist (19 November 2013).
Ann Gibbons, “Who were the Denisovans?,” Science 333: 1084–1087 (26 August 2011).
Carl Zimmer, “Siberian fossils were Neanderthals’ eastern cousins, DNA reveals,” The New York Times (24 December 2010).
Elizabeth Pennisi, “More genomes from Denisova cave show mixing of early human groups,” Science 340: 799 (17 May 2013).
Michael F. Hammer et al, “Genetic evidence for archaic admixture in Africa,” PNAS 108(37): 15123–15128 (13 September 2011).
Charles Choi, “Genome of mysterious extinct human reveals brown-eyed girl,” LiveScience (30 August 2012).
Viviane Slon et al, “The genome of the offspring of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father,” Nature (22 August 2018).
Carl Zimmer, “A blended family: her mother was Neanderthal, her father something else entirely,” The New York Times (22 August 2018).
Gretchen Vogel, “Ancient DNA reveals tryst between extinct human species,” Science (24 August 2018).
“Neanderthals and Denisovans regularly interbred,” The Economist (23 August 2018).
H. naledi
Ralph L. Holloway et al, “Endocast morphology of Homo naledi from the Dinaledi Chamber, South Africa,” PNAS (29 May 2018).
“Where hominid brains are concerned, size doesn’t matter,” Phys.org (14 May 2018).
Paul HGM Dirks et al, “The age of Homo naledi and associated sediments in the Rising Star Cave, South Africa,” eLife (9 May 2017).
John Hawks et al, “New fossil remains of Homo naledi from the Lesedi Chamber, South Africa,” eLife (9 May 2017).
Lee R. Berger et al, “Homo naledi and Pleistocene hominin evolution in subequatorial Africa,” eLife (9 May 2017).
Sarah Wild, “Small-brained early human lived more recently than expected,” Nature News (9 May 2017).
EAnn Gibbons, “New human species discovered,” Science 349(6253): 1149–1150 (11 September 2015).
Lee R. Berger et al, “Homo naledi, a new species of the genus Home from the Dinaledi chamber, South Africa,” eLife (10 September 2015).
Jamie Shreeve, “Mystery man,” National Geographic (October 2015).
Bruce Bower, “Debate over Homo naledi continues,” Science News (14 May 2016).
Jamie Shreeve, “This face changes the human story. But how?”. National Geographic News (10 September 2015).
Ian Sample, “Homo naledi: new species of ancient human discovered, claim scientists,” The Guardian (10 September 2015).
Sarah Knapton, “Homo naledi, a new species of human, discovered in a cave in South Africa,” The Telegraph (10 September 2015).
John Noble Wilford, “New species in human lineage is found in a South African cave,” The New York Times (10 September 2015).
“Ecce Homo naledi,” The Economist (12 September 2015).
Bruce Bower, “New date suggested for Homo naledi,” Science News (6 August 2016).
H. floresiensis
Serena Tucci et al, “Evolutionary history and adaptation of a human pygmy population of Flores Island, Indonesia,” Science 361(6401): 511-516 (3 August 2018).
Eleanor M. Weston & Adrian M. Lister, Insular dwarfism in hippos and a model for brain size reduction in Homo floresiensis,” Nature 459: 85–88 (7 May 2009).
Adam Brumm et al, “Hominins on Flores, Indonesia, by one million years ago,” Nature 464: 748–752 (1 April 2010).
Bruce Bower, “Hobbits died out earlier than thought,” Science News (30 March 2016).
Peter Brown, “LB1 and LB6 Homo floresiensis are not modern human (Homo sapiens) cretins,” Journal of Human Evolution 62(2): 201–224 (February 2012).
Thomas Sutikna et al, “Revised stratigraphy and chronology for Homo floresiensis at Liang Bua in Indonesia,” Nature (30 March 2016).
T. Jacob et al, ” Pygmoid Australomelanesian Homo sapiens skeletal remains from Liang Bua, Flores: Population affinities and pathologi-cal abnormalities,” PNAS 103(36): 13421–13426 (5 September 2006).
Karen L. Baab et al, “Homo floresiensis contextualized: a geometric morphometric comparative analysis of fossil and pathological human samples,” PLoS One (10 July 2013).
Gerrit D. van den Bergh et al, “Homo floresiensis-like fossils from the early Middle Pleistocene of Flores,” Nature 534: 245–248 (9 June 2016).
Thomas Sutikna et al, “Revised stratigraphy and chronology for Homo floresiensis at Liang Bua in Indonesia,” Nature 532: 366–369 (21 April 2016).
Carl Zimmer, “New fossils strengthen case for ‘Hobbit’ species,” The New York Times (8 June 2016).
Daisuke Kubo et al, “Brain size of Homo floresiensis and its evolution-ary implications,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (17 April 2013).
Caley M. Orr et al, “New wrist bones of Homo floresiensis from Llang Bua (Flores, Indonesia),” 64(2): 109–129 Journal of Human Evolution (February 2013).
Robert B. Eckhardt et al, “Rare events in earth history include the LB1 human skeleton from Flores, Indonesia, as a developmental singularity, not a unique taxon,” PNAS (4 August 2014).
Maciej Henneberg et al, “Evolved developmental homeostasis disturbed in LB1 from Flores, Indonesia, denotes Down syndrome and not diagnostic traits of the invalid speciesHomo floresiensis,” PNAS (4 August 2014).
Chris Woolston, “Strong words over a ‘Hobbit’,” Nature 512: 235 (21 August 2014).
Daisuke Kubo et al, “Brain size of Homo floresiensis and its evolutionary implication,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B (17 April 2013).
Kate Wong, “The littlest human,” Scientific American 48–57 (June 2006).
George H. Perry et al, “Adaptive, convergent origins of the pygmy phenotype in African rainforest hunter-gatherers,” PNAS (18 August 2014).
“Why pygmies are so short,” Nature World News (19 August 2014).
H. luzonensis
Florent Détroit et al, “A new species of Homo from the Late Pleistocene of the Philippines,” Nature 568: 181-186 (10 April 2019).
Ben Guarino,”Bones discovered in an island cave may be a new human species,” The Washington Post (10 April 2019).
A.S. Mijares et al, “New evidence for a 67,000-year-old human presence at Callao Cave, Luzon, Philippine,” Journal of Human Evolution 59(1):123-132 (July 2010).
“The Hobbit’s cousin: more new human species are discovered,” The Economist (11 April 2019).
Homo sapiens
Katerina Harvati et al, “Apidima Cave fossils provide earliest evidence of Homo sapiens in Eurasia,” Nature (10 July 2019).
Joel Achenbach, “Enigmatic skull suggests our human species reached Europe 210,000 years ago,” The Washington Post (10 July 2019).
Anders Bergström & Chris Tyler-Smith, “Paleolithic networking,” Science 358(6363): 586-587 (3 November 2017).
Ann Gibbons, “An Asian origin for human ancestors?,” Science (4 June 2012).
Kate Douglas, “Asia’s mysterious role in the early origins of humanity,” New Scientist (4 July 2018).
Colin Barras, “Ancient skull from China may rewrite the origins of our species,” New Scientist (15 November 2017).
“Out of Eurasia, a great primate evolutionary bottleneck?,” Phys.org (15 October 2013).
