We now know that DNA works in many different ways: through genes that make the stuff of our bodies, through switches that turn those genes on and off, and through sequences of DNA’s chemicals that throw those switches. ibid.
We are living records of our past and so we can look at DNA of individuals today and get a sense of how they came to be that way. Professor Pardis Sabeti, Harvard University
When we’re looking at human evolution what we have to realise is we define ourselves by our big brain and by everything that results from that big brain. Professor Leslie Aiello, University College London
Anthropological, biological, and genetic evidence all put the origin of modern humans at between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago, probably in Africa. There is also much data that show an outburst of cultural behavior occurring around 50,000-40,000 years ago in Europe. That’s when archaeologists date the oldest evidence of burial ceremonies, body ornaments, and cave paintings. William J Cromie, Harvard Gazette article discussing work of Daniel Lieberman, ‘Facing up to Modern Man’
The main task of any theory of evolution is to explain adaptive complexity, that is, to explain the same set of facts that Paley used as evidence of a creator. John Maynard Smith, cited C H Waddington, Towards a Theoretical Biology
Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is the only workable explanation that has ever been proposed for the remarkable fact of our own existence, indeed the existence of all life wherever it may turn up in the universe. John Maynard Smith, The Theory of Evolution p15 1958
Natural selection is the only workable explanation for the beautiful and compelling illusion of ‘design’ that pervades every living body and every organ. Knowledge of evolution may not be strictly useful in everyday commerce. You can live some sort of life and die without ever hearing the name of Darwin. But if, before you die, you want to understand why you lived in the first place, Darwinism is the one subject that you must study. ibid. p16
The last decade has seen a steady increase in the application of concepts from the theory of games to the study of evolution. Fields as diverse as sex ratio theory, animal distribution, contest behaviour and reciprocal altruism have contributed to what is now emerging as a universal way of thinking about phenotypic evolution. John Maynard Smith, Evolution and the Theory of Games p7, 1973
The proper place for the study of religious beliefs is in a church or temple, at home, or in a course on comparative religions, but not in a biology class. There is no place in our world for an ideology that seeks to close minds, force obedience, and return the world to a paradise that never was. Students should learn that the universe can be confronted and understood, that ideas and authority should be questioned, that an open mind is a good thing. Education does not exist to confirm people’s superstitions, and children do not learn to think when they are fed only dogma. Tim Berra, Evolution and the Myth of Creationism
Fundamentalists long for the return of a more moral America, an America that may never have been. All around them they see what they perceive as declining morality and spirituality. They reason that if humans share ancestry with the other animals, we have no reason to behave as anything other than animals. This view neglects the fact that humans are the only known animals with the ability to contemplate the consequences of their own actions. It also fails to recognize that there is a great deal of good in the world, the nightly news notwithstanding. Crime existed long before the theory of evolution, even before the writing of the Bible, and biologists do not like crime any more than the creationists do. Evolutionary theory is not a license to run amok, and neither is a belief in the literal interpretation of the Bible a guarantor of moral behavior. ibid.
[A] curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he can understand it. Jacques Monod, On the Molecular Theory of Evolution
Louisiana’s [1981] Creationism law, which requires creationism to be taught wherever the theory of evolution is explained, is unconstitutional, a US Court of Appeals ruled yesterday ... ‘The Act’s intended effect is to discredit evolution by counterbalancing its teaching at every turn with the teaching of creationism, a religious belief,’ the US Court of Appeals said. San Francisco Chronicle article 9th July 1985
Seventy-two American winners of the Nobel Prize in science urged the Supreme Court yesterday to strike down a Louisiana law requiring public schools teaching evolution to also teach Creationism ... Creation-science is linked closely to a literal interpretation of the biblical book of Genesis, teaching that Earth and most of its life forms came into existence suddenly about 6,000 years ago ... The case before the High Court is Edwards v Aguillard. San Francisco Chronicle, 19th August 1986
Life and love by love
We passed through the cycles strange,
And breath by breath and death by death
We followed the chain of change. Langdon Smith, Evolution
Any competent biologist is aware of a multitude of problems yet unresolved and of questions yet unanswered. After all, biologic research shows no sign of approaching completion; quite the opposite is true. Disagreements and clashes of opinion are rife among biologists, as they should be in a living and growing science. Anti-evolutionists mistake, or pretend to mistake, these disagreements as indications of dubiousness of the entire doctrine of evolution. Their favourite sport is stringing together quotations, carefully and sometimes expertly taken out of context, to show that nothing is really established or agreed upon among evolutionists. Some of my colleagues and myself have been amused and amazed to read ourselves quoted in a way showing that we are really anti-evolutionists under the skin. Theodosius Dobzhansky, Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution
The evolution of life, and the evolutionary origin of mankind, are scientifically established as firmly and completely as any historical event not witnessed by human observers. Any concession to anti-evolutionists, suggesting that there are scientific reasons to doubt the facticity of evolution, would be propagating a plain untruth. Theodosius Dobzhansky, letter to J Kunamoto 1972
And it wasn’t just mammoths. Before long hundreds of other strange-looking fossils began to be identified as creatures that had mysteriously disappeared off the face of the Earth. The claim that some animals that had once lived had gone extinct raised uncomfortable questions. If every creature in God’s fixed universe had a place and a purpose, why had some died off? Michael Mosley, The Power of Science: Power, Proof & Passion, BBC 2010
[Robert] Chambers called it Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. And in it he presented a compelling case for the notion that species are not fixed. They change. That everything had developed from an earlier form. He called this concept Transmutation. We call it Evolution ... The public simply couldn’t get enough of this book. ibid.
There is no other known snail that has a metal fortified shell. Even in the animal kingdom we don’t know of anything else that has a metal fortified shell. The animals have spent evolutionary time honing the composition of a shell to make it deflect predators, to make it strong. So it’s like having armour, right. Here’s this little animal that sits in this warm water that’s coming out, this metal ridge, and it’s sitting there mining these metals. Professor Cindy Van Dover, marine biologist Duke University North Carolina
The shape of your face, walking on two legs, the way you see the world, what makes you the person you are? The story of each and every one of us can be traced back millions of years to the plains of Africa. Dr Alice Roberts, Origins of Us 1/3: Bones, BBC 2011
The story starts millions of years ago with an ape who stood upright and walked. ibid.
We are so closely related to chimpanzees we share nearly 99% of our DNA with them. ibid.
We have a common ancestor with chimpanzees going back about six or seven million years ago. So I’m here visiting my relatives. ibid.
Standing upright causes us so many problems – so why did we do it? ibid.
Lucy still appears very ape-like. And her brain was very similar in size to a chimpanzee’s. But becoming a walking ape had fundamentally changed the shape of her body. ibid.
Walking would fundamentally alter the course of our evolutionary history. ibid.
A big bushy family tree. But while most of those lineages would eventually die out one would go on to be extraordinarily successful. ibid.
Our hands have changed because of something we’ve done ... The tools we have created have shaped our hands. ibid.
The need for food hasn’t just shaped sea-squirts it’s shaped us as well – from our own guts to the way we move, the way the behave and even the way we experience the world around us. Dr Alice Roberts, Origins of Us 2/3: Guts
With our three types of colour receptors our eyes can see up to a million different colours. ibid.
Home erectus’s smaller teeth meant a smaller jaw. And he lost that ape-like snout of earlier ancestors. ibid.
The evidence of your diet is etched onto the surface of your teeth in the forms of scratches and pits. ibid.
We are specifically adapted to eating starchy foods. ibid.