170 Fun Facts About Evolution

Evolution is defined as the change in what over successive generations?

It happens when evolutionary processes act on genetic variation within a population.

Which two British naturalists independently conceived the theory of evolution by natural selection?

Darwin preferred the phrase 'descent with modification' to 'evolution'.

In which book did Darwin first set out the theory in detail?

It was published in 1859, and Vestiges, an anonymous 1844 book, had already stirred up the public.

What is the ultimate source of all genetic variation in organisms?

Such changes may alter a gene's product, disable it, or do nothing; about half of those in coding regions are harmful and half neutral.

What is the random fluctuation of allele frequencies from one generation to the next called?

It works fastest in small populations and can fix or eliminate alleles by chance alone.

According to the neutral theory of molecular evolution, most evolutionary change results from what?

The better-supported 'nearly neutral' version notes that a change harmless in a small population may not be harmless in a large one.

How is an organism's evolutionary fitness measured?

It is not simply the number of offspring: an animal whose young all die contributes little to future generations.

What is a 'throwback' trait like hind legs in dolphins, from reactivated dormant genes, called?

Wingless stick-insect species have regrown wings the same way.

Which term describes natural selection that favours both extremes of a trait over the average?

Directional selection shifts the average; stabilising selection squeezes variation towards it.

Cumbersome antlers, mating calls and bright male colours are products of which evolutionary process?

The survival cost is offset by higher mating success from hard-to-fake displays.

In a famous long-term laboratory experiment, E. coli evolved the ability to use what as a nutrient?

A Flavobacterium separately evolved an enzyme to eat nylon by-products, and Sphingobium learned to degrade a synthetic pesticide.

The bones in a bat's wing closely match those in a mouse's foot and a human hand because of what?

Even squid and vertebrate eyes share a common set of homologous genes, an idea called deep homology.

Which of these is listed as a vestigial structure in humans?

The appendix, goose bumps and some primitive reflexes are others; whales and snakes keep vestigial hip bones.

What is the term for a structure that evolved for one function but became useful for another?

The flat head of the lizard Holaspis guentheri evolved for hiding in crevices and now helps it glide.

Bones that form the jaw in other animals develop into which structure in mammals?

It is a favourite example of evolutionary developmental biology.

A genetic change in chickens can cause embryos to grow what, resembling those of crocodiles?

It shows lost structures can reappear through changes in developmental genes.

Which evolutionary biologist defined the Biological Species Concept in 1942?

It defines species as groups of interbreeding natural populations reproductively isolated from other such groups.

What is the most common way new animal species form, in geographically isolated populations?

Selection and drift act independently on the separated populations until they can no longer interbreed.

What term describes speciation in a small isolated population, driven by the founder effect?

The isolated group is much smaller than the parent population, so inbreeding boosts selection on homozygotes.

The grass Anthoxanthum odoratum undergoes parapatric speciation in response to what?

Metal-tolerant plants shifted their flowering time until they were reproductively isolated from their neighbours.

Arabidopsis suecica arose about 20,000 years ago through what process, common in plants but rare in animals?

Polyploidy lets the chromosomes of two parent species pair up properly at meiosis; the event has been repeated in the lab.

Which theory explains the fossil pattern of short bursts of evolution between long periods of stasis?

It links rapid change to speciation in small or isolated populations that rarely fossilise.

Which mass extinction wiped out about 96 percent of marine species?

The ongoing Holocene extinction runs at 100 to 1,000 times the background rate.

Roughly what proportion of all species that have ever lived on Earth are now extinct?

That is over five billion species; only about 1.9 million living ones have been named.

What does the acronym LUCA stand for?

It lived roughly 3.5 to 3.8 billion years ago; in 2016 scientists identified 355 of its genes.

How old is the Earth?

The earliest undisputed evidence of life is at least 3.5 billion years old, from the Eoarchean.

Where were microbial mat fossils found in 3.48-billion-year-old sandstone?

Graphite of biological origin in 3.7-billion-year-old rocks comes from Greenland.

What percentage of their genomes do humans and chimpanzees share, according to DNA comparisons?

