Theories and Discovery
Revolutionary ideas and breakthroughs in science that have advanced our knowledge of the universe- Explore more »
Nine Science Stories You Should Have Read This Year
It's also been a good year for science stories in Smithsonian magazine, including our special issue, Exploring the Frontiers of Science. Here are nine you should read if you haven't already:Gene Therapy in a New Light: A husband-and-wife team's experimental genetic treatment for blindness is renewi...
December 30, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Evolution in Two Minutes or Less
Discover magazine has announced the winners of their Evolution in Two Minutes or Less contest. The video above, by Stephen Anderson of Texas, won the viewer's choice. Other videos, including the official winning video and an explanation from judge PZ Meyers, can be found on the contest web site. Wh...
November 11, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
White Coat on a Black Bear
Generally, having white fur is only good if you live in a white environment. The arctic fox, for example, would probably be eaten pretty quickly if it lived in Florida. Likewise, black bears that inherit two copies of a recessive gene for a white coat tend not to live very long, becoming victims of...
November 09, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
The Falklands Wolf: A Darwin Mystery Solved
When Charles Darwin's reached the Falkland Islands on his famed voyage, he discovered there a "large wolf-like fox" found nowhere else in the world. "As far as I am aware," he would later write in The Voyage of the Beagle, "there is no other instance, in any part of the world, of so small a mass of...
November 04, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Evolution in the Deepest River in the World
New species are born in the turbulence of the Congo River
November 03, 2009 |
By Kyle Dickman
The Impossibility of Avoiding Darwin on my Vacation
First of all, many thanks to Greg Laden for filling in for me on the blog for the last couple of weeks while I was away on my much-needed vacation. Where did I go? Mainly to Cambridge, England, but my travels also took me to Cardiff (in Wales), London and Paris.I went to Cambridge to visit some fri...
October 13, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Why You Should Care About Acoelomorph Flatworms
Greg Laden is guest-blogging this week while Sarah is on vacation. You can find his regular blog at Scienceblogs.com and Quiche Moraine.Darwin proposed that all species arose from a single common ancestor, and that this process involved almost uncountable branching events over eons of time. Workin...
October 01, 2009 |
By Greg Laden
Fabulous New Fossil of a Human Ancestor
A 4.4-million-year-old hominin is shaking up our understanding of human evolution this morning. The first bits of the new species, called Ardipithecus ramidus, were discovered in 1994, and now (it took a while), scientists are publishing an exhaustive analysis of the hominin and the habitat in whic...
October 01, 2009 |
By Laura Helmuth
The Origin of the Komodo Dragon
Greg Laden is guest-blogging this week while Sarah is on vacation. You can find his regular blog at Scienceblogs.com and Quiche Moraine.The world's largest living lizard is the Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis), a type of "varanid" lizard. Despite the fact that Komodo dragons are very interestin...
September 30, 2009 |
By Greg Laden
Toad "Fraud" May Have Been Ahead of His Time
Before Charles Darwin, there was Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, the French naturalist who proposed that an organism could pass to its offspring characteristics that it acquired during its lifetime. The classic example is the idea that giraffes got their long necks by gradually stretching them over successi...
September 03, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
The Culture of Being Rude
A new biological theory states that cultural behavior is not just a regional quirk, but a defense against the spread of disease
August 03, 2009 |
By Rob Dunn
Hominids' African Origins, 50 Years Later
The next time a creationist spouts some nonsense about how the lack of a fossil record undermines the theory of evolution, direct them to the hominid family tree. If you haven't read much about human origins lately, it might come as a surprise that so many species have been identified (and more all...
July 23, 2009 |
By Laura Helmuth
Darwin for Dads and More Science Finds in the August Issue
When my daughter was small, I used to take her to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. There, I would explain why the dinosaurs disappeared and how mankind evolved from our primitive forebears. She seemed rapt. But a few weeks ago, after hearing me on the radio discuss a new boo...
July 21, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Catching a Wave, Powering an Electrical Grid?
Electrical engineer Annette von Jouanne is pioneering an ingenious way to generate clean, renewable electricity from the sea
July 2009 |
By Elizabeth Rusch
Two Minutes to Understanding the Theory of Evolution
I was glancing through YouTube yesterday and came across this wonderful video, "The Theory of Evolution in 2 Minutes." (I also realized that YouTube's grouping of science and technology together can be very annoying—the day after the latest Apple conference, everything is about the iPhone.) And if ...
June 11, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Humans Don’t Have the Last, or Only, Laugh
Anyone who has visited a zoo can attest to the human-like qualities of our close relatives. Whether you’re watching chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans or gorillas, it’s the facial expressions and social interactions that most make them appear similar to humans. Now researchers have evidence of anothe...
June 10, 2009 |
By Ashley Luthern
The Hubbub About Ida
It's been a fascinating week here in the world of science communication. By now you've heard of Ida, the beautifully fossilized 47-million-year-old primate that may or (more likely) may not be a human ancestor? It's a gorgeous fossil from an important era of primate evolution, and its presentation ...
May 26, 2009 |
By Laura Helmuth
A Fish Tale
A curator discovers that whalefishes, bignose fishes and tapetails are all really the same kind of fish at different life stages
April 2009 |
By Joseph Caputo
Who Discovered the North Pole?
A century ago, explorer Robert Peary earned fame for discovering the North Pole, but did Frederick Cook get there first?
April 2009 |
By Bruce Henderson
UPDATED: Small Victory for Science -- Previously: Texas Science Education Stands at the Edge of the Abyss
UPDATE: According to a report from the Dallas Morning News, the Texas Board of Education rejected restoring the "strengths and weaknesses" proposal by a 7-7 split vote. A final vote will come on Friday, but the vote is expected to remain deadlocked.My freshman year of high school, when the teacher...
March 26, 2009 |
By Sarah Zielinski
