Darwin’s Doubts

Throughout his life Charles Darwin suffered bouts of anxiety and often went off alone by himself to think. His work afforded him the perfect escape and he dove into it at every opportunity. Evolution Talk is also a book! You can find links to Amazon, Barnes &...

The Beginning: Out of the Sea

The sea was full of life a half a billion years ago. Arthropods fought to survive and there were some interesting things happening on land as well. We have here our first plants – and they spread like wildfire. The quiet life on land enjoyed by the plants looked...

The Beginning: An Arms Race

As predators evolved to better catch their prey, their prey evolved unique and efficient ways to avoid being eaten. It was because of this sudden arms race that we see the proliferation of body forms that mark the Cambrian Era. The real winners were the Trilobites....

The Beginning: Multicellularity Rules

The reason natural selection had such a grand old-time with multicellular organisms is because it gave it something to select for. These organisms increased in size, moved into new areas for food, and protected themselves against the environment. It is during this...

The Beginning: Sexual Reproduction

One day, millions of years ago, something occurred between two unsuspecting eukaryotes. When they bumped into one another something magical happened. They both left that encounter slightly different than they had been before. What passed from one to the other was a...

The Beginning: Cyanobacteria

3.5 billion years ago microbial organisms appeared on the earth. These organisms combined, split, and combined some more, until the formation of microbes and single-celled algae. One of these single-celled algae-like organisms were cyanobacteria. Evolution Talk is...