The few areas of difference help date their common ancestor via the molecular clock.

Roughly when did eukaryotic cells emerge?

Later engulfment of bacteria produced mitochondria, and of cyanobacteria-like cells produced chloroplasts.

The Cambrian explosion, in which most modern animal types appeared, began roughly how long ago?

The burst of diversity took about 10 million years; rising atmospheric oxygen is one proposed trigger.

Which group of animals makes up the majority of animal species today?

Even so, most of Earth's biomass and species are prokaryotes.

Roughly when did modern humans appear, according to the article's timeline?

The Homininae go back about 10 million years and mammals about 129 million.

Which pre-Socratic philosophers first suggested one organism could descend from another?

The Roman poet Lucretius carried the idea into De rerum natura.

Which Arab scholar wrote in his 1377 Muqaddimah that humans developed from 'the world of the monkeys'?

He described a process by which 'species become more numerous'.

Whose 1809 'transmutation' theory was the first full-fledged evolutionary scheme?

It imagined lineages inheriting changes caused by use and disuse, with an inherent drive towards complexity.

Whose 1798 Essay on the Principle of Population influenced Darwin's idea of a 'struggle for existence'?

Darwin began developing natural selection from 1838 onwards.

Which American palaeontologist gave the first solid fossil evidence for evolution by unearthing horse ancestors?

His 1880 monograph on toothed birds helped bridge dinosaurs and birds; Darwin called it the best support for the theory in 20 years.

What did Darwin call his provisional, and ultimately wrong, theory of heredity?

Mendel's 1865 laws of inheritance eventually replaced most of it.

Which scientist distinguished germ cells from somatic cells, showing heredity passes only via the germ line?

De Vries then linked Darwin's pangenes to Weismann's distinction and put them in the nucleus.

In which decades did the 'modern synthesis' fuse natural selection with Mendelian population genetics?

It reframed evolution as change in allele frequencies and folded in drift and gene flow.

Who wrote in 1973 that 'nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution'?

He also supplied the standard definitions of adaptation, adaptedness and adaptive trait.

What is the informal name for evolutionary developmental biology?

It studies how changes in embryonic development produce new features across generations.

What is the 1925 case that kept evolution out of American textbooks for a generation called?

Teaching evolution only became legally protected with Epperson v. Arkansas in 1968.

Which 2005 court case excluded 'intelligent design' from American science classrooms?

Creationism itself had been barred by decisions in the 1970s and 1980s.

Breeding together different cave populations of which blind fish produced offspring with working eyes?

Different mutations had knocked out sight in each isolated cave, so the crosses complemented each other.

Whose 1960s 'evolution strategies' made artificial evolution a recognised optimisation method?

Genetic algorithms in particular were popularised by John Henry Holland's writing.

The four genes the human eye uses to sense light all descend from what?

Gene duplication supplies the raw material for new genes; one copy keeps the old job while the other is free to change.

What is the intentional breeding of domesticated plants and animals for chosen traits called?

Directed evolution applies the same principle to proteins in the lab through repeated rounds of change and selection.

Which alternative metaphor to the evolutionary 'tree' accounts for horizontal gene transfer?

Darwin himself briefly mentioned the idea before abandoning it.

Which two processes are the sources of new species and the loss of species, respectively?

Change within a single species over time is called anagenesis.

In which century did naturalist John Ray first apply 'species' strictly to plants and animals?

Linnaeus's 1735 classification then recognised the hierarchical nature of species relationships.

Where is Charles Darwin buried?

He has been called one of the most influential figures in human history.

At which university did the young Darwin neglect his medical studies to investigate marine invertebrates?

He then studied at Christ's College, Cambridge from 1828 to 1831.

How many years did Darwin's voyage aboard HMS Beagle last?

He was originally told it would take two years; it ran from 1831 to 1836.

How many copies of the first printing of On the Origin of Species were oversubscribed on its release day?

The entire stock sold out to booksellers on 22 November 1859.

Whom did Charles Darwin marry in January 1839?

The Anglican ceremony at Maer was arranged to suit the Wedgwoods' Unitarian faith.

