Recent content by edwardr

Consider this: humans wouldn't play music if not for other humans. Artistic expression can be thought of as an adaptive behavior. It takes place within the context of society.

It certainly *could* happen, but it's much easier in theory than in the real world. The group(s) would need to be sufficiently isolated to minimize gene flow to a non-existent or bare level, and this would need to continue for tens of thousands, perhaps millions of years. And at what point would...

You might want to run it by this community: http://www.thefossilforum.com/index.php?/forum/14-fossil-id/

It looks to me like a type of foraminiferan known as a nummulite. I've found plenty of these myself in Miocene limestone. I don't think they've been found in Cretaceous rock though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nummulite

David Attenborough was in the news recently claiming "human evolution has stopped." While the selective pressures and even the landscape for natural selection has changed drastically for humans in the post-agrarian and post-industrial world, there are still factors affecting human breeding...

There are two major factors to consider here: genetic compatibility and willingness to breed. For example, while a Chihuahua's sperm could probably inseminate a wolf successfully, it's a rendezvous that would probably be unlikely to happen naturally. Remember that genetically dogs are all...

Darwin got a lot wrong. But as a previous poster said, he was wrong mostly in the same way that Newton was wrong. Hindsight truly is a blessing. This is a discussion that could go on for pages and get quite lively, but I'll chime in on one aspect. Darwin did not have the benefit of an...