
evolution
Chapters in the EET
Ten Recent Advances in Evolution
By Carl Zimmer Posted 10.26.09 NOVA To celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Origin of Species , here's a list—by no means exhaustive—of some of the biggest advances in evolutionary biology over the past decade. These advances include not just a better understanding of how this or that group of species first evolved, but insights into the evolutionary process itself. In some cases those insights would have given Darwin himself a pleasant jolt of surprise. Ten significant leaps forward in evolution research in the past decade, as chosen and described by noted science writer Carl Zimmer Enlarge Photo credit: (Earth) © NASA; (text) © WGBH Educational Foundation Darwin envisioned natural selection acting so slowly that its effects would be imperceptible in a human lifetime.Tree of Life Web Project
Meteor Strike A meteor burst into a fireball over Siberia. Can we spot the next deadly asteroid in time? 52:53 Air Date 03/27/13 Mind of a Rampage Killer Can science help us understand why some people commit horrific acts of mass murder?
What Darwin Never Knew | NOVA
by Rick Groleau In 1987, three scientists announced in the journal Nature that they had found a common ancestor to us all, a woman who lived in Africa 200,000 years ago. She was given the name "Eve," which was great for capturing attention, though somewhat misleading, as the name at once brought to mind the biblical Eve, and with it the mistaken notion that the ancestor was the first of our species—the woman from whom all humankind descended. The "Eve" in question was actually the most recent common ancestor through matrilineal descent of all humans living today. That is, all people alive today can trace some of their genetic heritage through their mothers back to this one woman. The scientists hypothesized this ancient woman's existence by looking within the cells of living people and analyzing short loops of genetic code known as mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA for short.