“Asia was settled in multiple waves of migration, DNA study suggests,” ScienceDaily (26 September 2011).
Hugh McColl et al, “The prehistoric peopling of Southeast Asia,” Science 361: 88-92 (6 July 2018).
Mark Lipson et al, “Ancient genomes document multiple waves of migration in Southeast Asian prehistory,” Science 361: 92-95 (6 July 2018).
M. Gallego Llorente et al, “Ancient Ethiopian genome reveals extensive Eurasian admixture throuhttps://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24032042-500-modern-lifestyles-shaped-our-evolution-only-a-few-thousand-years-ago/ghout the African continent,” Science Xpress (8 October 2015).
Carina M. Schlebusch et al, “Southern African ancient genomes estimate modern human divergence to 350,000 to 260,000 years ago,” Science (28 September 2017).
“Modern humans emerged more than 300,000 years ago new study suggests,” ScienceDaily (28 September 2017).
Ewen Callaway, “Oldest Homo sapiens fossil claim rewrites our species’ history,” Nature News (8 June 2017).
Chris Stringer & Julia Galway-Witham, “On the origins of our species,” Nature 546: 212-213 (8 June 2017).
Jean-Jacques Hublin et al, “New fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and the pan-African origin of Homo sapiens,” Nature 546: 289-292 (8 June 2017).
Daniel Richter et al, “The age of the hominin fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco, and the origins of the Middle Stone Age,” Nature 546: 293-296 (8 June 2017).
Bruce Bower, “Fossils push back origin of humans,” Science News (8 & 22 July 2017).
Ann Gibbons, “Oldest members of our species discovered in Morocco,” Science 356(6342): 993-994 (9 June 2017).
“The oldest Homo sapiens yet,” The Economist (10 June 2017).
Kate Wong, “Sourcing sapiens,” Scientific American 289(2): 23-24 (August 2003).
Serena Tucci & Joshua M. Akey, “Population genetics: a map of human wanderlust,” (21 September 2016).
Elizabeth Culotta & Ann Gibbons, “Aborigines and Eurasians rode one migration wave,” Science 353(6306): 1352–1353 (23 September 2016).
Swapan Mallick et al, “The Simons Genome Diversity Project: 300 genomes from 142 diverse populations,” Nature (21 September 2016).
Luca Pagani et al, “Genomic analyses inform on migration events during the peopling of Eurasia,” Nature (21 September 2016).
Peter B. deMenocal & Chris Stringer, “Human migration: climate and the peopling of the world,” Nature (21 September 2016).
Axel Timmermann & Tobias Friedrich, “Late Pleistocene climate drivers of early human migration,” Nature (21 September 2016).
Ian Sample, “Fossilised finger points to previously unknown group of human relatives,” The Guardian (22 December 2010).
Brenna M. Henn et al, “The great human expansion,” PNAS (17 October 2012).
“Peopling the planet,” Nature 485: 23 (3 May 2012).
“Homo sapiens developed a new ecological niche that separated it from other hominins,” Phys.org (30 July 2018).
Patrick Roberts & Brian A. Stewart, “Defining the ‘generalist specialist’ niche for Pleistocene Homo sapiens,” Nature Human Behavior 2: 542–550 (2018).
J.R. Stewart & C.B. Stringer, “Human evolution out of Africa: the role of refugia and climate change,” Science 335: 1317–1321 (16 March 2012).
Pamela R. Willoughby, “The middle and later Stone Age in the Iringa Region of southern Tanzania,” Quaternary International 270: 103–118 (23 August 2012).
Alyssa A. Botelho, “Lost river guided early humans out of Africa,” Science News (16 September 2013).
Tom J. Coulthard et al, “Were rivers flowing across the Aahara during the last interglacial? Implications for human migration through Africa,” PLoS One 8(9): e74834 (September 2013).
Tim Appenzeller, “Easter odyssey,” Nature 485: 24–26 (3 May 2012).
Bruce Bower, “Before Europe, humans went to Asia,” Science News (14 November 2015).
Chris Clarkson et al, “Human occupation of northern Australia by 65,000 years ago,” Nature 547: 306–310 (20 July 2017).
Curtis W. Marean, “Archaeology: early signs of human presence in Australia,” Nature 547: 285–287 (20 July 2017).
Nicola Davis, “Humans arrived in Australian interior 49,000 years ago, archaeologists believe,” The Guardian (2 November 2016).
Morten Rasmussen et al, “An aboriginal Australian genome reveals separate human dispersals into Asia,” Science 334: 94–98 (7 October 2011).
Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas et al, “A genomic history of aboriginal Australia,” Nature (21 September 2016).
Bruce Bower, “DNA illuminates reverse migration,” Science News (14 November 2015).
James C. Chatters et al, “Late Pleistocene human skeleton and mtDNA link paleoamericans and modern native Americans,” Science 344(6185): 750–754 (16 May 2014).
Nicola Davis, “Ancient Siberia was home to previously unknown humans, say scientists,” The Guardian (5 June 2019).
Sindya N. Bhanoo, “Prehistoric skeleton in Mexico is said to link modern indians to earliest Americans,” The New York Times (15 May 2014).
Nicholas Wade, “Earliest Americans arrived in waves, DNA study finds,” The New York Times (11 July 2012).
Andrew Curry, “Coming to America,” Nature 485: 30–32 (3 May 2012).
“Atlas of the human journey,” National Geographic (2 May 2007).
Bruce Bower, “DNA reveals early mating between Asian herders and European farmers,” New Scientist (8 February 2019).
Bruce Bower, “Arrival to South America pushed back,” Science News (26 December 2015).
Bruce Bower, “Disputed finds put humans in South America 22,000 years ago,” Science News (20 April 2013).
Morten E. Allentoft et al, “Population genomics of Bronze Age Eurasia,” Nature 522: 167–172 (11 June 2015).
Toba Super-eruption
Michael R. Rampino & Stephen Self, “Climate-volcanism feedback and the Toba eruption of ~74,000 years ago,” Quaternary Research 40: 269–280 (1993).
Katherine Sanderson, “Super-eruption: no problem?,” Nature (5 July 2007).
John Hawks et al, “Population bottlenecks and Pleistocene human evolution,” Molecular Biology and Evolution 17(1): 2– 22 (2000).
David Whitehouse, “Humans came ‘close to extinction’,” BBC News (8 September 1998).
David Whitehouse, “When humans faced extinction,” BBC News (9 June 2003).
Shu-Jin Luo et al, “Phylogeography and genetic ancestry of tigers (Panthera tigris),” PLoS Biology (7 December 2004).
Ryan D. Hernandez et al, “Demographic histories and patterns of linkage disequilibrium in Chinese and Indian rhesus macaques,” Science 316(5822): 240–243 (13 April 2007).
O. Thalman et al, “The complex history of gorillas: insights from genomic data,” Molecular Biology and Evolution 24: 146–158 (2007).
M.E. Steiper, “Population history, biogeography, and taxonomy of orangutans (Genus: Pongo) based on a population genetic meta-analysis of multiple loci,” Journal of Human Evolution 50: 509–522 (2006).
Pedro Soares et al, “Correcting for purifying selection: an improved human mitochondrial molecular clock,” The American Journal of Human Genetics (4 June 2009).
