“We found very many human genes undergoing selection,” says anthropologist Gregory Cochran of the University of Utah, a member of the team that analyzed the 3.9 million DNA sequences* showing the most variation. “Most are very recent, so much so that the rate of human evolution over the past few thousand years is far greater than it has been over the past few million years.” [Scientific American]
Primitive feathers that represent a key missing link in their evolution have been found, fossilised in 100-million-year-old amber from France. [Telegraph]
State education officials voted to add evolution to the required course work in public schools, but only after a last-minute change depicting Darwin’s seminal work as merely a theory. [NYT]
A study of ancient canoes has backed the idea that human culture is as much subject to the forces of evolution as human genes, so that harmful and unsustainable cultures may face extinction [Telegraph].
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