Unfortunately, many people have persistent misconceptions about evolution. Some are simple misunderstandingsŃideas that develop in the course of learning about evolution, possibly from school experiences and/or the media. Other misconceptions may stem from purposeful attempts to misrepresent evolution and undermine the public's understanding of this topic.

Last month, paleontologists from Canada, the U.S., and Japan announced an exciting discovery: feathered dinosaur fossils in North America. When Ornithomimus edmontonicus was first studied in the 1930s, its ostrich-like skeleton earned it a name that translates to "bird mimic." Now new fossils and a re-evaluation of old ones have revealed that its body covering also fits the moniker. A newly unearthed, year-old juvenile specimen is covered in downy, hair-like feathers, and re-examination of an adult specimen turned up traces of standard feathers with a central shaft. While most popular reporting has focused on the idea that these shafted feathers may have been used to attract mates, the real news in this research lies elsewhere

Diners sitting down to enjoy a burger couldn't be faulted for wondering, "Where's the beef from?" After all, just a few months ago, European consumers were dismayed to discover that many products marketed as beef actually contained large quantities of horse meat. Genetic fingerprinting, which was used to detect the imposter beef, can identify meat as a particular species or even a particular population. However, other analyses of genetic data can trace the source of a patty, McNugget, or filet, not just to a particular breed or population, but back in time. Using these techniques, scientists have uncovered the deep evolutionary origins of domesticated animals (such as sheep) and major crop plants (such as corn). Now, they've applied those techniques to cattle as well. This month, a team of researchers from the Universities of Texas and Missouri announced the results of a study focusing on the origins of breeds specific to the Americas, like the Texas Longhorn. The story told by the cows' genes crisscrosses the trajectory of human evolutionary history from wild aurochs that lived alongside Neanderthals, to Christopher Columbus and, ultimately, the American West

Policies that mandate public data archiving (PDA) successfully increase accessibility to data underlying scientific publications. However, is the data quality sufficient to allow reuse and reanalysis? We surveyed 100 datasets associated with nonmolecular studies in journals that commonly publish ecological and evolutionary research and have a strong PDA policy. Out of these datasets, 56% were incomplete, and 64% were archived in a way that partially or entirely prevented reuse. We suggest that cultural shifts facilitating clearer benefits to authors are necessary to achieve high-quality PDA and highlight key guidelines to help authors increase their data’s reuse potential and compliance with journal data policies.

We surveyed 807 researchers (494 ecologists and 313 evolutionary biologists) about their use of Questionable Research Practices (QRPs), including cherry picking statistically significant results, p hacking, and hypothesising after the results are known (HARKing). We also asked them to estimate the proportion of their colleagues that use each of these QRPs. Several of the QRPs were prevalent within the ecology and evolution research community. Across the two groups, we found 64% of surveyed researchers reported they had at least once failed to report results because they were not statistically significant (cherry picking); 42% had collected more data after inspecting whether results were statistically significant (a form of p hacking) and 51% had reported an unexpected finding as though it had been hypothesised from the start (HARKing). Such practices have been directly implicated in the low rates of reproducible results uncovered by recent large scale replication studies in psychology and other disciplines. The rates of QRPs found in this study are comparable with the rates seen in psychology, indicating that the reproducibility problems discovered in psychology are also likely to be present in ecology and evolution.

Science has now provided an excuse for those of us used to being chided by our dentists for not brushing often enough: blame your cavities on the Industrial Revolution. New research suggests that the dietary changes associated with the Industrial Revolution 150 years ago (and with the invention of agriculture 10,000 years ago) caused an epidemic of tooth decay and gum disease. The culprits are oral bacteria. The human mouth is the native home of a wide variety of microbes, some helpful species and some harmful. Over the course of human history, eating more starch and sugar seems to have tipped the balance in favor of the disease-causing bacteria. Even without ultrasonic toothbrushes and mouthwashes, our ancestors may have had healthier teeth than we do!

This list of conceptual understandings regarding evolution are aligned across grade levels to help instructors identify age-appropriate learning goals for their students and understand how concepts taught at one grade level lay the groundwork for more sophisticated concepts later on. The Framework is divided into five strands: History of life; Evidence of evolution; Mechanisms of evolution; Nature of science; and Studying evolution

Understanding Evolution provides a large collection of images and illustrations you may download and use in lectures and presentations to help explain the concepts of evolution.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"A new study shows that a novel embryonic cleavage pattern can evolve without affecting other developmental traits. But let’s start at the beginning. The earliest stages of animal development – the moments following fertilization of the egg – involve a sequence of cell divisions that will eventually turn a zygote into a multicellular embryo. This process is termed _cleavage_. Two cells become four. Four cells become eight. Etcetera. But it’s not just the addition of new cells that is important in this process – it’s also their orientation. Just as there are all shapes and sizes of animals, the pattern of early cell division varies across different organisms. In some animals, these cleavage patterns play the crucial role of precisely positioning early embryonic cells in just the right way. A single misplaced cell can have catastrophic consequences for the growing embryo..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

Extinction is a fact of modern life. Humanity's relentless encroachment on the wilderness has marred the diversity of life with conspicuous gaps where the Tasmanian tiger, the Passenger Pigeon, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, and countless others used to be. As these extinctions accumulate, the Earth inches closer and closer to its sixth mass extinction. We are all too familiar with the concept of mass extinction - a disaster strikes and sets off a chain of events that result in a massive die-off. But you may not have considered what comes next: what happens to surviving species in the wake of a massive extinction event? Recent research suggests that mass extinctions shake up life on Earth in surprising ways.

In the next few months, college students across the country will be offered the chance to save a life by swabbing cells from the insides of their cheeks and registering as a potential marrow donor with Be The Match The Give A Spit About Cancer campaign, which launched in October, helps college students organize marrow donor registry drives. The cells collected in these drives are used to figure out who might be able to donate marrow or blood stem cells to a patient with a life-threatening disease like leukemia. While ethnicity is irrelevant to most medical procedures, marrow and blood stem cell transplants are an exception to this rule.

This month, the World Health Organization announced that tuberculosis cases are on the decline for the first time in at least 20 years. We seem finally to be winning what has been a very long battle. Tuberculosis bacteria have been attacking us since modern humans began to migrate out of Africa around 40,000 years ago. If you enjoy classic literature, you'll be familiar with the cough, fever, and weight loss of consumption (the old-fashioned term for tuberculosis), which used to be a near certain death sentence. That changed when the aminoglycoside antibiotic streptomycin was discovered in 1943.

This interactive site allows participants to learn about skeletal anatomy by viewing the bones of a human, chimpanzee, and baboon. The Comparative Anatomy section enables users to make direct comparisons of bones. The material is appropriate for science teacher education as it illustrates how careful observation leads one to wonder about the dizzying beauty of a planet that works by bringing us one different creature after another.

Though we often think of evolution as occurring at a snail's pace, one fish species is highlighting just how quickly evolution occurs in the right circumstances. Between 1947 and 1976, General Electric released more than a million pounds of PCBs into the Hudson River. PCBs can kill fish and seabirds and have been linked to cancer and other serious health problems in humans. PCBs were banned in 1979, but the toxins have remained at high levels in the Hudson because they settle into the sediments on the bottom of the river and don't break down. Now, scientists have discovered that, over the past 60 years, one bottom-feeding fish species, the Atlantic tomcod, has evolved resistance to PCBs.