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In a recent discussion on The Discovery Institute’s ID the Future podcast, geologist Casey Luskin explained that the original “98-99%” figure was derived from a single protein-to-protein comparison before the chimp genome was sequenced. Since then, we’ve gained a great deal more precision. According to Luskin, humans and chimps have about 35 million single base-pair genetic differences and five million insertion-deletion differences. Humans also have 689 unique genes not found in chimps. And while there are different ways of quantifying the differences, almost none of these ways yield the famous “98-99%” number. For example, in 2018, Queen Mary University of...

Moa were nine species of giant flightless endemic birds that belonged to six genera grouped into three different families. They evolved into a wide variety of sizes to become the largest terrestrial herbivores in prehistoric New Zealand.

Unicorns appeared in Arthurian legend and are Scotland’s national animalA MYSTERIOUS “unicorn” skull has been unearthed near King Arthur’s castle. Tourist John Goodwin dug it up after spotting the long horn sticking out of moss on the edge of a Cornish cliff. When he pulled it free, he found a skull with a single tusk in the middle of its forehead — like the mythical creature. John, a plumber from Canada was near Tintagel — the supposed site of King Arthur’s Camelot castle — with wife Val and their daughter. He found the skull at St Nectan’s Glen, a spot...

One hundred years ago, a public high school teacher stood trial in Dayton, Tennessee, for teaching human evolution. His nation is still feeling the reverberations today. The law books record it as State of Tennessee v. John T. Scopes. History remembers it as the “ Monkey Trial.” The case ballooned into a national spectacle, complete with a courthouse showdown between a renowned, agnostic defense attorney and a famous fundamentalist Christian politician who defended the Bible on the witness stand.

Paleontologists have described a new species of the extant bee genus Leioproctus from a fossil specimen found in southern New Zealand.Named Leioproctus barrydonovani, the new species lived during the Middle Miocene epoch, some 14.6 million years ago.The ancient insect belongs to Leioproctus, a large genus within the plasterer bee family Colletidae.Extant Leioproctus species are small, black, hairy bees between 4 and 16 mm in length.They are found in Australasia and South America, and include the most common native bees in New Zealand...The specimen (total length of the body is 6.4 mm) was recovered from the Middle Miocene deposits of the...

There is no single answer to this puzzle. Dinosaurs dominated the planet for around 179 million years and during that time, evolved into an enormous array of different shapes and sizes. Some were tiny, like the diminutive Albinykus, which weighed under a kilogram (2.2lbs) and was probably less than 2ft (60cm) long. Others were among the biggest animals to have ever lived on land, such as the titanosaur Patagotitan mayorum, which may have weighed up to 72 tonnes. They ran on two legs, or plodded on four. And along with these diverse body shapes, they would have produced an equally...

“Why is it that man ever chooses to sin? The answer is that man has fallen away from God (and) his whole nature has become perverted and sinful. Man’s whole bias is away from God. By nature he hates God and feels that God is opposed to him. His god is himself…his own abilities and powers and desires (Man) likes and covets the things which God prohibits, and dislikes the things and kind of life to which God calls him. These are no mere dogmatic statements. They are facts (that) alone explain the moral muddle and the ugliness that characterize...

Scientists have been wondering for years which dinosaur could run the fastest. Now, new simulation models are offering a fresh look at dinosaur speed. This renewed interest has roots in a major discovery from 1964, when paleontologist John Ostrom and his team uncovered Deinonychus—a dinosaur with a lightweight body, long claws, and strong legs. Its features challenged the long-held image of dinosaurs as sluggish reptiles and instead pointed to an active, fast-moving predator. This discovery helped launch what scientists call the “dinosaur renaissance,” a major shift in how experts understood dinosaur behavior. Instead of slow-moving reptiles, some dinosaurs began to...

Ants are among the most familiar insects on Earth today, but their origins remain cloaked in deep evolutionary history. Until now, the oldest known ant specimens came from amber deposits in France and Myanmar, dating to the Cretaceous period around 100 million years ago. But a new discovery—published recently in the journal Current Biology—pushes that timeline back even further. “Our team has discovered a new fossil ant species representing the earliest undisputable geological record of ants,” said lead author Anderson Lepeco in a recent statement. “What makes this discovery particularly interesting is that it belongs to the extinct ‘hell ant,’...

Early humans of Homo juluensis had a large head shape, with measurements notably larger than those of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. Scientists have announced the discovery of a new human species, Homo juluensis, following extensive research published in Nature Communications. Professor Christopher J. Bae from the University of Hawaii and Xiujie Wu from the Chinese Academy of Sciences led the study, which sheds light on the diversity of ancient human populations in East Asia.

