Among the many obligations keeping me away from the blog is the nearly-completed overhaul of my web site, carlzimmer.com. Along with information on my books and talks, the site also has an archive of the past few years of my articles. I’ve made my way back to 2001, and I am continuing to push back further. It’s a strange experience to look back over many dozens of stories that all seemed rather cutting-edge at the time. In some cases, they’ve been outstripped so starkly by later research that they seem almost like time capsules now. In other cases, further research hasn’t really pushed the boundary of knowledge much more.

Continue reading “Penguins, Chimpanzees, and Other Old Friends” →

It’s getting harder and harder to remember what it was like to write about science in the pre-Web 2.0 days. Back then (i.e., 2004), I’d come across an intriguing paper, I’d interview the authors, I’d get comments–supportive or nasty–from other experts in the field, and then publish an article distilling everything I’d learned. It would take months or years for the authors to follow up on their work or for other scientists to publish their own papers attacking or supporting the original research.

Continue reading “When Scientists Go All Bloggy” →

Trace your genealogy back 25 million years, and you’ll meet long-tailed monkey-like primates living in trees. Those primates were not just the ancestors of ourselves, but of all the other apes–chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans, and gibbons–along with the monkeys of the Eastern Hemisphere, such as baboons and langurs. By comparing ourselves to these other primates, scientists can get clues to our evolution over the past 25 million years. Until now, most of those clues have come from fossils and studies on the behavior and physiology of apes and monkeys. But in the past few years scientists have begun to pore over a new record: the one that is inscribed in our genome and the genomes of other apes and monkeys.

Continue reading “Meet the Monkey Cousins” →

At the end of February I joined John Rennie, editor in chief of Scientific American, to talk to students at the New York University journalism program about blogging about science. There’s a post about the talk now up, including some podcast excerpts, on the the Scienceline blog from the NYU Science Health and Environmental Reporting Program. More here. 

Originally published April 6, 2007. Copyright 2007 Carl Zimmer.

Check this out. An international team of climate experts has been looking into the impact of climate on ecosystems, food production, and other aspects of the natural and human-controlled world. They’ve just come out with the executive summary of their contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change‘s fourth assessment report. Heavy rains likely in some places, heat waves in others. Some parts of the world may enjoy a better climate for producing food, but for how long is unclear. Other places face serious threats to food.

Continue reading “Looking For A Gloomy Read?” →