HMS Beagle was one of more than 100 10-gun brig-sloops of which type?

More than 100 were built; Beagle was launched at Woolwich in 1820 for £7,803.

How much of the Beagle voyage did Darwin spend on land rather than at sea?

He was at sea for only 18 months of the nearly five-year expedition.

Which book, read during the Beagle voyage, greatly influenced Darwin's geological thinking?

Darwin was 22 and hoping to see the tropics before becoming a parson.

At which Argentine site did Darwin find gigantic fossils of extinct mammals?

Such fossils were then known from very few specimens.

Which naturalist gives his name to the faunal boundary dividing Asian and Australasian animals in Indonesia?

It separates animals of Asian origin from those of Australasian origin.

Wallace is sometimes called the father of which discipline, the study of species' geographic distribution?

He was the 19th century's leading expert on the geographical distribution of animals.

In which river basin did Wallace begin his extensive fieldwork?

His 1858 paper spurred Darwin to rush out On the Origin of Species.

How many characteristics of pea plants did Gregor Mendel study?

They included plant height, pod shape and colour, seed shape and colour, and flower position and colour.

In Mendel's pea crosses, green seeds reappeared in the second generation at what ratio to yellow?

He coined 'dominant' and 'recessive' to explain the pattern.

Gregor Mendel served as abbot of which religious house in Brno?

His pea experiments ran from 1856 to 1863.

Which biologist was nicknamed 'Darwin's Bulldog'?

He coined the term 'agnosticism' in 1869.

Which term for the position that ultimate truths are unknowable did Huxley coin in 1869?

He elaborated on it in 1889 to frame what is knowable and what is not.

Which bishop supposedly asked Huxley whether he descended from a monkey via his grandfather or grandmother?

The 1860 exchange took place at the Oxford University Museum.

On what date did the famous Oxford evolution debate between Huxley and Wilberforce take place?

It was seven months after the Origin was published, during the British Association's meeting.

Which anatomist coached Bishop Wilberforce before the Oxford debate?

Owen and Huxley also feuded over whether humans were closely related to apes.

To which bird family do Darwin's finches actually belong?

Their closest relative is the South American dull-coloured grassquit.

Who popularised the term 'Darwin's finches' in a 1947 book?

Percy Lowe first used the term in 1936.

Which of Darwin's finches lives outside the Galápagos, on an island belonging to Costa Rica?

There are about 18 species in the group, a classic example of adaptive radiation.

The rise of dark peppered moths in 19th-century England is an example of what phenomenon?

Sewall Wright called it the clearest observed case of a conspicuous evolutionary process.

By 1895, the dark form of the peppered moth made up what share of the population in one record?

The dark carbonaria form had been rare, with a specimen collected by 1811.

Where in Nunavut were the first Tiktaalik fossils found in 2004?

The lobe-finned fish from 375 million years ago is a key fish-to-tetrapod transition fossil.

From which geological period does Tiktaalik date?

Its fins had sturdy interior bones that let it prop itself up in shallow water.

All Archaeopteryx fossils come from limestone quarried near which German town?

The bird-like dinosaur lived about 150 million years ago in the Late Jurassic.

What does the name Archaeopteryx mean?

Its German nickname is Urvogel, 'primeval bird'.

Who discovered the Australopithecus skeleton 'Lucy' in Ethiopia in 1974?

She was named after the Beatles song played repeatedly in camp that night.

Roughly what fraction of Lucy's skeleton was recovered?

She lived about 3.2 million years ago and walked upright despite an ape-sized skull.

What does Lucy's Amharic name Dinkinesh mean?

Her combination of small brain and upright gait showed bipedalism preceded big brains.

Which archaic human was the first to leave Africa and wield fire?

It spanned nearly two million years and was first described from Java by Eugène Dubois.

Under what genus and species name did Eugène Dubois first describe Java Man in 1893?

He worked from a skullcap, molar and femur found on Java.

Dubois's team found Java Man at Trinil on the banks of which waterway?

The site at Trinil yielded a tooth, a skullcap and a thighbone.

In what year was the first recognised Neanderthal fossil found in Germany's Neander Valley?

