Third molar agenesis: a puzzling case of recent human evolution
One of the most obvious cases of recent human evolution is the increasing frequency with which individuals don’t develop third molars, what is called “M3 age...
All posts tagged with acceleration
My essay in The Scientist covers recent natural selection in humans
The Scientist has published a current essay I wrote about the evidence for recent and ongoing natural selection in humans: “Humans Never Stopped Evolving”.
Bill Nye looks at the future of human evolution
The noted television popular science educator Bill Nye has a new book in which he looks at the evidence for evolution: Undeniable: Evolution and the Science ...
Selection and lactase persistence
I received a letter about lactase persistence that motivated me to a fairly long reply; I thought I would share the question and answer:
My article in Scientific American
The current issue of Scientific American is specially devoted to human evolution. There are great articles by Kate Wong, Ian Tattersall, Frans de Waal, Berna...
Upcoming events: Wisconsin Science Festival
I’ve had a very busy and interesting week at the European Society for Human Evolution meetings, and haven’t had a chance to update, and I’m on my way to Chic...
My review of "Paleofantasy"
I have a review of Marlene Zuk’s new book, Paleofantasy, in this week’s Nature: “Evolutionary biology: Twisting the tale of human evolution” Hawks:Paleofanta...
Recent evolution of coding variants
How did I get myself quoted in a story as the skeptic about recent human evolution? (“Human Evolution Enters an Exciting New Phase”). After all, I’ve been a ...
How I got into anthropology
I was noodling around online and found a video interview from last year’s Darwin Day event here at UW. Regular readers won’t learn anything new in the first ...
Human population history makes a difference
Alon Keinan and Andrew Clark have a short report in the current Science examining the effects of recent human population growth on the expected spectrum of h...
Kaku cockup
I can’t bear to watch it again, and I don’t see why I should tolerate anyone else having to watch it. But I can’t sit quietly while physicist Michio Kaku tel...
Spatial dispersal, parallel adaptation, and the "Stooge effect"
Peter Ralph and Graham Coop have an interesting paper in the current Genetics, titled, “Parallel Adaptation: One or Many Waves of Advance of an Advantageous ...
Recent selection, the new paradigm
Nicholas Wade gives some recent highlights of research into ongoing selection in humans.
Using the Neandertal genome to uncover human evolutionary history
Before the Neandertal genome release last week, I was reading (thanks to a correspondent) an essay that James Noonan wrote for the current Genome Research. T...
Selection's genome-wide effect on population differentiation
Alon Keinan and David Reich Keinan:Reich:2010 have tested an obvious prediction of the hypothesis that recent selection has had a major effect on variation a...
Genes and archaeology
Current Biology has released a special issue titled “Global genetic history of Homo sapiens”. There is much of interest in this issue, with seven papers, mos...
Humans still evolving…
Time has a story about Stephen Stearns and colleagues’ work characterizing ongoing selection using the Framingham Heart Study sample:
What does acceleration mean for evolutionary psychology?
The Newsweek a couple of weeks ago had a long (7 pages in the magazine!) essay/article titled, “Don’t Blame the Caveman”. Writer Sharon Begley sets out the t...
Spatial variation and near-fixed selected alleles
I couple of people have asked me about a new paper in PLoS Genetics by Graham Coop and colleagues, titled, “The role of geography in human adaptation.” The p...
Richard Lewontin: "[T]oo rapid for genetic adaptation"
I have had a New York Review of Books essay by Richard Lewontin, titled, “Why Darwin?” on my desktop for a week without getting to the last section of it.
Arrested adaptation and "diseases of civilization"
While I was browsing papers for a research project, I happened to re-open the paper, “Stone Agers in the fast lane,” written by S. Boyd Eaton, Melvin Konner,...
Overstating the obvious
I’m reading this interesting paper by Joseph Pickrell and colleagues, titled, “Signals of recent positive selection in a worldwide sample of human population...
Did biologists really think that human evolution stopped?
Larry Moran has been writing a series of posts about quality science journalism. These have included descriptions of some well-written journalistic accounts ...
The 10,000 Year Explosion
I want to point people interested in recent human evolution to a new book, The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution.
Biology and culture in recent selection
This isn’t a long essay; just a pointer to a Nature feature by Erika Check Hayden where I make an appearance to represent the anthropological viewpoint on re...
Mailbag: Chance and recent selection
Our work on recent selection was featured in Discover magazine this month. I’ll link to that later. In the meantime, I’ve been getting some thoughtful letter...
Surfing and recent selection
Genetic Future and Gene Expression have commented today on the relative roles of selection and demography in shaping the genetic differences between populati...
Recent evolution in Newsweek
I very much appreciate that Newsweek has started including a regular opinion column on science, written by Sharon Begley. I don’t always like it, but it plac...
Human evolution stopping? Wrong, wrong, wrong.
I’m usually pretty measured when I respond to dumb ideas about evolution reported in the press. After all, scientists are often misquoted, or misunderstood b...
Hawks featured in Science News
Bruce Bower has a really nice feature article in Science News about my work on hearing and recent selection:
Hawks in U.S. News
I’m featured in an article in U.S. News and World Report, by Nancy Shute. It was a great interview, and she’s put together our work on recent acceleration wi...
Tuberculosis is interesting, but a lot older than 10,000 years
Hebrew University has issued a press release about ongoing research on human and animal bones from the Jericho excavations. They’re looking for signs of tube...
Why accelerated adaptive evolution is faster evolution
RPM at Evolgen has a post raising a concern I've been seeing a lot the last week or two:
Tracking back to acceleranistas
I've had a very busy couple of days, and haven't been maintaining my reading-and-linking as much as I had hoped. So I wanted to take a few minutes to do a q...
Why human evolution accelerated
n. b. This is a story about my work on recent human evolution, describing some of the main results and how the work came about. The story refers to my paper ...
Things I didn't expect to happen today
I am absolutely overwhelmed by the interest and press given to our paper about acceleration of human evolution. So far, the paper hasn't yet shown up online...
Acceleration rarely-asked questions
Usually an FAQ starts with the easiest-to-answer questions. Those are, after all, the ones that are asked frequently!
Human evolution has accelerated
The embargo has now ended on the second, and far more important paper that I mentioned the other day. It is a product of work I've been doing with Bob Moyzi...
That acceleration thing
If you've come via a link about my current work, please welcome! I'm really not going to write about it here until our publication -- journals can be persni...