“New ‘molecular clock’ aids dating of human migration history,” ScienceDaily (22 June 2009).
Red Deer Cave People
Red Deer Cave people image courtesy of Bogdan Petry.
Darren Curnoe et al, “Human remains from the Pleistocene-Holocene transition of Southwest China suggest a complex evolutionary history for East Asians,” PLoS One (14 March 2012).
James Owen, “Cave fossil find: new human species or ‘nothing extraordinary’?,” National Geographic News (14 March 2012).
Ian Sample, “‘Red Deer Cave people’ may be new species of human,” The Guardian (14 March 2012).
Cro-Magnon
Brian Fagan, Cro-Magnon, Bloomsbury Press (2010).
Chip Walter, “Neanderthals: why us and not them?” The Wall Street Journal (25 January 2013).
“Neanderthals – the other white meat,” The Week (5 June 2009).
Continuing Evolution
Dorothy H. Crawford, Deadly Companions, Oxford University Press (2007).
Evgeny Chekalin et al, “Changes in biological pathways during 6,000 years of civilization in Europe,” Molecular Biology and Evolution (30 October 2018).
Michael Marshall, “Modern lifestyles shaped our evolution only a few thousand years ago,” New Scientist (14 November 2018).
Hakhamanesh Mostafavi et al, “Identifying genetic variants that affect viability in large cohorts,” PLoS Biology (5 September 2017).
Bruno Martin, “Massive genetic study shows how humans are evolving,” Nature (6 September 2017).
“Humans still evolving, large-scale study of genetic data shows,” ScienceDaily (5 September 2017).
Wenqing Fu et al, “Analysis of 6,515 exomes reveals the recent origin of most human protein-coding variants,” Nature 493: 216–220 (10 January 2013).
L.C. Alello, “Allometry and the analysis of size and shape in human evolution,” Journal of Human Evolution 22: 127–147 (1992).
R.J. Smith, “Biology and body size in human evolution,” Current Anthropology 37: 451–481 (1996).
“How are we different and what gave us the advantage over extinct types of humans like the Neanderthals?,” ScienceDaily (22 April 2014).
Colin Barras ,”Why we get autism but our Neanderthal cousins didn’t,” Science News (17 April 2014).
D. Gokhman et al, “Reconstructing the DNA Methylation Maps of the Neandertal and the Denisovan,” Science (17 April 2014).
C.B. Ruff, “Morpholgoical adaptation to climate in modern and fossil hominoids,” Physical Anthropology Yearbook 231: 11–223 (1994).
Hannah Devlin, “Study shows humans are evolving faster than previously thought,” The Guardian (25 March 2015).
Agnar Helgason et al, “The Y-chromosome point mutation rate in humans,” Nature (25 March 2015).
John Hawks, “Still evolving (after all these years),” Scientific American 311(3): 86–91 (September 2014).
Jonathan K. Pritchard, “How we are evolving,” Scientific American 303(4): 41–47 (October 2010).
Sandra Wilde et al, “Direct evidence for positive selection of skin, hair, and eye pigmentation in Europeans during the last 5,000 years,” PNAS (10 March 2014).
“Anthropology: not what they were,” The Economist (14 May 2016).
Yair Field et al, “Detection of human adaptation during the past 2,000 years,” bioRxiv (7 May 2016).
Human Speciation
Ewen Callaway, “How to build a Neanderthal,” Nature (17 April 2014).
David Gokhman et al, “Reconstructing the DNA methylation maps of the Neandertal and the Denisovan,” Science (17 April 2014).
Tábita Hünemeier et al, “Cultural diversification promotes rapid phenotypic evolution in Xavánte Indians,” PNAS (19 December 2011).
Laurent Abi-Rached et al, “The shaping of modern human immune systems by multiregional admixture with archaic humans,” Science 334 (6052): 69–74 (7 October 2011).
“People choose to marry individuals with genetic similarities,” Nature World News (20 May 2014).
“People more likely to choose a spouse with similar DNA, finds CU-Boulder study,” University of Colorado, Boulder (19 May 2014).
Rich Morin, “New academic study links rising income inequality to ‘assortative mating’,” Pew Research Center (29 January 2014).
Annie Murphy Paul, “The real marriage penalty,” The New York Times (19 November 2006).
Bjorn Carey, “The rules of attraction in the game of love,” LiveScience (13 February 2006).
Michael F. Hammer et al, “Genetic evidence for archaic admixture in Africa,” PNAS 108(37): 15123–15128 (13 September 2011).
Randy Thornhill & Craig T. Palmer, A Natural History of Rape, MIT Press (2000).
Yana Bromberg et al, “Neutral and weakly nonneutral sequence variants may define individuality,” PNAS 110(35): 14255-14260 (27 August 2013).
Dawn A. Thompson et al, “Evolutionary principles of modular gene regulation in yeast,” eLife (18 June 2013).
Propelling Human Evolution
Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides & John Tooby, The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and The Generation of Culture, Oxford University Press (1992).
Peter B. deMenocal, “Climate shocks,” Scientific American 311(3): 48–53 (September 2014).
Jacob Brownoski, The Ascent of Man, BBC Books (1973).
Timokratis Karamitros et al, “Human Endogenous Retrovirus-K HML-2 integration within RASGRF2 is associated with intravenous drug abuse and modulates transcription in a cell-line model,” PNAS (24 September 2018).
“An ancient virus may promote addiction in modern people,” The Economist (2 October 2018).
Aaron Sell, Leda Cosmides, John Tooby, “The human anger face evolved to enhance cues of strength,” Evolution & Human Behavior 35(5): 425–429 (September 2014).
“Researchers explain the ‘anger face’,” Nature World News (30 August 2014).
“The universal ‘anger face’: each element makes you look physically stronger and more formidable,” ScienceDaily (28 August 2014).
Peter Cook & Margaret Wilson, “Do young chimpanzees have extraordinary working memory?,” Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 17(4): 599–600 (August 2010).
Rowan Hooper, “Chimps outperform humans at memory task,” New Scientist (3 December 2007).
Dorothy Munkenbeck Fragaszy et al, “‘Vision for action’ in young children aligning multi-featured objects: development and comparison with nonhuman primates,” PLoS One (6 October 2015).
“New clues about how humans become tool users,” ScienceDaily (8 October 2015).
Simon E. Fisher & Matt Ridley, “Culture, genes, and the human revolution,” Science 340(6135): 929-930 (24 May 2013).
Brains & Brawn
Elizabeth Pennisi, “Bad news for big brains,” Science Now (10 July 2012).
Carl Zimmer, “Stronger brains, weaker bodies,” The New York Times (27 May 2014).
Dennis M. Bramble & Daniel E. Lieberman, “Endurance running and the evolution of Homo,” Nature 432: 345–352 (18 November 2004).
Sang-Hee Lee & Milford H. Wolpoff, “The pattern of evolution in Pleistocene human brain size,” Paleobiology 29(2): 186–196 (2003).
Katarzyna Bozek et al, “Exceptional evolutionary divergence of human muscle and brain metabolomes parallels human cognitive and physical uniqueness,” PLoS Biology (27 May 2014).
Robert A. Barton & Chris Venditti, “Human frontal lobes are not relatively large,” PNAS (13 May 2013).