Neanderthals went extinct roughly 40,000 years ago as modern humans arrived.

Sequencing of the Neanderthal genome in which year revealed interbreeding with modern humans?

Neanderthals may have persisted in Gibraltar thousands of years after dying out elsewhere.

The first Denisovan was identified in 2010 from DNA in what remains from a Siberian cave?

Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains gave the group its name.

Which Chinese skull, named Homo longi, was shown to represent a Denisovan?

Analysis of its mitochondrial DNA and proteins made the link.

Homo floresiensis, nicknamed the 'Hobbit', was discovered in 2003 in which cave?

The individual stood about 1.1 metres tall; its small size is attributed to insular dwarfism.

What is generally accepted as the cause of Homo floresiensis's small body size?

The phenomenon is common among island animals.

Homo naledi was discovered in 2013 in which South African cave system?

More than 1,550 specimens from at least 15 individuals were recovered.

Which living animals are the closest relatives of whales and dolphins?

The two lineages diverged about 55.5 million years ago; whales moved into the water in what is now Pakistan.

In which modern country did the land-to-water transition of cetaceans mostly take place?

Research there in the late 1970s revealed several stages of the transition.

What is the cladistic term for similar traits arising by convergent evolution?

Wings of birds, bats and pterosaurs are analogous, but their forelimbs are homologous.

Which bacteria are mitochondria thought to be related to?

Chloroplasts, by contrast, are thought to descend from cyanobacteria.

Which Russian botanist articulated the endosymbiotic theory in 1905 and 1910?

Lynn Margulis substantiated it with microbiological evidence in 1967.

Lynn Margulis's landmark 1967 paper on the origin of eukaryotic cells was rejected by roughly how many journals first?

Her idea that mitochondria were once free bacteria was ignored for another decade.

With which British chemist did Lynn Margulis co-develop the Gaia hypothesis?

It proposes that Earth functions as a unified self-regulating system.

Under Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium with alleles A and a at frequencies p and q, what is the frequency of heterozygotes?

The principle holds only in the absence of drift, selection, mutation and other forces.

Who proposed the Red Queen hypothesis in 1973?

It explains the constant extinction probability seen in the fossil record through coevolution.

Which puzzle of sterile social insects led Darwin to touch on kin selection in the Origin?

He argued a benefit to related organisms of the same 'stock' could explain it.

Which term for a unit of cultural evolution did The Selfish Gene introduce in 1976?

Dawkins built on George C. Williams's work and W. D. Hamilton's kin selection.

With whom did Stephen Jay Gould develop the theory of punctuated equilibrium in 1972?

It was contrasted with phyletic gradualism.

With whom did E. O. Wilson develop his 1967 theory about species numbers on islands?

Wilson, partially blinded at seven, turned to entomology and later founded sociobiology.

Which Japanese biologist introduced the neutral theory of molecular evolution in 1968?

He was known for using diffusion equations to compute allele fixation probabilities.

Which three scientists are considered the 'great trio' of the modern synthesis in population genetics?

Richard Dawkins called Fisher the greatest of Darwin's successors.

Which idea about life's origin did J. B. S. Haldane's 1929 article on abiogenesis introduce?

He later renounced British citizenship and became an Indian citizen in 1961.

Which measure did Sewall Wright discover along with methods to compute it in pedigree animals?

He was a founder of population genetics with Fisher and Haldane.

Batesian mimicry is named after a naturalist who studied butterflies in which country's rainforests?

Henry Walter Bates described harmless species imitating harmful ones.

In Müllerian mimicry, what kinds of organisms converge in appearance?

Fritz Müller proposed it in 1878 with one of biology's first frequency-dependent selection models.

To which country do the Galápagos Islands belong?

They lie about 900 km west of South America and were found by Bishop Tomás de Berlanga in 1535.

Which bishop accidentally discovered the Galápagos Islands in 1535?

There is no firm evidence anyone reached the islands before him.

Beagle captain Robert FitzRoy later coined which everyday weather term?

He founded what became the Met Office in 1854 and was governor of New Zealand.

