r/evolution

Or some really cool facts

Hey y'all! In preparation for a personal project, I've decided to amass a collection of resources regarding evolution and the origin of life. So far, my list goes as follows:

1. Prebiotic Chemistry and the Origin of Life by Anna Neubeck, Sean McMahon
2. Dinosaurs: A Concise Natural History by David E. Fastovsky, David B. Weishampel, John Sibbick
3. Evolutionary Genetics: Concepts, Analysis, and Practice by Glenn-Peter Sætre, Mark Ravinet
4. Introduction to Paleobiology and the Fossil Record by Michael J. Benton, David A. T. Harper
5. Plant Evolution: An Introduction to the History of Life by Karl J. Niklas
6. The Princeton Guide to Evolution by Jonathan B. Losos, David A. Baum, Douglas J. Futuyma, Hopi E. Hoekstra, Richard E. Lenski, Allen J. Moore, Catherine L. Peichel, Dolph Schluter, Michael C. Whitlock
7. Understanding Human Evolution by Ian Tattersall
8. Vertebrate Palaeontology by Michael J. Benton
9. Spinosaur Tales: The Biology and Ecology of the Spinosaurs by David Hone and Mark Witton
10. The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte
11. The Rise and Reign of Mammals by Steve Brusatte
12. Extinction by Michael J. Benton
13. When the Earth was Green by Riley Black
14. The Last Days of the Dinosaurs by Riley Black
15. Otherlands by Thomas Halliday
16. Dinosaurs Rediscovered Michael J. Benton
17. Eve by Cat Bohannon
18. Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin

Are there any textbooks that I don't have that might be beneficial? I recognize that some of these references are not purely for scholarly purposes, and they'll more or less be used as inspiration than education.
I'm more focused on getting contemporary works that delve into modern understanding for educational purposes.
Thanks!

What’s the selective pressure that produces this result?

The one where that Russian scientist bred the foxes for friendliness and they started turning into dogs made me wonder what else would be as interesting if not more interesting as that experiment. What do y’all think?

I’m looking for some recommendations about biology books, mainly taxonomy, evolutionary biology and history of life, fossil documentation, clade based evolutionary history books is the vibe.
Like, if anyone knows a good cetacean/afrotheria evolution book it would be amazing.
I just read epic Earth, it was good, I just like it a little more scientific.
Thanks a lot🙏

Since 97% of the worlds water is salt water, is there a reason why humans have not been able to evolve to process salt water? It is a more frequent source of water.

To me it feels like a huge gap in evolution, obviously small changes due to imperfect DNA cloning adds up over a long time causing changes, but at the rate that goes I feel like it's unlikely the first 2 organisms to fertilize, because that big jump seems like it would cause the species to go extinct.

idk if i worded that well and i dont think I could explain it too much better but this was bugging me for a while

Approximately 252 million years ago, Earth experienced "The Great Dying" (the Permian–Triassic mass extinction). It remains the largest known mass extinction in Earth's history.

The most likely cause was a series of massive volcanic eruptions known as the Siberian Traps, located in present-day Siberia. These eruptions occurred in stages over millions of years, releasing vast quantities of CO₂ and other gases into the atmosphere.

Consequently, global temperatures spiked, oceans warmed and became more acidic, severe oxygen depletion occurred in many marine areas, and ecosystems across the planet collapsed catastrophically.

The result?

Approximately 90–96% of marine species went extinct.
About 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species also perished.
Forests suffered massive collapse.
Coral reefs virtually disappeared, taking millions of years to recover.

In contrast, Earth's ecosystems recovered relatively quickly after the asteroid impact that ended the dinosaur era some 66 million years ago. However, following "The Great Dying," it took roughly 10 to 15 million years for biodiversity and ecosystems to fully re-establish themselves.

In short, while the extinction of the dinosaurs is the most famous in history, it was not the most destructive.

Sometimes, the real story is the one least discussed.

It always confused me how some of those extremely complex and convoluted courtship methods would evolve naturally. It is mostly seen on birds, but not only on them. In many cases is not learned, It is instinctual. So how?

Is not something as straightforward as, "new generation has hotter bodies so they are better adapted to the increasing cold temperatures, so they have better chances of surviving and reproducing".

I realise it sounds it at times in this post and title, but I'm not a creationist, I'm biology student, but I still haven't been able to answer this through research, i just keep getting told why beavers build dams.

I understand the benefits of a beaver building a dam, not asking for why they do it. But evolution is generally a tinkerer, right? I'm aware that sometimes 'big' mutations can happen like a whole translocation or HGT or something, but generally a new phenotype happens when a gene is modified so that a protein does something different or doesnt work. How can a dam building protein just happen? What biochemical or mechanical change could have possibly happened to cause an instinct to move wood so that it pools in a beneficial way? Surely the mum beaver didnt have a precursor non functional just-in-case-our-species-needs-it-one-day dam building gene that suddenly became active, or an anti dam building gene that became inactive? Even with translocations etc i don't see how it could evolve.

Even if something like that appeared through gradual changes - tinkering - enough selection pressure would have to be present for it to become fixed, so i dont see how a beaver could be 'slightly' dam building in a way that has a great enough benefit that its more likely to pass on genes.

Tldr how can something as complex as dam building evolve so specifically and quickly enough that it is beneficial enough to become fixed by selection pressure? Is the answer in epigenetics?

Obviously, carcinization is cool but more famous than it should be, when there's a bunch of dumb meme builds that evolution has done more times than crab. What do you think is the most prominent?