Genevieve Konopka et al, “Human-specific transcriptional networks in the brain,” Neuron 75(4): p601–617 (23 August 2012 ).
Ana Navarrete et al, “Energetics and the evolution of human brain size,” Nature 480: 91–94 (1 December 2011).
“More sophisticated wiring, not just bigger brain, helped humans evolve beyond chimps, geneticists find,” ScienceDaily (22 August 2012).
Language
Ipek G. Kulahci et al, “Lemurs groom-at-a-distance through vocal network,” Animal Behaviour 110: 179-186 (December 2015).
“Chitchat and small talk could serve an evolutionary need to bond with others,” Phys.org (14 December 2015).
David Maximiliano Gómez et al, “Language universals at birth,” PNAS (31 March 2014).
Bob Holmes, “Born to chat: humans may have innate language instinct,” New Scientist (31 March 2014).
Ewen Callaway, “Steppe migration rekindles debate on language origin,” Nature (18 February 2015).
Jennifer Culbertson & David Adgerb, “Language learners privilege structured meaning over surface frequency,” PNAS (31 March 2014).
Robin I.M. Dunbar, Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language, Reed Business Information (1997).
Hiroki Koda et al, “Soprano singing in gibbons,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology (July 2012).
“Babel or babble?,” The Economist (14 April 2011).
“Hard tone: the evolution of language,” The Economist (3 September 2010).
Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language, Harper (2007).
Guy Dsutscher, The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind’s Greatest Invention, Holt (2006).
Adam Tierney & Nina Kraus, “The ability to move to a beat is linked to the consistency of neural responses to sound,” Journal of Neuroscience 33(38): 14981–14988 (18 September 2013).
“Decoding the secrets of dolphins’ language,” BBC (13 June 2013).
Bruce Dorminey, “Researchers closer to decoding dolphin speak,” Forbes (18 October 2012).
Johan J. Bolhuis et al, “How could language have evolved?,” PNAS (26 August 2014).
Stephen Levinson, “Language and Wallace’s problem,” Science 344(6191): 1458–1459 (27 June 2014).
Derek Bickerton, More Than Nature Needs, Harvard University Press (2014).
Shigeru Miyagawa et al, “The integration hypothesis of human language evolution and the nature of contemporary languages,” Frontiers in Psychology (9 June 2014).
Asif A. Ghazanfar, “Language evolution: neural differences that make a difference,” Nature Neuroscience 11: 382–384 (2008).
James K. Rilling et al, “The evolution of the arcuate fasciculus revealed with comparative DTI,” Nature Neuroscience (23 March 2008).
Mo Costandi, “Brain connectivity predicts reading skills,” Nature (8 October 2012).
D. Kimbrough Oller et al, “Functional flexibility of infant vocalization and the emergence of language,” PNAS (2 April 2013).
Natalie Thaïs Uomini & Georg Friedrich Meyer, “Shared brain lateralization patterns in language and acheulean stone tool produc-tion: a functional transcranial doppler ultrasound study,” PLoS One 8(8): e72693 (August 2013).
Patricia M. Greenfield, “Language, tools and brain: the ontogeny and phylogeny of hierarchically organized sequential behavior,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 14(4): 531–551 (December 1991).
Nicholas Bakalar, “A village invents a language all its own,” The New York Times (14 July 2013).
Alice Roberts, “Roar of the rutting stag: why men have deep voices,” The Observer (5 October 2013).
Caleb Everett et al, “Climate, vocal folds, and tonal languages: connecting the physiological and geographic dots, PNAS (20 January 2015).
Paul Ibbotson & Michael Tomasello, “Language in a new key,” Scientific American (November 2016).
Hal Hodson, “Talking gibbonish: deciphering the banter of the apes,” New Scientist (7 January 2015).
Dave Armstrong, “Gibbon-speak is real language,” Earth Times (11 January 2015).
Esther Clarke et al, “Context-specific close-range “hoo” calls in wild gibbons (Hylobates lar),” BMC Evolutionary Biology (8 April 2015).
Dina Lipkind et al, “Stepwise acquisition of vocal combinatorial capacity in songbirds and human infants,” Nature (4 June 2013).
Tilda
Jon Hamilton, “From the mouths of apes, babble hints at origins of human speech,” NPR (14 January 2015).
Adriano R. Lameira et al, “Speech-like rhythm in a voiced and voiceless orangutan call,” PLoS One (8 January 2015).
Monogamy
Ian Sample, “The mystery of monogamy: scientists claim to have an answer,” The Guardian (29 July 2013).
D. Lukas & T.H. Clutton-Brock “The evolution of social monogamy in mammals,” Science 341: 526–530 (2 August 2013).
“New research shows social monogamy evolved as result of competition,” Phys.org (29 July 2013).
Christopher Opie et al, “Male infanticide leads to social monogamy in primates,” PNAS (29 July 2013).
Mairi Macleod, “Monogamy evolved to keep baby-killers away,” New Scientist (30 July 2013).
Jennifer S. Mascaroa et al, “Testicular volume is inversely correlated with nurturing-related brain activity in human fathers,” PNAS 110(39): 15746–15751 (24 September 2013).
Ian Sample, “Testicle size may indicate men’s childcare aptitude, suggests US study,” The Guardian (9 September 2013).
Carl Zimmer, “Monogamy’s boost for human evolution,” The New York Times (2 August 2013).
Ben C. Sheldon & Marc Mangel, “Love thy neighbour,” Nature 512: 381–382 (28 August 2014).
Sigrunn Eliassen & Christian Jørgensen, “Extra-pair mating and evolution of cooperative neighbourhoods,” PLoS One 9(7): e99878 (July 2014).
“Pack power,” The Economist (30 May 2015).
E.S. Almberg et al, “Social living mitigates the costs of a chronic illness in a cooperative carnivore,”Ecology Letters (18 May 2015).
Social Cunning
Clémentine Vignal et al, “Audience drives male songbird response to partner’s voice,” Nature 430: 448–451 (22 July 2004).
Richard W. Byrne & Andrew Whiten, Machiavellian Intelligence, Clarendon Press (1998).
R.I. Dunbar, “The social brain hypothesis and its implications for social evolution,” Annals of Human Biology 5: 562–572 (September – October 2009).
Sergey Gavrilets & Aaron Vose, “The dynamics of Machiavellian intelligence,” PNAS 103(45): 16823–16828 (7 November 2006).
Robin I.M. Dunbar, “The social brain hypothesis,” Evolutionary Anthropology (1998).
R. Dunbar, Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates, Journal of Human Evolution 20: 469–493 (1992).
Christopher McCarty et al, “Comparing two methods for estimating network size,” Human Organization 60(1): 28–39 (Spring 2001).
Cooperation
Lawrence H. Keeley, War Before Civilization: the Myth of the Peaceful Savage Oxford University Press (1996).
Richard Wrangham, “How humans evolved to be both shockingly violent and super-cooperative,” New Scientist (13 February 2019).
Nicholas Wade, “Sign of advancing society? An organized war effort,” The New York Times (1 August 2011).
“Male–male bonds as a key to the evolution of complex social systems,” ScienceDaily (10 September 2014).
Christopher Boehm, “Ancetral hierarchy and conflict,” Science 336:844-847 (18 May 2012).
