Nic Rawlence • Jul 30, 2019 •
A moa walks across a vast flood plain, its feet sinking into the soft mud. Once buried by the next flood, the footprints left behind harden. Millions of years later, a farmhand taking the dogs for a swim on a hot day makes the discovery of a lifetime. Seven footprints, around 25 cm in diameter, were recently discovered in the … Read More
Robert Hickson • Jul 09, 2019 •
If you have a job (say, driving a truck, or working in a warehouse) and that job gets automated, what are your future employment options? A recent analytical paper on networks by Jordan D. Dworkin looks at this situation mathematically. It brought to my mind studies of fitness landscapes … Read More
Robert Hickson • Jul 03, 2019 •
Four years ago I wrote about getting too carried away with evolutionary metaphors for robots. But I can’t deny that we’re are seeing an increasing diversity of robotic forms and capabilities. The technological sophistication of high-end robotics, and the speed with which they are improving, is impressive. Check out SpotMini’s moves. … Read More
Robert Hickson • May 09, 2019 •
Elephants can be an important futures symbol. The “elephant in the room” – also, unnecessarily pigmented, called a “black elephant” by some futurists – is the well known large and obvious issue that people refuse to address. Then there is the parable of the “blind men and the elephant”, which … Read More
Alison Campbell • Feb 25, 2019 •
The hominid known as “Ardi” (a specimen of Ardipithecus ramidus) was discovered in 1994, at a site near Ethiopia’s Awash River. Once excavated, it turned out that this was – for its age – a remarkably complete specimen: 125 fossilised bones, comprising most of the skull, teeth, hands & feet, pelvis, and the lower sections of the arms & legs. This … Read More
Brendan Moyle • Feb 11, 2019 •
Giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) eat bamboo and not much else. This in evolutionary terms is odd. It’s odd in part because the panda has a short gut typical of carnivores. And it still possesses many of the genes associated with a carnivorous lifestyle. This is largely due to belonging to the bear family Ursidae. This is a group of animals … Read More
Guest Author • Feb 07, 2019 •
Theresa Cole; Jonathan Waters, and Kieren Mitchell, University of Adelaide Ever since Charles Darwin’s voyage to the Galapagos, biologists have been trying to figure out what determines the number of species that exist at any point in time. Our research, published this week, provides an answer to this question, at least when it comes to … Read More
Alison Campbell • Jan 16, 2019 •
Every so often there’s a new story claiming that a study has overturned our understanding of human evolution. (Or something along those lines.) I’ve just come across another one**, & thought I’d write this post as a warning to year 13 biology students. As Carl Sagan once said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence – something that’s lacking in this particular … Read More
Jamie Steer • Dec 22, 2018 •
This is this idea that we either do this or something that we love dies – what might be referred to as ‘conservation at the barrel of a gun’. Here’s another collection of quotes from the feedback to Kim Hill again – the last one most notably being from one of New Zealand’s foremost conservation biologists: ‘By accepting many introduced … Read More
Alison Campbell • Nov 20, 2018 •
By the end of the school year, Year 13 students preparing for Schol Bio should have a pretty good grasp of the concepts and content they’ve encountered in their studies. What tends to throw some, though, is the fact that the context used for each question will almost certainly be something that they haven’t come across before. I experienced that “what the … Read More