Some contenders: Crab (carcinization) 5 times: brachyura, king crabs, porcelain crabs, sponge crabs, weird australian nonsense

Hopping mouse (jerboazation) 7 times: kangaroo rat, potoroo, hopping mouse, jumping mouse, gerboa, kultarr, springhare

Snake (ophidization) 14 times: I'm not gonna list all these but there are a LOT of independently snake-shaped reptiles

Reptiles with sails on their back (dimetrodontization) 10 times: I'm having trouble tracking down all of these but it happens so often I'm genuinely curious why a big back sail made of neural spines isn't present in stem-reptilians

Anything else I'm missing?

Note: I’m not posting these questions with the hope of finding answers. I just want to know if some people share my curiosity :D

1. How did life originate?

2. What is the definition of life?

3. How did cellular structures and biochemical pathways evolve? Is it possible to develop a field comparable to evolutionary developmental biology or comparative anatomy, but focused on cell and molecular biology?

4. What kinds of dinosaurs lived in what is now Iran?

5. What did Spinosaurus actually look like?

6. What did skin of T.rex look like? Feathers? Scales? Both?

7. How did Pterosaurs and Dinosaurs originate?

8. What really sets humans apart from other living organisms?

9. Why did the human brain evolve the way it did? What is the evolutionary purpose of human intelligence?

10. Why did Whales and Ichthyosaurs evolve gigantic body sizes so early in their evolutionary history?

11. Is evolution predictable?

12. Does life follow a predictable evolutionary path on every planet?

13. What is humanity’s place in the history of life?

14. What is the place of life within the non-living universe?

15. How can we anticipate and stop future Viruses before they emerge?

16. Where do Viruses truly belong in the tree of life? Where did they come from? Are all Viruses merely parasites, or do they play a deeper role that we have not yet fully understood?

17. How did Dinosaurs evolve into birds?

18. What did Andrewsarchus really look like?

19. What is the natural mating system of humans?

20. How could we build a society that minimizes—or perhaps even eliminates—sexual conflict in humans?

21. What is consciousness?

22. How does the brain construct and process its representation of the world?

23. Could DNA itself be considered a system that processes information about its environment and responds through adaptation, in a way that is loosely analogous to the brain?

24. Could the Buddhist concept of emptiness be applied to biology, suggesting that none of our biological definitions have an objective existence independent of our own conceptual framework?

25. What is the biological definition of an individual? What actually qualifies something as an individual in biology?

26. Homo sapiens has existed for at least 250,000 years, yet civilization emerged only within the last 10,000 years. What prevented humans from developing civilizations throughout most of their history? Could other human species have developed civilizations as well? If so, why didn’t they?

27. Why were placental mammals able to spread from Africa across Eurasia and eventually into the Americas, but not from Asia into Australia? What prevented them from colonizing Australia in the same way?

28. Why did concealed ovulation and permanently enlarged breasts evolve in human females, when most other female mammals have obvious signs of ovulation and develop enlarged breasts only during lactation?

29. Why did so many megafaunal species disappear around the end of the last Ice Age? What caused the widespread extinction of large mammals such as mammoths, Smilodon, and the short-faced bear across different continents?

30. Inclusive fitness theory suggests that helping genetically related individuals can increase an individual’s evolutionary success. Why, then, does kin-selected cooperation generally stop at close relatives rather than extending to all members of the same species—or even to more distantly related organisms, since all life shares some degree of common ancestry?

When looking at an evolution chart for fish, I had to go pretty far down to get down to tetrapods. And they're pretty close to lungfish and coelacanths. In the chart it says Tetrapoda (not considered fish), but wouldn't they be? I always hear people say insects are actually crustaceans, and birds are reptiles, so would the same not apply to all tetrapods being considered fish. Would birds be reptiles AND fish!?!?

A few days ago, I was getting a haircut and started thinking about something that had never really crossed my mind before. We spend so much time and money taking care of our hair. Some people are proud of it, some worry about losing it, and entire industries exist around keeping it healthy. Yet most of us rarely stop to think about why humans have hair in the first place.

The more I thought about it, the stranger it seemed. Hair clearly serves important purposes. The hair on our heads helps protect us from direct sunlight and temperature extremes. Eyebrows keep sweat from running into our eyes. Eyelashes help block dust and other particles. Even body hair can act as a sensory system, helping us detect insects, movement, or changes in our surroundings. From a survival standpoint, hair doesn't seem useless at all.

But then I started thinking about other mammals. Most mammals are covered in fur because it helps them survive. Fur provides insulation, protection from the environment, and in some cases even camouflage. If hair is such a useful evolutionary tool, why are humans so different? Compared to almost every other mammal, we're surprisingly hairless. We lost most of the thick body hair that our ancestors likely had, yet we kept a large amount of hair on our heads and in a few specific areas.

That feels like a very specific evolutionary choice. If body hair was important, why lose so much of it? If it wasn't important, why keep any of it at all? Why keep thick scalp hair while allowing most of the rest of the body to become relatively hairless? It seems like there must have been a significant advantage that outweighed the benefits of being covered in fur.

I've read a few theories. Some suggest that losing body hair helped early humans stay cool while walking and running long distances in hot climates. Others argue that sexual selection played a role, with less body hair becoming a preferred trait over many generations. I've also seen arguments that reduced body hair made it harder for parasites such as ticks and lice to thrive. But none of these explanations feels completely satisfying on its own.

So I'm curious what people who know more about evolution, anthropology, biology, or human history think. What is the most convincing explanation for why humans evolved to lose most of their body hair while keeping the hair on their heads? Was it mainly about temperature regulation, disease prevention, attraction, or something else entirely? And if losing body hair was such an advantage, why did evolution stop halfway instead of making humans completely hairless?

I'd love to hear both scientific explanations and personal theories. It's one of those everyday things that seems simple at first, but the more I think about it, the more fascinating it becomes.