Interesting Facts

According to research from from the University of Leicester, rodents could evolve to fill niches as larger mammals go extinct. (The largest extinct rodent known to science was Josephoartegasia monesi. It lived three million years ago, was larger than a bull, and weighed over a ton. Like its modern-day relative, the sheep-sized capybara, it lived in South America. Gigantism is a well known evolutionary response that occurs when a small creature steps into an ecological niche left by a larger species. Rats the size of sheep!  If that isn't a good enough reason to protect the elephant, rhino and other species from extinction, I don't know what is.)

According to Dr Charles Brown, of the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma, swallows are evolving to avoid getting hit by cars. (A study carried out over several years  in Keith County, Nebraska, has shown a  sharp reduction in the number of swallows killed on the roads, and the results seem to show that n atural selection has favoured birds that are better able to get out of the way of oncoming cars and trucks.  Now if only hedgehogs would evolve too.)

According to research from Russia's ANO Laboratory of Prehistory, European Neanderthals may have been wiped out by a catastrophic volcanic eruption over 40,000 years ago. (A new study says that a massive explosion caused the onset of a 'volcanic winter' that devastated their population. Modern homo sapiens may have survived the fall-out because much of their population was in Africa which was unaffected, and they went on to replace the Neanderthals about 30,000 years ago. Of course Neanderthals may have interbred with modern humans, so there may be a bit of Neanderthal in all of us.)

According to a team of researchers from the The University of London, people from traditionally urban areas could be genetically better suited to fighting infection. (The team studied people who carried a specific gene variant known to give resistance to TB and leprosy. They found it was more common in people from areas with a long history of urbanisation, where the diseases were more likely to have been rife at one point. Dr Ian Barnes, said, "This seems to be an elegant example of evolution in action.” Like poetry in motion.)

According to research published in the journal Current Biology, each of us has at least 100 new mutations in our DNA. (So does that mean that we're mutating, or evolving?)

Charles Darwin only published his treatise "the Origin of Species" after a fellow naturalist, called Wallace, wrote him a letter to inform him that he had come up with a theory of natural selection. (Before receiving this letter he'd been too scared to go to print because he was a devout Christian, and when he realised what his new scientific theory meant for Christian fundamentalism, he was scared of the backlash he'd receive.) PS - Hindsight proves him right to have been worried as the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial proves, and the controversy continues today.

Professor Steve Jones from the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London, believes that the mechanisms of evolution are winding down in the human race. (So, according to him this is as good as it gets.)