M. Dyble et al, “New study provides insight into social structure of modern hunter-gatherer tribes,” Science 348(6236): 796-798 (15 May 2015).
“New study provides insight into social structure of modern hunter-gatherer tribes,” Sci-News.com (15 May 2015).
Ann Gibbons, “How we tamed ourselves – and became modern,” Science 346(6208): 405–406 (24 October 2014).
“The roots of human altruism,” University of Zurich (27 August 2014).
J. M. Burkart et al, “The evolutionary origin of human hyper-cooperation,” Nature Communications (27 August 2014).
Rui Diogo et al, “Bonobo anatomy reveals stasis and mosaicism in chimpanzee evolution, and supports bonobos as the most appropriate extant model for the common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans,” Scientific Reports (4 April 2017).
“Study finds bonobos may be better representation of the last common ancestor with humans than common chimpanzees,” Phys.org (29 April 2017).
Michael Balter, “Human altruism traces back to the origins of humanity,” Science (27 August 2014).
Michael Balter, “Why we’re different: probing the gap between apes and humans,” Science 319(5862): 404–405 (25 January 2008).
Annika Patzelt et al, “Male tolerance and male-male bonds in a multilevel primate society,” PNAS (8 September 2014).
“Society bloomed with gentler personalities, more feminine faces: technology boom 50,000 years ago correlated with less testosterone,” ScienceDaily (1 August 2014).
Robert L. Cieri et al, “Craniofacial feminization, social tolerance, and the origins of behavioral modernity,” Current Anthropology 55(4) (Au-gust 2014).
Sergey Gavrilets, “Collective action and the collaborative brain,” Interface (26 November 2014).
Bruce Bower, “Massacre hints at early origin of war,” Science News (20 February 2016).
Douglas P. Fry & Patrik Söderberg, “Lethal aggression in mobile forager bands and implications for the origins of war,” Science 341: 270-272 (19 July 2013).
“Primitive human society ‘not driven by war’,” BBC News (18 July 2013).
David P. Barash, “Are we hard-wired for war?,” The New York Times (28 September 2013).
Ernst Fehr & Simon Gachter, “Altruistic punishment in humans,” Nature 415: 137-140 (10 January 2002).
David G. Rand et al, “Positive interactions promote public cooperation,” Science 325: 1272-1275 (4 September 2009).
Elizabeth Pennisi et al, “On the origin of cooperation,” Science 325: 1196-1199 (4 September 2009).
Social Structure
Kim R. Hill et al, “Co-residence patterns in hunter-gatherer societies show unique human social structure,” Science 331(6022): 1286–1289 (11 March 2011).
Bernard Chapais, “The deep social structure of humankind,” Science 331(6022): 1276–1277 (11 March 2011).
Cultural Diversity
Dan Jones, “The ritual animal,” Nature 493: 470–472 (24 January 2013).
Robert S. Walker & Drew H. Bailey, “Body counts in lowland South American violence,” Evolution & Human Behavior 34(1): 29–34 (January 2013).
Samuel Bowles, “Did warfare among ancestral hunter-gatherers affect the evolution of human social behaviors?,” Science 324: 1293–1298 (5 June 2009).
Bruce Hood, The Domesticated Brain, Pelican Books (2014).
Technology
“World’s oldest butchering tools gave evolutionary edge to human communication: Oldowan technology behind genesis of language and teaching,” ScienceDaily (13 January 2015).
T.H.J. Morgan et al, “Experimental evidence for the co-evolution of hominin tool-making teaching and language,” Nature Communications (13 January 2015).
Technology
Maxime Derex et al, “Experimental evidence for the influence of group size on cultural complexity,” Nature 503: 389–391 (21 November 2013).
Peter Richerson, “Group size determines cultural complexity,” Nature 503: 351-352 (21 November 2013).
Joseph Henrich et al, “Understanding cumulative cultural evolution,” PNAS 113(44): E6724-E6725 (1 November 2016).
Colin Barras, “Complex stone tools in China may re-write our species’ ancient history,” New Scientist (19 November 2018).
Yue Hu et al, “Late Middle Pleistocene Levallois stone-tool technology in southwest China,” Nature (19 November 2018).
Synopsis
Mark Pagel, Wired for Culture, W.W. Norton & Company (2012).
Early Human History
Colin Renfrew, Prehistory, The Modern Library (2007).
Bruce G. Trigger, Understanding Early Civilizations, Cambridge University Press (2007).
Jean Guilaine (editor), Prehistory: The World of Early Man, Facts on File (1986).
James C. Scott, Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States, Yale University Press (2017).
Ian Morris et al, Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels: How Human Values Evolve, Princeton University Press (2015).
“Hunter-gatherers: noble or savage?,” The Economist (19 December 2007).
Expression
Gustavo Arriaga et al, “Of mice, birds, and men: the mouse ultrasonic song system has some features similar to humans and song-learning birds,” PLoS One (10 October 2012).
Grover S. Krantz, “Laryngeal descent in 40,000 year old fossils,” in The Genesis of Language (edited by M.E. Langsberg), 173–180, Mouton de Gruyter (1988).
Art
“The earliest known drawing in history sends a message through 73,000 years,” Nature (12 September 2018).
Tome Froese et al, “Turing instabilities in biology, culture and consciousness? On the enactive origins of symbolic material culture,” Adaptive Behavior 21(3): 199–214 (2013).
Jennifer Ouellette, “When math meets nature: Turing patterns and form constants,” Scientific American (27 March 2013).
Jennifer Ouellette, “Biologists home in on Turing patterns,” Quanta Magazine (25 March 2013).
Cave Paintings
M. Aubert et al, “Palaeolithic cave art in Borneo,” Nature (7 December 2018).
M. Aubert et al, “Pleistocene cave art from Sulawesi, Indonesia,” Nature (8 October 2014).
Robert G. Benarik, “The earliest known palaeoart,” International Federation of Rock Art Organisations (2003).
Randall White, Prehistoric Art, Harry N. Abrams, Inc. (2003).
Carl Zimmer, “In cave in Borneo jungle, scientists find oldest figurative painting in the world,” The New York Times (7 November 2018).
Geoglyphs
Nazca Lines monkey photo courtesy of Maria Reiche.
Paracas Candelabra photo courtesy of Alex Zanuccoli.
Christopher S. Henshilwood et al, “An abstract drawing from the 73,000-year-old levels at Blombos Cave, South Africa,” Nature 562: 115–118 (2018).
Owen Jarus, “Russian geoglyph: elk-shaped design found in Ural Mountains, may predate Peru’s ‘Nazca Lines’,” HuffPost (12 October 2012).
Owen Jarus, “Mysterious symbols in Kazakhstan: how old are they, really?,” Live Science (5 November 2015).
Eliza Sankar-Gorton, “These mysterious ancient geoglyphs can be seen from space,” HuffPost (3 November 2015).
Jason Golomb, “Nazca Lines,” National Geographic (undated).
Bryan Nelson, “10 mysterious geoglyphs around the globe,” Mother Nature Network (5 March 2014).
Jennifer Nalewicki, “Where to see five of the planet’s most mysterious geoglyphs,” Smithsonian (20 April 2017).
April Holloway, “Ten amazing and mysterious geoglyphs from the ancient world,” Ancient Origins (12 December 2014).
