The New York Times, March 3, 2006

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One of the hallmarks of being human is cooperation. No other primate exhibits the same kind of helpfulness to others. Humans have made even violence a highly cooperative effort, and scientists have wondered how far back in evolution this trait goes.

New studies on chimpanzees suggest that this part of human nature may have already existed millions of years ago, perhaps before the human and ape lineages divided.

Scientists had observed chimpanzees in the wild apparently cooperating in the past. “They work together to chase monkeys, and they’re quite effective when they chase them together,” said Brian Hare of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

Continue reading “Chimps Display a Hallmark of Human Behavior: Cooperation” →

The New York Times, February 21, 2006

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Sooner or later, everyone encounters a kentia palm. Its ability to grow in low sunlight has made it one of the world’s most traded houseplants.

“If you’ve been to a wine bar or to Starbucks, there may have been one in there,” said William Baker, a botanist at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, England.

“Whether you realize it or not, you’re familiar with this palm,” he said.

Continue reading “Palm Trees and Lake Fish Dispel Doubts About a Theory of Evolution” →

The New York Times, February 7, 2006

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The tub full of leeches sat on a table in Mark Siddall’s office at the American Museum of Natural History. The leeches, each an inch long and covered in orange polka dots, were swimming lazily through the water.

One leech in particular attracted Dr. Siddall’s attention. It had suddenly begun undulating up and down in graceful curves, pushing water along its body so that it could draw more oxygen into its skin.

“This is beautiful. Look at that,” Dr. Siddall said. “It’s a very complex behavior. The only other animals that swim in a vertical undulating pattern are whales and seals.”

Continue reading “His Subject: Highly Evolved and Exquisitely Thirsty” →

The New York Times, January 26, 2006

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NEW YORK — Scientists at the American Museum of Natural History have discovered a fossil in New Mexico that looks like a six-foot-long, two-legged dinosaur similar to a tyrannosaur or a velociraptor. But it is actually an ancient relative of modern alligators and crocodiles.

The discovery is a striking example of how completely different categories of animals can evolve the same kind of body over and over again.

For almost 60 years, the 210-million-year-old fossil had been hiding in plain sight. It was lodged in a slab of rock dug up in 1947 in New Mexico by a team led by Dr. Edward Colbert, a paleontologist at the natural history museum.

Continue reading “Crocodile fossil shows uncanny convergence” →