Robert FitzRoy served as the second governor of which colony from 1843 to 1845?

He tried to protect settlers and Maori from speculative land sales.

Which Birmingham discussion group of industrialists counted Charles Darwin's grandfather as a founder?

He turned down George III's invitation to be Physician to the King.

Which naturalist established extinction as a scientific fact and is called the founding father of paleontology?

He proposed that extinct species were wiped out by periodic catastrophes.

Which philosopher dubbed Lyell's gradualist view 'uniformitarianism'?

He contrasted it with the catastrophism championed by Cuvier.

Which Scottish scientist is known as the 'Father of Modern Geology'?

He studied Siccar Point and Salisbury Crags to argue the Earth could not be young.

Which gases, plus water, did the 1952 Miller-Urey experiment use to simulate early Earth?

An electric arc simulating lightning produced amino acids.

Which Nobel laureate supervised Stanley Miller's origin-of-life experiment at the University of Chicago?

It supported the Oparin-Haldane hypothesis of chemical origins of life.

Roughly when did the Great Oxidation Event begin?

Microbial photosynthesis pushed oxygen to as much as 10 percent of modern levels.

What is the proposed radiation of Ediacaran life 575 million years ago called?

It followed the thaw from the Cryogenian glaciation.

Which metal is unusually abundant in the K-Pg boundary clay, pointing to an asteroid?

The impact killed off all non-avian dinosaurs about 66 million years ago.

What fraction of plant and animal species died in the K-Pg extinction event?

Most tetrapods over 25 kg vanished, except some like sea turtles and crocodilians.

How wide is the Chicxulub crater buried under Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula?

It was made by an asteroid about ten kilometres across.

Which two geophysicists searching for oil discovered the Chicxulub crater in the late 1970s?

The Alvarez impact hypothesis was bolstered by the crater's identification in the early 1990s.

Who discovered the Burgess Shale in 1909?

He returned almost every year until 1924, amassing over 65,000 specimens.

The Burgess Shale fossils, in the Canadian Rockies, date to which period?

It preserves soft parts of middle Cambrian animals.

In what year was the Piltdown Man hoax definitively exposed?

A 2016 review pinned the 1912 fraud on amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson.

Which amateur archaeologist was identified in 2016 as the perpetrator of the Piltdown hoax?

He apparently sought recognition from other archaeologists.

Who described the Taung Child, the first early hominin fossil found in Africa, in 1925?

It was the first evidence that humanity originated in Africa.

To which species does the Taung Child belong?

Its forward foramen magnum indicated bipedality despite a chimp-sized brain.

Which Swedish geneticist won the 2022 Nobel Prize for work on the genomes of extinct hominins?

He founded the genetics department at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig.

Lactase persistence, the ability to digest milk as an adult, is especially high in which population?

Most people worldwide lose lactase activity after weaning.

Which two scientists first noticed the 'molecular clock' in hemoglobin differences in 1962?

They proposed a roughly constant rate of protein change over time.

What is the German term for a ring species?

Neighbouring populations interbreed, but the end populations of the ring cannot.

Which German biologist founded cladistics, beginning the work as a prisoner of war in 1945?

He coined synapomorphy, symplesiomorphy and paraphyly, and specialised in true flies.

What are the shared derived characteristics used as evidence in cladistics called?

A clade is a last common ancestor plus all its descendants.

Which Swede formalised binomial nomenclature and is called the father of modern taxonomy?

He published the first edition of Systema Naturae in the Netherlands in 1735.

In which Kent village did Darwin live and work from 1842 until his death?

Down House is now in the care of English Heritage.

In what year did Darwin publish The Descent of Man?

It applied evolutionary theory to humans and detailed his theory of sexual selection.

To which family member did Darwin send Descent of Man chapters for editing?

He also took advice from his wife Emma to avoid damaging inferences.

Richard Dawkins was named the first holder of which Oxford professorship in 1995?

He held the post until 2008.

People carrying one copy of the sickle cell allele gain some resistance to which disease?

This heterozygote advantage keeps the allele common where malaria is endemic.

Which English anatomist coined the word 'Dinosauria'?