Musical Instruments
Thomas Higham et al, “Testing models for the beginnings of the Aurignacian and the advent of figurative art and music: the radiocarbon chronology of Geißenklösterle,” Journal of Human Evolution 62(6): 664–676 (June 2012).
B.S. Akshaya, “Earliest musical instrument discovered,”International Business Times (26 May 2012).
Writing
“Chinese writing ‘8,000 years old’,” BBC News (18 May 2007).
Clare Pain, “We recognise words like we do faces,” ABC Science (25 March 2015).
“After learning new words, brain sees them as pictures.” ScienceDaily (24 March 2015).
Ashley Yeager, “The brain sees words, even nonsense ones, as pictures,” Science News (24 March 2015).
L.S. Glezer et al, “Evidence for highly selective neuronal tuning to whole words in the ‘visual word form area’,” Neuron 62(2):199–204 (30 April 2009).
Stone Age
David R. Braun et al, “Earliest known Oldowan artifacts at >2.58 Ma from Ledi-Geraru, Ethiopia, highlight early technological diversity,” PNAS (3 June 2019).
“Oldest flaked stone tools point to the repeated invention of stone tools,” Phys.org (3 June 2019).
Bruce Bower, “Hominids may have been cutting-edge tool makers 2.6 million years ago,” Science News (3 June 2019).
“Laziness led to extinction of Homo erectus,” Phys.org (10 August 2018).
Ceri Shipton et al, “Acheulean technology and landscape use at Dawadmi, central Arabia,” PLoS One (27 July 2018).
Ann Gibbons, “Complex behavior arose at dawn of humans,” Science 359(6381): 1200-1201 (16 March 2018).
Erin Biba, “Africa’s great divide,” Scientific American 311(2): 17–18 (August 2014).
Ludovic Slimak et al, “Late Mousterian persistence near the Arctic Circle,” Science 332 (6031): 841–845 (13 May 2011).
Kyle S. Brown et al, “An early and enduring advanced technology originating 71,000 years ago in South Africa,” Nature (7 November 2012).
Sally McBrearty, “Sharpening the mind,” Nature (7 November 2012).
Ian Sample, “Lethal weapons may have given early humans edge over Neanderthal,” The Guardian (7 November 2012).
Settlement
Richard W. Yerkes et al, “Form and function of early Neolithic bifacial stone tools reflects changes in land use practices during the Neolithization process in the Levant,” PLoS One (8 August 2012).
Helmut Ziegert, “A new dawn for humanity: Lower Paleolithic village life in Libya and Ethiopia,” Minerva 18(4): 8–9 (July/August 2007).
Bruce Bower, “Shelters date to Stone Age,” Science News (22 February 2012).
Lisa A. Maher et al, “Twenty thousand-year-old huts at a hunter-gatherer settlement in eastern Jordan,” PLoS One (15 February 2012).
William James Burroughs, Climate Change in Prehistory, Cambridge University Press (2008).
Patricia Phillips, The Prehistory of Europe, Indiana University Press (1980).
Xiaohong We et al, “Early pottery at 20,000 years ago in Xianrendong Cave, China,” Science 336: 1696–1700 (29 June 2012).
Gideon Shelach, “On the invention of pottery,” Science 336: 1644–1645 (29 June 2012).
“Woven cloth dates back 27,000 years,” BBC News (14 June, 2000).
Jean Guilaine, editor, Prehistory: The World of Early Man, Facts on File (1991).
Religion
Harvey Whitehouse et al, “Complex societies precede moralizing gods throughout world history,” Nature 568: 226-229 (10 April 2019).
“Should we thank god for civilsation?,” New Scientist (26 March 2015).
Esther Addley, “Mega lift? Stonehenge pillars were carried 230km over land – research,” The Guardian (19 February 2019).
Ian Sample, “Stonehenge was based on a ‘magical’ auditory illusion, says scientist,” The Guardian (16 February 2012).
Fred Pearce, “Jungle festivals led to first Maya cities,” New Scientist (23 March 2015).
Nicholas Epley & Adam Waytz, “Mind perception,” in Handbook of Social Psychology, Volume 1, 5th edition, John Wiley & Sons (2010).
Benjamin Grant Purzycki et al, “Moralistic gods, supernatural punishment and the expansion of human sociality,” Nature 530: 327-330 (18 February 2016).
Dominic D.P. Johnson, “Hand of the gods in human civilization,” Nature 530: 285-286 (18 February 2016).
Agriculture
James C. Scott, Against the Grain, Yale University Press (2017).
Suzanne Shablovsky, “The perils of permanence,” Science 357(6350): 459 (4 August 2017).
Jared E. Decker et al, “Worldwide patterns of ancestry, divergence, and admixture in domesticated cattle,” PLoS Genetics (27 March 2014).
Ainit Snir et al, “The origin of cultivation and proto-weeds, long before Neolithic farming,” PLoS One (22 July 2015).
“First evidence of farming in Mideast 23,000 years ago,” ScienceDaily (22 July 2015).
Robert J. Wenke & Deborah I. Olszewski, Patterns in Prehistory, Oxford University Press (2007).
Jessica E. Tierney & Peter B. deMenocal, “Abrupt shifts in horn of Africa hydroclimate since the Last Glacial Maximum,” Science 342(6160): 843–846 (15 November 2013).
Edouard Bard, “Out of the African humid period,” Science 342(6160): 843–846 (15 November 2013).
Gordon Conway, One Billion Hungry, Cornell University Press (2012).
Robin G. Allaby et al, “Geographic mosaics and changing rates of cereal domestication,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (October 2017).
“Crops evolving ten millennia before experts thought,” ScienceDaily (23 October 2017).
Evelyn Kim, “The amazing multimillion-year history of processed food,” Scientific American 309(3): 50–55 (September 2013).
Amy McDermott, “Farming spread from two groups,” Science News (6 August 2016).
Sara Reardon, “Ancient climate change picked the crops we eat today,” New Scientist (15 August 2013).
Ian Kuijta & Bill Finlayson, “Evidence for food storage and pre-domestication granaries 11,000 years ago in the Jordan Valley,” PNAS 106(26): 10966–10970 (7 July 2009).
Richard W. Yerkes et al, “Form and function of early Neolithic bifacial stone tools reflects changes in land use practices during the Neolithization process in the Levant,” PLoS One (8 August 2012).
Ainit Snir et al, “The origin of cultivation and proto-weeds, long before Neolithic farming,” PLoS One (22 July 2015).
Colin Barras, “The first human farmers continued to forage a wide diet from nature,” New Scientist (27 November 2018).
Sindya N. Bhanoo, “Farming had an earlier start, a study says,” The New York Times (27 July 2015).
Mark Lipson et al, “Parallel palaeogenomic transects reveal complex genetic history of early European farmers,” Nature (8 November 2017).
“Neolithic farmers coexisted with hunter-gatherers for centuries in Europe,” ScienceDaily (09 November 2017).
“Neolithic man: the first lumberjack?,” ScienceDaily (9 August 2012).
Ruth Bollongino et al, “2000 years of parallel societies in Stone Age central Europe,” Science 342: 479–481 (25 October 2013).
Catherin Brahic, “Stone Age DNA shows hunter-gatherers shunned farming,” New Scientist (24 April 2014).
