Evolution, Morphology and Exobiology

I am in a genuine search to understand why human emotion is so important and, in an evolutionary scale, important to survival. In particular, I fail to see why making others laugh would be a valuable trait. I have searched for a list of human emotions and found an attempt to list emotions on a Buddhist website (to be taken with a pinch of salt). Here are a few examples: http://www.buddhamind.info/leftside/actives/drama/key-word.htm From an evolutionary point of view, was there a point to the great comedians of the past and present? Here's one, below called Ross Noble, who has an amazing ability to think laterally and on-the-spot. I wonder if it is th…

If anyone hasn't come across this yet, nifty new website! http://www.timetree.org/ The description from Dechronization: It has all the caveats of molecular dating, but, still, neat resource and fun to play with.

Hey guys, I'm using a bit of an outdated textbook, so I'ld like a little help on this. What is science's current viewpoint on the structure of the phylogenetic tree for prokaryotes, in terms of what came first, and then with consequent evolutionary changes, what followed? If anyone can give me a good visual, that would be really great (As that's primarily what I'm looking for; I'll discern the rest accordingly). If not, if someone could give me the basic structure, verbally or by means of a link, that would be great. It's for some research I'm doing into the evolution of prokaryote metabolism. Any help would be greatly appreciated Cheers! ps: If anyone also knows …

Note title Also, what is "desire" and how did it come to be?

I don't know if I'll get any bites on this, but: I've just read yet another scheme for hominid systematics. I'm not really posting about that specific scheme (it's the one in Stones, Bones, and Molecules, Cameron and Groves [2004]), but trying to see if anyone here has any specific opinions on the subject. Some guidance for a poor undergraduate. There are just so many of these phylogenetic trees (Svante Paabo has an interesting take on the reason: http://johnhawks.net/node/2093). Anyway, how would you parse our ancestors?

Is global warming happening too fast for evolution to occur? Wont we and other life forms evolve to fit our environment?

As we see, weapons' might is becoming incredibly great, no matter how strong you are, you are nothing compared to the weapons and you can't drive them only by your strength. So being big just means you're nothing but a huge target. As for the resources and rooms( of vehicles or habitations) are all limited, being small means frugal and indirectly means being richer. Moreover i've heard that the more cells one has the more complicated his body system gets to be, thus the more unpredictable illness will happen easily. Afterall I think it's better to be smaller for us human beings. The only question is how small we are going to be is the best? As small as an ant?

Does anyone know how far the decoding of morphological data in the DNA has reached ? (e.g. : can one find how many legs a given creature has, only by looking at the DNA code ?)

A few weeks ago I came across this review by Ewen Callaway of a recent biography of Stephen Jay Gould (one that looks pretty interesting, actually, I'll have to get to it at some point): Review: Stephen Jay Gould and the Politics of Evolution The review briefly talks about the intellectual connections between Punctuated Equilibrium and leftist-Marxist politics ('Communist biology'), which is interesting enough, but it was this statement that particularly caught my attention: Now this was news to me. All the introductory biology texts I've used in high school and thus-far in college have included Punctuated Equilibrium as pretty much orthodox. The authors, two an…

My dad found this about 10 years ago while digging a water well line. We thought it was pretty neat so he kept it and forgot about it until recently. I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on it as far as does it seem to be a fossil or just a foot shaped rock? There are what looks exactly like five toes and a well formed foot about an inch long encased in (limestone?) with what looks like a knee joint peeking out of the top, length about 1 1/2" from bottom of foot to top of joint. He started to remove the rock with a Dremel tool but stopped in case he damaged it, other than that it is exactly how he found it. Was found 3' to 4' deep under a layer of lignite south…

This claim is based on a scientific fraud that the evolutionist biologist Ernst Haeckel perpetrated in the early 20th century. In order to supply evidence of evolution that did not in fact exist, Haeckel drew the developing embryos of such life forms as human beings, chickens and fish alongside one another—but deliberately distorted them. The whole scientific world now agrees that this was a fraud. The structure that Haeckel depicted as a “gill” is actually the beginning of the middle ear canal, the parathyroids, and the thymus gland.

Hey! This is my first and hopefully not last post in these forums. I am currently trying to engage in sort of an online debate with some creationists and I am trying to show how evolution works and various evidence for it, etc. I am learning a lot and consider myself a novice in the fields of biology and genetics, etc, but I know that I understand the basics of evolution, and I get it (it has really clicked in my mind after several years lol). The specific information that I am looking for right now is concerning how humans (and other animals) have some unused or deactivated genes in their DNA from generations and speciations ago. I once read somewhere that humans…

Will you believe that theory of Evolution will collapse in just 50 themes , nothing less nothing more. For this you can download the free E.book THE COLLAPSE OF THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION IN 50 THEMES Link Link removed Wait for the discussion

Since we are the product of evolution ( Man from Apes ) and apes from ocean dwelling animals that crawled onto land to become what we are, Them why did evolution stop ?. We lived for thousands of years to record history of mankind and animal specie. Why did our ocean stopped producing new kinds of animals to this day ?. Is evolution just an imaginary joke played out by Darwin ?. I sure would like to see our oceans produce more Dinosaur animals. Also Apes evolve into man. Was Charles Darwin in his right mind or hir delusion a mith ?.