He accepted evolution but was an outspoken critic of Darwin's natural selection.

How old was Mary Anning when she found the first correctly identified ichthyosaur skeleton?

She hunted fossils in the Blue Lias cliffs at Lyme Regis, Dorset.

In which Dorset town did Mary Anning collect her Jurassic marine fossils?

Winter landslides exposed new fossils that had to be grabbed before the sea took them.

What does the species name Homo habilis mean?

It lived in East and South Africa about 2.4 to 1.65 million years ago.

'Ardi', the 4.4-million-year-old skeleton found in Ethiopia, belongs to which species?

A college student, Yohannes Haile-Selassie, uncovered the first hand bone in 1994.

Louis Leakey called Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and Biruté Galdikas by what collective nickname?

He saw field research on living primates as key to understanding human evolution.

At which Tanzanian site did Louis and Mary Leakey make their famous discoveries?

Mary found the robust Zinjanthropus skull there and classified the site's stone tools.

In what were the famous Laetoli hominin footprints preserved?

Mary Leakey's team found the tracks in 1976, strong evidence for Pliocene bipedalism.

How far is Laetoli from the Leakeys' famous site to its north?

The tracks were discovered in 1976 and excavated by 1978.

Which extinct ape's first fossil skull, believed ancestral to humans, did Mary Leakey discover?

She discovered fifteen new animal species during her career.

On which island did Wallace say he was when he wrote his 1858 natural selection paper?

His journal suggests he was actually on nearby Gilolo.

Which physician and poet of the Midlands Enlightenment was grandfather to the author of the Origin of Species?

His poems included a statement of evolution and the relatedness of all life.

How many Italian wall lizards were moved to the islet of Pod Mrčaru in 1971, founding a fast-evolving colony?

Five breeding pairs came from Pod Kopište, 3.5 km away; a 2008 study found striking changes in their bodies and behaviour.

Dmitry Belyayev's famous fox-domestication experiment took place at an institute in which Siberian city?

He bet that selecting for tameness alone would drag along droopy ears and patchy coats, a 'domestication syndrome' challenged in 2019.

What single criterion did Belyayev believe Neolithic farmers had selected for in all domesticated species?

Selecting foxes for tameness alone, he argued, explained why dogs differ so much from their wolf ancestors.

In 1975, Japanese scientists found bacteria digesting synthetic polymer by-products in ponds beside what?

The compounds did not exist before nylon's invention in 1935; the strain is now Paenarthrobacter ureafaciens KI72.

Which geneticist proposed that the nylonase enzyme EIII arose from gene duplication plus a frameshift mutation?

A single inserted thymidine would turn an arginine-rich 427-amino-acid protein into the 392-amino-acid enzyme.

Who discovered the first living coelacanth among a fisherman's catch in South Africa in December 1938?

The museum curator sent drawings to ichthyologist J. L. B. Smith, who cabled 'Most Important Preserve Skeleton'; the genus Latimeria honours her.

The second living coelacanth species, found in the late 1990s, lives in the seas of which country?

Latimeria menadoensis ranges from Manado to Papua; the first species is also known around the Comoro Islands.

The word 'coelacanth' refers to which feature of the first fossil named by Agassiz in 1839?

Popularly called a living fossil, the group's body shapes were in fact far more varied in the deep past than today.

Dark-coated rock pocket mice living on black basalt show a perfect link between colour and which gene?

Michael Nachman's 2003 study found the Pinacate mice's melanism tied to the melanocortin-1 receptor, though New Mexico mice went dark another way.

Roughly how many Hawaiian honeycreeper species are thought to have existed before humans colonised Hawaii?

Only 17 are confirmed alive today; the finches radiated into forms with hugely elongated, curved bills.

The horse's 50-million-year evolution transformed which dog-sized forest dweller into the modern single-toed animal?

Horses share ancestry with tapirs and rhinos as odd-toed ungulates, and most of their evolution happened in North America.

The London Underground mosquito was first described in the 18th century from specimens collected where?

Peter Forsskål named it Culex molestus for its voracious biting; despite the name it long predates the Tube.