Alison George, “Stuff: humans as hunters and mega-gatherers,” New Scientist (30 March 2014).
Soil & Human Fertility
“Noble or savage?,” The Economist (19 December 2007).
Stephen Shennan et al, “Regional population collapse followed initial agriculture booms in mid-Holocene Europe,” Nature Communications (1 October 2013).
Bruce Bower, “Ancient farming populations went boom, then bust,” Science News (1 October 2013).
Mary C. Sholes & Robert J. Scholes, “Dust unto dust,” Science 342: 565–566 (1 November 2013).
“Civilizations rise and fall on the quality of their soils,” ScienceDaily (4 November 2013).
Amy Bogaard et al, “Crop manuring and intensive land management by Europe’s first farmers,” PNAS (16 July 2013).
Steven Le Blanc & Katherine E. Register, Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage, Macmillan (2013).
Lydie Dupont, “The human factor,” Science 335: 1180–1181 (9 March 2012).
Jeff Tollefson, “Footprints in the forest,” Nature 502: 160–162 (10 October 2013).
Boris V. Schmid et al, “Climate-driven introduction of the Black Death and successive plague reintroductions into Europe,” PNAS (23 February 2015).
The great gerbil (Rhombomys opimus), endemic to arid habitats in central Asia, portered the Black Death bacterium.
Tina Hesman Saey, “Written in bone,” Science News (2 May 2014).
Eva Emerson, “Prying tales from ancient DNA and a far-away moon,” Science News (17 May 2014).
Michael Balter, “European hunter-gatherers dined on domestic pigs,” Science 341: 950 (30 August 2013).
Ben Krause-Kyora et al, “Use of domesticated pigs by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers in northwestern Europe,” Nature Communications (27 August 2013).
Simone Riehl et al, “Emergence of agriculture in the foothills of the Zagros mountains of Iran,” Science 341: 65–67 (5 July 2013).
Michael J. Montague et al, “Comparative analysis of the domestic cat genome reveals genetic signatures underlying feline biology and domestication,” PNAS (14 November 2014).
David Grimm, “The genes that turned wildcats into kitty cats,” Science 346(6211): 799 (14 November 2014).
Jeanmaire Molina et al, “Molecular evidence for a single evolutionary origin of domesticated rice,” PNAS 108(20): 8351–8356 (17 May 2011).
Colin Barras, “Farming has deep roots in Chinese ice age,” New Scientist (18 March 2013).
Hucai Zhang et al, “Morphological and genetic evidence for early Holocene cattle management in northeastern China,” Nature Communications (8 November 2013).
Mary C. Stiner et al, “A forager–herder trade-off, from broad-spectrum hunting to sheep management at Asikli Höyük, Turkey,” PNAS (28 April 2014).
Andrew Lawler, “Uncovering civilization’s roots,” Science 335 (6070): 790–793 (17 February 2012).
Animal Domestication
Tina Hesman Saey, “The road to tameness,” New Scientist (8 July 2017).
Monamie Ringhofer & Shinya Yamamoto, “Domestic horses send signals to humans when they face with an unsolvable task,” Animal Cognition (24 November 2016).
“When horses are in trouble they ask humans for help,” ScienceDaily (15 December 2016).
Erika Engelhaupt, “Keeping silkworms secret,” New Scientist (8 July 2017).
The Descent of Dogs
Golden retriever drawing courtesy of Kendra Goering.
Laurent A.F. Frantz et al, “Genomic and archaeological evidence suggests a dual origin of domestic dogs,” Science 352(6290): 1228-1231 (2 June 2016).
David Grimm, “Dogs may have been domesticated more than once,” Science 352(6290): 1153-1154 (2 June 2016).
Tina Hesman Saey, “Ancient DNA tells of two origins for dogs,” Science News (2 June 2016).
Bruce Bower, “Dogs may have helped ancient Middle Easterners hunt small game,” Science News (25 January 2019).
Adam H. Freedman et al, “Genome sequencing highlights the dynamic early history of dogs,” PLoS Genetics (16 January 2014).
James Gorman, “The big search to find out where dogs come from,” The New York Times (18 January 2016).
“New twist in tale of dogs’ origins,” ScienceDaily (16 December 2015).
Pontus Skoglund et al, “Ancient wolf genome reveals an early divergence of domestic dog ancestors and admixture into high-latitude breeds,” Current Biology 25(11): 1515–1519 (1 June 2015).
Rachel Dale et al, “Wolves, but not dogs, are prosocial in a touch screen task,” PLoS One (1 May 2019).
“Wolves cooperate with humans,” Phys.org (15 March 2019).
Sarah Marshall-Pescini et al, “A task-experienced partner does not help dogs be as successful as wolves in a cooperative string-pulling task,” Scientific Report (30 October 2018).
Tina Hesman Saey, “Ancient DNA pushes back timing of the origin of dogs,” Science News (21 May 2015).
Micheael Slezak, “Ancient DNA suggests dogs split from wolves 40,000 years ago,” New Scientist (21 May 2015).
Helen Thompson, “Ancient wolf skulls challenge dog domestication timeline,” Science News (5 February 2015).
Mark Derr, “From the cave to the kennel,” The Wall Street Journal (29 October 2011).
David Grimm, “Dawn of the dog,” Science 348(6322): 274–279 (17 April 2015).
David Grimm, “How the wolf became the dog,” Science 348(6322): 277 (17 April 2015).
Sudeshna Chowdhury, “Did dogs really evolve from wolves? New evidence suggests otherwise,” The Christian Science Monitor (17 January 2014).
Laura M. Shannon et al, “Genetic structure in village dogs reveals a Central Asian domestication origin,” PNAS (19 October 2015).
“First domestication of dogs took place in Asia, not Europe,” New Scientist (19 October 2015).
Tina Hesman Saey, “Dogs’ origins lie in Europe,” Science News (14 November 2014).
Ewen Callaway, “Prehistoric genomes reveal European origins of dogs,” Nature News (14 November 2013).
O. Thalmann et al, “Complete mitochondrial genomes of ancient canids suggest a European origin of domestic dogs,” Science 342: 871-874 (15 November 2013).
Elizabeth Pennisi, “Old dogs teach a new lesson about canine origins,” Science 342: 785-786 (15 November 2013).
Greger Larson et al, “Rethinking dog domestication by integrating genetics, archeology, and biogeography,” PNAS 109(23): 8878–8883 (5 June 2012).
Nicholas Wade, “New finding puts origins of dogs in Middle East,” The New York Times (17 March 2010).
Erik Axelsson et al, “The genomic signature of dog domestication reveals adaptation to a starch-rich diet,” Nature 495: 360–365 (21 March 2013).
Ewen Callaway, “Dog’s dinner was key to domestication,” Nature News (23 January 2013).
“Have we turned dogs into lazy thinkers through domestication,” New Scientist (16 September 2015).
Monique A.R. Udell, “When dogs look back: inhibition of independent problem-solving behaviour in domestic dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) compared with wolves (Canis lupus),” Biology Letters (16 September 2015).
Simona Cafazzo et al, “The effect of domestication on post-conflict management: wolves reconcile while dogs avoid each other,” Royal Society Open Science (4 July 2018).
