Evolution
8 cards from across every topic, each citing a source. Tap one to open it in the feed.
- Dinosaurs aren't extinct. They're chirping outside.
Birds descend from small feathered predatory dinosaurs, the theropods, the group that also included Tyrannosaurus and …
- Every one of your cells houses former bacteria.
Mitochondria, the power plants of your cells, were free-living bacteria about two billion years ago. An ancestral cell …
- Evolution wants nothing. It only sorts.
A common mistake: species "develop" traits because they need them. In reality, variants arise at random and the …
- Fungi are closer relatives of yours than of plants.
Fungi and animals together form a group called Opisthokonta. Their last common ancestor lived after the plant lineage …
- Goosebumps are a program for fur you don't have.
Every hair has a tiny muscle attached, the arrector pili. In cold or fear it contracts and raises the hair. In furred …
- How bacteria run evolution in a matter of days.
Take an antibiotic and most bacteria die. A few happen to carry a mutation that protects them. Those survive and …
- Oxygen was once Earth's deadliest pollutant.
About 2.4 billion years ago, cyanobacteria began releasing oxygen in bulk. For most life at the time the gas was toxic …
- Sharks existed before trees did.
Sharks have been swimming the seas for around 400 million years. The first organism that counts as a tree …