Evolution, Morphology and Exobiology

Hi there, my name is Simon and Im posting on behalf of an English production company called Touch production who are currently involved in creating a program on evolutions missing links and I was wondering if anyone could be of any help. The idea of the program, as mentioned above, is interesting missing links in the evolution of particularly fascinating species. I have already found lots of information on species such as the megalodon/mako shark to great white debate, the Anchiornis Huxley dino to bird find and the mini tyrannosaur that has changed all the theories on Trex body shape etc. But I was wondering if anyone knows of any more that have recently occurred or…

I was looking thru the wikipedia and then I discovered that the naked mole rat is cold blooded. so lets discuss cold-blood and warm blood. Basically the question is that can I assume that a cold blooded mammal will need less food than a warm-blooded one assuming that they are the same size. and can the cold blooded mammal reach evolutionarily a larger size than a warm blood? And also how about a heterothermic one[in between cold and warm]

While learning about Dabrowski's Theory of Positive Disintegration, I began to wonder how our minds would have developed if evolution took on a totally different course. What if our world evolved differently, more differently than we can imagine? Would our minds have developed in the same manner as they are currently? Or would our brains have a totally different function than what we are used to now? If the development of an intelligent mind is precipitated by experience, it would make sense to say that an individual who has experienced the force of gravity on the moon would have a slightly higher developed mind than the individuals who have remain earthbound for their en…

Does evolution have 'stages'? (I mean outside the human mind) As far as I'm aware there are no sudden limbs on the tree of life...they all start out as sprigs. And it's not as if life reaches a certain point and then decides to takes a breather and stop mutating, right? Seems like there may be times when lots of diversification is allowed by the environment... and then usually (inevitably?) pruned back... but I'm wondering if it's really 'correct' to say there are 'stages'. Thanks.

When did language first evolve? Was it the result of a genetic mutation or did man always have the genetic capacity for language but only develop it fully later on?

Anyone heard of the gooey twelve mile long substance they found on the north coast of alaska? It looks like an oil spill from the air but its more of an algae. The weird thing is the locals that hunt for whales for decades have never seen anything like this nor heard of any centry's old legend or myth about it. I believe it has something to do with global warming. Any ideas?

How is it that an Amoeba has 200 times the DNA of a human ? An onion 12 times as much. A rasberry has 12% of the DNA of a human wich seems logical. It`s a simpler organism and would require less DNA to produce the fewer attributes to be expressed. As far as I know ,no one has come up with a cohesive answer yet. If someone did I did not read of it. The Harvard Gazette is where I got the figures used here. There is speculation out there but no decisive answers. I appears to me amoebas have simply been piling up random DNA that occurred through mutation as long as it did not prove fatal or detrimental to it`s survival over the 2 billion year history of thier existance. No de…

Hello, I had a look at graphs of average human height as a function of time , cf for example http://tpek2005.free.fr/Pages/Taille.htm . It seems that for most populations, height has been increasing almost monotonically for the past 2 centuries. I was wondering : will humans ever reach an optimum "plateau" height ? Or will they just keep growing ? There are lots of factors explaining why we should grow taller (attractiveness, health, etc.) or stop growing (heart has to do more effort to pump the blood etc.) ; more specifically, I am looking for a study of an animal's (any animal) size evolution - this would in my mind provide the best clues to answering thi…

I tried mightily to articulate what I wanted to ask precisely but failed to come with anything intelligible. So, in bullet form, here's the situation archaeologically in early to middle Pleistocene: Mode 1, also called Oldowan, technology originated in Homo habilis, but persisted in H. ergaster, and is the only industry associated with H. erectus (outside Africa), H. georgicus (controversial species some consider H. ergaster), and the 800,000 year old fossils from Atapuerca sometimes called H. antecessor. Mode II, or Acheulean, stone tools (the hand axes are particularly famous) are associated with later H. ergaster and H. heidelbergensis (I'm going to stop with the M…

Ignorant question from an "armchair archaeologist": Are there any single rock outcrops or locations where animals of more than one era are found in succession? In other words, is there any one place where you find Mesozoic animals, then higher up in the same outcrop you find Cenozoic animals? Just wondering. Thanks Chris

Is it possible or plausable that as evolution continues that it accelrates or speeds up? So could ti be that as we become more evolved that the process speeds up? This question is very similar to the philosophical theory of Singularity invlolving Artificail Intelligence.

In the natural selection section of my biology book it says that several species originated from one species. Nature then selected who would survive and who would die out based on the strength of the species (the features that were most advantageous etc.) Here are my questions: 1. Where did all of the other species come from? Were they genetic mutations or were they modified? And if they were modified how were they modified? 2. My book also states that there was descent with modification. How did these modifications come about? Did the environment trigger these modifications? 3. Doesn't this whole theory of nature selecting the stronger species favor …

well, not only dummies, but kids, simple minded people, guys with ADHD, those who are lazy to research, and the sheer dumb. so i'd like to have a story in this thread, a story of Ted, ted was flung away as something or another in the big bang, and now after billions of years he's a human, we would like to have his biography here, Ted didn't mind, i hope you will be as generous to supply us with the details, in a manner a 10 year old can read and understand. also if the story can go on a fictional ground, but based on actual science, so it'll be easier to relate to it. and it would be better if the story was told small bit by bit, easier for you to tell, easier…

I have noticed that animals appear to be less sensitive to pain than humans... Like when the dog does something stupid and hurts itsself, it looks extremely painful but the dog doesnt even seem to care. Is it possible that animals have evolved over time to be less sensitive to pain? Considering that in the animal kingdom, most animals suffer extremely painful looking deaths...

In Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, Feynman talks about his brief stint as a biologist. One of the experiments he helped perform was transplanting ribosomes from mice into bacteria and seeing if they would work in place of the bacteria's own ribosomes. Unfortunately, Feynman had contaminated the ribosomes so the experiment failed, however he claimed other scientists would go on to discover that the way ribosomes map tri-nucleotide codons to peptides is universal for all forms of life, i.e. there is a single universal genetic code shared between all life on earth. Wikipedia claims: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribosome Wikipedia also provides this tabl…

Is it possible to grow functional arms on dolphins using genetic engineering, so they can create tools and manipulate there environment?

around 230 million years. To this day covering more land mass than any other plant group. As JillSwift pointed out in another thread some of these trees live to be over 5,000 years old. The Giant Redwood and the Bristlecone Pine. How on Earth did certain individual plants that cannot move or change thier location manage to survive all the droughts,fires,insect infestations,microbial infection, and such for 5,000 years. More importantly why don`t they deteriorate the same way other organisms do with age? Maybe under the right conditions they are potentially immortal. What is about them that seems to defie all the usual explanations for aging. The same may be true for some…

I've been wondering lately: Has it ever been postulated if perhaps certain forms or maybe even all forms of microorganisms were 'engineered' by nature to help keep populations under control? Seems a bit far fetched, but what if, that is their sole purpose? I mean when we talk about ecosystems, we talk about certain organisms having specific niches right? That's one reason we get so out wack when a species becomes extinct, because we are not aware of what function or 'purpose' it played in the larger ecosystem. Right? Hypothesis: Microorganisms have their requirements for survival met by performing the function of keeping population under control (and possibly …

Hey everyone, this is my first post here, and its some thoughts I had on this subject, and a hypothesis, I just wanted to post it to see what others might have to contribute to the discussion.... I posted a longer version on another science discussion website, but it was quite long, so I trimmed it a bit. - its still long! Hypothesis The health, robustness, adaptability, ability, and vitality of the population (macrobiological scale) of living organisms on the planet is in a decreasing trend. Now, I know that the historical evidence of the fossil record contradicts this, but please get to the bottom of the post before you dismiss it Definitions: I had wr…

As you know the yucca plant has a unique method of pollination - and it is quite recondite: http://waynesword.palomar.edu/ww0902a.htm The selection pressures on both the pollinator and pollinated are slightly different - for example, the yucca plant does not have to survive predators. The method of evolution of both the yucca plant and its moth has been termed co-evolution - a marvellous term! The question is that the mechanisms by which co-evolution occurs are mysterious although theories exist. I just wanted to stimulate discussion on the possibility that epigenetic factors exist where the co-evolution of species can occur in a short time scale. …

Hey I was arguing with someone about evolution, specifically transitional forms, and I tried to google some images of living animals that display a fair amount of transitional traits, like with the Okapi or Tasmanian Tiger and whatever else. I know that everything alive is the current transition of something that could be different thousands of years from now... but I just figured that by now it would be easy to find a website that listed real photographs of living animals that display the best possible evolutionary path of life. Yes I know a lot of species in between have become extinct and the two sides even more evolved and fine tuned... but still, there has to be …

could any one suggest some science fair ideas based on application of mathematic in genetics. I will be entering 10th grade and any help on above will be highly appreciated. Thank you

Aside from being in the habitable zone and having water, what particular evolutionary advantages does the Earth (or the solar system it floats in) have? A few I've found so far: 1) The protosphere, the nebulous disk from which the solar system arose, formed of matter from a heavier star which contained a wide variety of heavier materials. 2) The Earth was formed of a mass which contained a wide variety of elements. 3) The Earth was protected from the impact of heavier asteroids by the proximity of the gas giant Jupiter, the vacuum cleaner of the solar system 4) Meanwhile, smaller asteroids and comets, having less gravitational attraction to Jupiter, were let th…

hi folks just wondering, i found this site, linking to some info, pro and con, about ID [Link removed by mod] Anyone know of good sites that review ID 'theory' critically, but logically? I mean not just railing against it, but showing, with evidence, how ID is misrepresenting, misleading, wrong, where it makes mistakes? Just to make clear, I am a believer in science and evolution. Just want to see some clear info I can use in case it ever comes up in discussion. thanks gene

Please be nice, I'm not exactly the brightest star in the galaxy. I've always wanted to know, what is stronger plant cell or animal cell? It's pretty easy to break a plant in half but to rip the skin of a human you would need something sharp like a finger nail or a knife. Also the plant cell features a cell wall that gives support for the cell. Shouldn't the plant cell be stronger?