For various reasons, (whether for medical research, or their elusiveness) nudibranchs, have quite recently become the subject of much attention. Now I know that nudibranchs are of course related to gastropods, but have evolved in various ways, and after millions of years, they differ drastically from their gastropod relatives. One fundamental difference is the lack of a shell. Nudibranchs, instead protect themselves from predators by means of toxic secretions. What interests me is that these toxins are not produced within the body, but rather, extracted from their prey. All of these things tie into my area of question. Does anyone know at about what time evolution resul…

I was wondering whats more popular, the Iron-Sulfur world theory, or the RNA world theory. I cant really make a stand yet, because I do not know enough about either one yet, but I want to hear the pros and cons of both through peoples thoughts. Maybe spark some good debates too.

I remember this topic being brought up somewhere else, and some of the conclusions and results of research I saw I did find disturbing; I guess to be brutally honest with myself and everyone on this forum it did upset egalitarian prejudices I hold dear. I'm guessing people will be aware of books like the Bell Curve by Charles Murray and the Global Bell Curve by Richard Lynn; I was given 2 further links to books on this subject, where I brought it up as follows: http://www.wspublishers.com/uhh.pdf and http://www.charlesdarwinresearch.org/reb.html I wanted to get your assessment on how sound this kind of work is, and whether we really do have to concede tha…

Since my recent thread on a related subject, I cannot help but wonder the extent and nature to which as a species we may have "evolved", adapting to different environments and lifestyles since becoming homo-sapiens. In all honesty, I am not much better than an educated layman at biology, especially so evolutionary biology, so I was hoping I could get some input on these kinds of questions from people in the forum. My understanding from my school education was that biodiversity is present in human beings, though has never been significant enough, coupled with the fact that human populations have never been isolated enough from each other to allow for sub-species to eme…

We are currently top dog. What current species lineage is most likely to succeed us here on Earth? Obviously the endangered ones are unlikely, but none are 100.00...% out of contention until they are extinct (and all their DNA squashed) Chimps? Gorilla? ...I don't think they will outlast us even if it is our fault not theirs, but maybe they could sneak past a virus that wipes out the rest of us. A lot depends on how we do ourselves in, winning the Darwin award for our species as a whole and leaving who knows what type of vacuum at the top. Rat? Cockroach? ..one or both should survive our Nuclear annihilation Oak? Maple?...woodent think so but th…

In the aquarium pets industry, it is very common to see breeders applying the practice of selective breeding to come with a species with desired characteristic. It is always of my view that doing this may actually cause more harm and the underlying results in the long run is that we could actually produce a species that will have all the negative traits combined together. I mean how would we know that the traits would be the one that could ensure their survival in the wild? Take for example fish with strong and bright colors like the swordtails. In the wild the same species actually have dull grey colors (Xiphophorus helleri) and because of that they were able to surv…

It's mentioned offhandedly in this NYTimes article about echidnas that their brains are 50% neocortex, which presumably is a lot (human brains are 30% neocortex). They also call them "brainy," and say they're surprisingly intelligent. Wikipedia says "a high neocortex ratio is thought to correlate with a number of social variables such as group size and the complexity of social mating behaviors" (unreferenced). What significance does it have? How unusual is a ratio of 50%? What are the odds that echidnas secretly rule the world?

I've spent some time studying why the brain changes as it gets bigger, from mouse to whale. But one big mystery no one in neuroscience has an answer to is why bigger animals have bigger brains in the first place. Brain mass tends to increase as the 3/4 power of body mass. And this seems to be unrelated to behavioral complexity; that is, a "mere" increase in body mass seems to be enough to lead to the brain mass increase. Why all this extra brain for no extra smarts? That's the enigma.

Hi I just noticed that the eye color of mammals and humans seem to have a wider range of colors then skin and fur of mammals. So I m wondering can mammals if possible produce purple hair or green skin the same way as the eyes of some animals? Blue Skin is well known in some mammals Discuss.

After watching Extraterrestrials, I was wondering whether can a plant take in water from the top like collect it in a basin like this strange plant? PAGODA TREE Distinguishing Features: Abundant carbon dioxide means the pagoda trees grow to more than half a mile tall. Cuplike crowns above the canopy collect rainwater to keep the uppermost limbs hydrated. Closest Earth Cousin: Giant sequoias, but their growth is limited by the ability of the tree's vascular system to deliver water hundreds of feet up.

I was just reading this article: http://frostfirefizz.com/why-males-die-before-females And suddenly realised this: Since apparently our brains are quite primitive, that means that our bodies can't tell the difference between mastubation and sex, right? Well if this is so, then if you masturbate from a young age, your body would assume you were having sex, and therefore having kids very early on, meaning you're not needed much after that - you've reproduced! Since (I gathered from that article - kindof ) you're not really needed (as far as genetics are concerned) meaning your genetics will program future generations to age faster since it assumes they'll reprod…