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Skulls Of Modern Humans And Ancient Neanderthals Evolved Differently Because Of Chance, Not Natural SelectionThe approximate locations of the cranial measurements used in the analyses are superimposed as red lines on lateral (A), anterior (B), and inferior (C) views of a human cranium. (Credit: National Academy of Sciences, PNAS (Copyright 2008)) ScienceDaily (Mar. 20, 2008) — New research led by UC Davis anthropologist Tim Weaver adds to the evidence that chance, rather than natural selection, best explains why the skulls of modern humans and ancient Neanderthals evolved differently. The findings may alter how anthropologists think about human evolution. Weaver's study...

aturday, February 09, 2008 "He is like a key. He's going to unlock a door . . ." Jody Klein of Centralia, Wash., about two hours-drive south of Seattle, was near tears as she recounted her Obama experience. At age 20, she'll vote in a presidential election for the first time. "There's just this amazing excitement that's here," she said. "When he was talking about hope, it actually almost made me cry. Like it really made sense, like, for the first, like, whoa … how important a time this is for us. It was really exciting."

Men have evolved to choose young wives Last Updated: 12:01am BST 29/08/2007 There is a 25 year age gap between Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas Men have evolved to seek wives and girlfriends who are younger than they are to maximise their chances of reproducing, researchers have found. Couples are most likely to have a greater number of children if the man is about six years older. A team from Vienna University studied more than 11,600 Swedish men and women, aged 45-55, and their partners and found that relationships in which the man was six years older than the...

Nearly four years have elapsed since the Oslo process (1993-2000) between Israelis and Palestinians foundered in bloodshed. Over that period, two U.S. administrations have tried to forge policies that would reduce the violence and point toward a solution to the conflict.It has not been a single-minded pursuit. Since September 11, 2001, the prime focus of Washington has been the management of unprecedented U.S. military interventions in the region, which removed regimes from power in Afghanistan and Iraq. The notion of Israeli-Palestinian peace as the key to regional stability has been replaced by the war on terror and the insistence on...

Papers have been flapping with new headlines about the latest in a long line of alleged dinosaur ancestors of birds. This one is claimed to be a sensational dinosaur with feathers on its hind legs, thus four ‘wings’.1 This was named Microraptor gui—the name is derived from words meaning ‘little plunderer of Gu’ after the paleontologist Gu Zhiwei. Like so many of the alleged feathered dinosaurs, it comes from Liaoning province of northeastern China. It was about 3 feet (1 meter) long from its head to the tip of its long tail, but its body was only about the size...

Today's handsome hunks may owe their good looks to a sexual power shift towards the fair sex during primate evolution. As our ancestors evolved, the ability to attract a female mate through good looks became may have become more important in the mating stakes than the ability to fight off male rivals, suggests a new study. By analysing the shapes and sizes of facial features in chimps, gorillas and other primates, researchers in Germany and the University of Cambridge, UK, found evidence suggesting that our ancestors may have gradually sacrificed fighting for wooing. "Our research suggests that in early humans,...