Evolution Talk

In the Neander valley, limestone miners found something which shocked them. They had found bones which they first thought belonged to a bear. Once Professor Schaafhausen had seen the bones he recognized them for what they were. Shortly after that the Neanderthal Man stepped into the spotlight. Were Neanderthals our early ancestors or were they a separate species?

Frog populations remained pretty much the same in Podville until the Great Fire of 2015. After the fire the population of blue frogs increased. Welcome to genetic drift, the subject of this week's episode of 'Evolution Talk'.

In 1997 Professor Stephen Jay Gould published an essay in Natural History which also appeared in his book Rocks of Ages. This essay was titled 'Non-Overlapping Magisteria'. It's commonly referred to as NOMA. The concept behind NOMA is that science and religion operate in two different, non-overlapping, realms.

Where does altruism come from? How did it evolve in a world ruled by 'selfish genes'?

The term 'Survival of the Fittest' was unleashed on the world in 1864 by Herbert Spencer when he published his work Principles of Biology. It was later picked up by Charles Darwin who used it himself in the fifth edition of On the Origin of Species five years later. But is it fair to say that the term "Survival of the Fittest" is synonymous with evolution by natural selection? In this episode of Evolution Talk we explore this very question.

For Charles Darwin, the idea of sexual selection explained a lot of what he saw in the animal kingdom. He gave sexual selection just as much importance as natural selection.

In 1986 Professor Robert Bakker, a paleontologist, published 'The Dinosaur Heresies'. According to Professor Bakker there have been waves of extinction, and these extinction events mainly attacked, or affected, one particular type of animal... warm blooded animals.

What killed off the dinosaurs? There are many competing theories yet there is no 'smoking gun'. There is evidence however, and with each bit of evidence comes another theory. Dinosaurs didn't disappear overnight. It took a few millions years for them to die out. Perhaps six million years.

Today's episode of Evolution Talk is brought to you by all of those animals out there who exhibit vestigial features (which is pretty much every animal out there). Our DNA contains traces of our past - switches in our genes that have either been shut off or turned over the years while natural selection's fingers hovers over the controls.

To mark the occasion of Evolution Talk's 30th episode, Rick Coste steps into the past to interview Charles Darwin.