The human ability to walk and run efficiently on two feet arose around 2 million years ago with our Homo erectus ancestors. But our earlier relatives, the australopithecines, were also bipedal around 4 million years ago. Given the long arms and different body proportions of species like Australopithecus afarensis, though, researchers have assumed that australopithecines were less capable of walking on two legs than modern humans. In a study published online Dec. 18 in the journal Current Biology, a team of researchers modeled the skeletal and muscular anatomy of Lucy to determine her maximum running speed, the energetic costs associated...

In 2018, a female Neanderthal was discovered in the Shanidar Cave in Iraqi Kurdistan. Now, archaeologists from The University of Cambridge have unveiled the reconstructed face of the 75,000-year-old woman, based on the assembly of hundreds of individual bone fragments recovered during excavations. “Neanderthals have had a bad press ever since the first ones were found over 150 years ago,” said Professor Graeme Barker from Cambridge’s McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, who led the excavation at the cave where the woman’s remains were discovered. Neanderthals are believed to have become extinct around 40,000 years ago, and discoveries of their remains...

Tails are useful in many ways, but — unlike these vervet monkeys pictured in Lake Mburo National Park in Uganda — humans' closest primate relatives lost the appendages about 25 million years ago. (Photo credit: imageBROKER/Shutterstock via CNN Newsource) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Humans have many wonderful qualities, but we lack something that’s a common feature among most animals with backbones: a tail. Exactly why that is has been something of a mystery. Tails are useful for balance, propulsion, communication and defense against biting insects. However, humans and our closest primate relatives — the great apes — said farewell to tails about 25...

A team of international scientists have discovered 240-million-year-old fossils from the Triassic period in China that one scientist described as a "long and snake-like, mythical Chinese dragon." The 16-foot-long aquatic reptile, called Dinocephalosaurus orientalis, has 32 separate neck vertebrae – an extremely long neck, according to the National Museums of Scotland, which announced the news on Friday. The new fossil has a snake-like appearance and flippers and was found in the Guizhou Province of southern China. Dinocephalosaurus orientalis was first identified in 2003 when its skull was found, but this more complete fossil discovery has "allowed scientists to depict the...

In 2022, researchers stumbled upon the footprint site near the northern tip of North Africa while examining boulders at a nearby pocket beach. A team of archaeologists have unveiled the discovery of the oldest human footprints ever recorded in North Africa and the southern Mediterranean. The footprints, dating back an astonishing 90,000 years, were found on a beach in Larache, Morocco, by a multinational team led by Moncef Essedrati, a research professor and laboratory director at the French University of Southern Brittany. "Between tides, I said to my team that we should go north to explore another beach," Essedrati told...

Dr Valentina Rossi of University College Cork, Ireland, who led the research team which discovered that a 280-million-year-old lizard fossil is, in part, a forgery. (Image credit: Zixiao Yang) A 280-million-year-old fossil that has baffled researchers for decades has been shown to be, in part, a forgery following new examination of the remnants. The discovery has led the team led by Dr Valentina Rossi of University College Cork, Ireland (UCC) to urge caution in how the fossil is used in future research. Tridentinosaurus antiquus was discovered in the Italian alps in 1931 and was thought to be an important specimen...

A newly described fossil suggests that the ancestor of humans and apes arose in Europe, not in Africa...In the new study, the researchers analyzed a newly identified ape fossil from the 8.7 million-year-old site of Çorakyerler in central Anatolia. They dubbed the species Anadoluvius turkae. "Anadolu" is the modern Turkish word for Anatolia, and "turk" refers to Turkey.The fossil suggests that A. turkae likely weighed about 110 to 130 pounds (50 to 60 kilograms), or about the weight of a large male chimpanzee.Based on the fossils of other animals found alongside it — such as giraffes, warthogs, rhinos, antelope, zebras,...

Prof. Begun said: "Our findings further suggest that hominines [bonobos, chimpanzees, and gorillas] not only evolved in western and central Europe - but spent over five million years evolving there and spreading to the eastern Mediterranean before eventually dispersing into Africa."....This migration, he added, was "probably a consequence of changing environments and diminishing forests."

If the claims are true, the behavior by Homo naledi—a baffling, small-brained member of the human family tree—would pre-date the earliest known burials by at least 100,000 years. An extinct human species that lived hundreds of thousands of years ago may have deliberately buried its dead and carved meaningful symbols deep in a South African cave—advanced behaviors generally deemed unique to Neanderthals and modern Homo sapiens. If confirmed, the burials would be the earliest yet known by at least 100,000 years. The claims, made today in two research papers uploaded to the preprint server bioRxiv, were also announced by paleoanthropologist...

Dinosaur that lived 85 million years ago was size of a bus, but breathed like a bird A huge carnivorous dinosaur that lived about 85 million years ago had a breathing system much like that of today's birds, a new analysis of fossils reveals, reinforcing the evolutionary link between dinos and modern birds.