evolution in the news (3 stories)

[mellowtigger]

Here's a report that may be of interest to the "locals".  A Minnesota fossil has helped to pin down the date, 96 million years ago, when insects started playing a role in plant pollination. Apparently air pollinators make their little pollen grains solitary so that they're easy to suspend in a small breeze and get carried to another plant. Insect pollinators, though, improve their chances by clumping together pollen grains (from 5 to 100 of them) for easy-carry packages that insects can haul around.  Researchers found this earliest evidence of clumping in Minnesota rock.

"The researchers sampled pollen from three sites in Minnesota’s Dakota Formation, which represents a time period when a shallow seaway covered North America’s interior."

Of special interest to me, however, is this news that autistic folk seem to be mutating at a faster rate than the general population. That fits into my own pet theory that Mother Nature is experimenting with creating a new kind of human.

"While most chromosomal abnormalities were inherited, the researchers found that seven percent of children with autism carry structural changes in the genome that are not found in their parents. The rate of such de novo changes in the general population is typically less than one percent, Scherer said."

Our understanding of genetic changes in humans is already improving at an impressive rate. That rate is likely to increase soon though, now that 1000 people will be fully mapped.  Called plainly "The 1000 Genome Project", it will make the results freely available through public databases, so scientists around the globe can readily access their results.