Mastodawn

Fascinating study decoding the evolution of sensory capacities directly from trace fossils
"exponential expansion of sensory distance from millimetric contact-based sensing subcentimetric chemo-/mechanosensation to decimetric long-range visual-sensation by the terminal Ediacaran"
🧪 ⚒️ #Geology #Paleobio #EvoBio
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2609730123

Andrej Spiridonov Jun 12

I thought that 476 is not a great number, but it is just a sample, if we take that the necropolis is 20 km X 1200 km long (estimate from presented map) and active carcass density 7.81 whale falls per square kilometre we should have ≈ 190,000 whales.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10546-z
🧪⚒️ #Paleobio #EvoBio

Andrej Spiridonov Jun 10

Retarding effects of the domestication. Compare the skulls of the 'Chad" auroch (Bos primigenius) on the right, and it's descendant - domestic cattle (Bos taurus) on the left. Photo taken in the Zoology museum of the Jagellonian University.
🧪⚒️ #Paleobio #EvoBio

Andrej Spiridonov Jun 9

The scale of the Megaloceros horns is incredible (Zoology museum of the Jagellonian University). They grown them in a single year and then shed it, and repeated the cycle next year. How on Earth they acquired sufficient amount of minerals and nutrients?

🧪⚒️ #Paleobio #EvoBio

Greg Priest Jun 8

On the role that diagramming played in Crick and Watson’s contributions to the structure of DNA--and on diagrams as epistemic tools in science and math more generally--see www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... (paywall). 🌱🐋🧪🐡 #EvoBio #HistSTM

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:6eqjufcnopmdmucccde5aeob/post/3mnrxbytods2t

Tools of Reason: The Practice ...

Greg Priest Jun 8

Francis Crick was born OTD in 1916. We've all seen the DNA diagram that appeared in Crick and Watson’s Nature paper (left), but have you seen his sketch (right), from which his wife Odile made the published version? 🌱🐋🧪🐡 #EvoBio #HistSTM

Greg Priest Jun 5

My blog post on Darwin’s reimagining of sympathy is here: https://www.jhiblog.org/2017/11/13/what-if-humans-were-raised-like-bees-charles-darwin-and-the-evolution-of-morality/ My article on the same (paywall) here: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/676147/pdf 🐋🌱🦋🦫🧠🧪 #HistSTM #PhilSci #Evobio

What if Humans Were Raised Lik...

What if Humans Were Raised Like Bees? Charles Darwin and the Evolution of Morality

By Greg Priest Read the full companion article in this quarter’s Journal of the History of Ideas. A new biography of Charles Darwin is coming out. Styled as a “radical reappraisal,” the book, by A.N. Wilson, condemns Darwin, accusing him... Continue Reading →

JHI Blog

neville park May 29

Okay, I put off watching the latest ZeFrank video because it seemed to be about honeybees, which are boring (sorry bee people), but it's actually an amazing journey through geometry, evo-devo, the other, cooler Hymenoptera such as wasps, solitary bees, and ants, the evolution of eusociality, "stigmergy" (a new one for me), and more!

https://youtu.be/_hw26yREe9w

#bugstodon #entomology #insects #bees #wasps #ants #EvolutionaryBiology #EvoBio #EvoDevo #Hymenoptera #Anthophila #Formicidae

True Facts: The Mystery Of How Bees Build

YouTube

Andrej Spiridonov May 27

A very interesting study on the growth of complexity by subtraction!
"Bones lost in lissamphibians exhibited greater morphological disparity and evolutionary rates in temnospondyls than retained bones. This indicates that developmental bias"
https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2025.3276
🧪⚒️ #EvoBio #Paleobio

Molecular Biology & Evolution May 13

IAP proteins play central roles in regulating apoptosis - Lopes et al. show that IAP expansion in animals has repeatedly emerged through lineage-specific duplication events

🔗 https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msag078

#evobio #molbio