Bob Yirka, “Study suggests dogs have lost ability to reconcile after violent conflicts,” Phys.org (4 July 2018).
Carl Zimmer, “From fearsome predator to man’s best friend,” The New York Times (16 May 2013).
Guo-dong Wang et al, “The genomics of selection in dogs and the parallel evolution between dogs and humans,” Nature Communications (14 May 2013).
Friederike Range & Zsófia Virányi, “Social learning from humans or conspecifics: differences and similarities between wolves and dogs,” Frontiers in Psychology (December 2013).
Nicholas Wade, “In taming dogs, humans may have sought a meal,” The New York Times (8 September 2009).
Sanni Somppi et al, “Dogs evaluate threatening facial expressions by their biological validity – evidence from gazing patterns,” PLoS One (13 January 2016).
Jan Hoffman, “The look of love is in the dog’s eyes,” The New York Times (16 April 2015).
Miho Nagasawa et al, “Oxytocin-gaze positive loop and the coevolution of human-dog bond,” Science 348(6232): 333–334 (17 April 2015).
Evan L. MacLean & Brian Hare, “Dogs hijack the human bonding pathway,” Science 348(6232): 280–281 (17 April 2015).
Cultural Crops
T. Talhelm et al, “Large-scale psychological differences within China explained by rice versus wheat agriculture,” Science 344(6184): 603–608 (9 May 2014).
Joseph Henrich, “Rice, psychology, and innovation,” Science 344(6184): 593–594 (9 May 2014).
“The story of yeast: domesticated tipple,” The Economist (10 September 2016).
Erika Szymanski, “Has yeast domesticated us?,” Palate Press (10 March 2013).
Bridgida Gallone et al, “Domestication and divergence of Saccharomyces cerevisiae beer yeasts,” Cell 166(6): 1397-1410 (8 September 2016).
Delphine Sicard & Jean-Luc Legras, “Bread, beer and wine: yeast domestication in the Saccharomyces sensu stricto complex,” Comptes Rendus Biologies 334(3): 229-236 (March 2011).
Early Civilizations
Brian M. Fagan, World Prehistory, Pearson Education (2008).
Colin Renfrew, Prehistory, Modern Library (2007).
Peter Turchin et al, “War, space, and the evolution of Old World complex societies,” PNAS (23 September 2013).
Sumer
John Perlin, A Forest Journey, The Countryman Press (2005).
Ben Collyer, “The real roots of early city states may rip up the textbooks,” New Scientist (4 October 2017).
Materialism
Elizabeth Pennisi, “Our egalitarian Eden,” Science 344(6186): 824 (23 May 2014).
R. Alexander Bentley et al, “Community differentiation and kinship among Europe’s first farmers,” PNAS 109(24): 9326–9330 (12 June 2012).
“Inequality dates back to Stone Age: earliest evidence yet of differential access to land,” ScienceDaily (28 May 2012).
Heather Pringle, “The ancient roots of the 1%,” Science 344(6186): 822 –825 (23 May 2014).
Timeline
Religion
Barbara Tedlock, The Woman in the Shaman’s Body: Reclaiming the Feminine in Religion and Medicine, Random House (2005).
Minoan Civilization
Jeffery R. Hughey et al, “A European population in Minoan Bronze Age Crete,” Nature Communications (14 May 2013).
Carl Zimmer, “DNA deciphers roots of modern Europeans,” The New York Times (10 June 2015).
Ancient Egypt
Horus image courtesy of Jeff Dahl.
Pyramids photo courtesy of Ricardo Liberato.
Akhenaten photo courtesy of Gérard Ducher.
Nefertiti photo courtesy of Philip Pikart.
David O’Connor, “Egypt and the Levant in the Bronze Age,” in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Archaeology, Crown Publishers (1980).
Andrew Grant, “Egypt wasn’t built in a day, but it did rise quickly,” Science News (9 September 2013).
José Ortitz, “Akhenaten,” National Geographic History 2(1): 18–26 (March/April 2016).
Michael Dee et al, “An absolute chronology for early Egypt using radiocarbon dating and Bayesian statistical modelling,” Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Science (8 November 2013).
“The real King Tut was sick, crippled, and ugly,” Nature World News (21 October 2014).
Rose Troup Buchanan, “King Tutankhamun did not die in chariot crash, virtual autopsy reveals,” The Independent (20 October 2014).
Bronze Age
Cristina Belmonte, “Çatalhöyük, the first steps to city life,” National Geographic History (March/April 2019).
Yamnayans
Colin Barras, “Story of most murderous people of all time revealed in ancient DNA,” New Scientist (27 March 2019).
Ann Gibbons, “Thousands of horsemen may have swept into Bronze Age Europe, transforming the local population,” Science (21 February 2017).
“Steppe migrant thugs pacified by Stone Age farming women,” Phys.org (4 April 2017). {This is one of the most ridiculous article titles I’ve seen.}
“Fourth strand of European ancestry originated with hunter-gatherers isolated by Ice Age,” Ancient Origins (16 November 2015).
Ewen Callaway, “Steppe migration rekindles debate on language origin,” Nature (23 February 2015).
Rasmus Kragh Jakobsen, “History rewritten: Europeans were “born” in the Bronze Age,” ScienceNordic (14 June 2015).
Martin Hinz et al, “Demography and the intensity of cultural activities: an evaluation of Funnel Beaker Societies (4200–2800 cal BC),” Journal of Archaelogical Science 39(10): 3331-3340 (October 2012).
Richard Harrison & Volker Heyd, “The transformation of Europe in the third millennium BC: the example of ‘Le Petit-Chasseur I + III’ (Sion, Valais, Switzerland),” Praehistorische Zeitschrift (20 December 2007).
Bronze Age Collapse
David Kaniewski et al, “Environmental roots of the Late Bronze Age Crisis,” PLoS One (14 August 2013).
Isabel Kershner, “Pollen study points to drought as culprit in Bronze Age mystery,” The New York Times (22 October 2013).
Iron Age
Thilo Rehren et al, “5,000 years old Egyptian iron beads made from hammered meteoritic iron,” Journal of Archaeological Science (20 August 2013).
Colin Barras, “Ancient Swedish massacre hints at chaos after the fall of Rome,” New Scientist (25 April 2015).
Ancient Rome
Simon Baker, Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire, Random House (2010).
Ian Sample, “Ancient Rome’s tap water heavily contaminated with lead, researchers say,” The Guardian (21 April 2014).
Beavers
Steve Boyle & Stephanie Owens, North American Beaver (Castor canadensis): A Technical Conservation Assessment, USDA Forest Service (6 February 2007).
Black Death
Vanessa Thorpe, “Black death was not spread by rat fleas, say researchers,” The Guardian (29 March 2014).
Eutheria
Zhe-Xi Luo et al, “A Jurassic eutherian mammal and divergence of marsupials and placentals,” Nature 476: 442–445 (25 August 2011).
Grande Coupure
J.J. Hooker et al, “Eocene-Oligocene mammalian faunal turnover in the Hampshire Basin, UK: calibration to the global time scale and the major cooling event,” Journal of the Geological Society 161(2): 161–172 (2004).
Meike Köhler & Salvador Moyà-Solà, “A finding of Oligocene primates on the European continent,” PNAS 96(25): 14664–14667 (December 1999).