The Friends of Charles Darwin

Scientists have re-constructed part of the genetic code that would have existed in a common ancestor of placental mammals, including humans. The creature, thought to be a nocturnal shrew-like animal, lived alongside dinosaurs about 75 million years ago. The researchers used computer analysis to compare and contrast modern mammal genomes and then modelled a sequence that would have been common to all.

"The dust falls in such quantities as to dirty everything on board, and to hurt people's eyes; vessels even have run on shore owing to the obscurity of the atmosphere. It has often fallen on ships when several hundred miles from the coast of Africa, and at points 1,600 miles distant in a north and south direction." Charles Darwin's note from 1832 suggests the dust clouds that engulfed HMS Beagle as it anchored in St Jago in the Cape de Verd Islands off the African coast were dramatic, if unsettling. But they were by no means freak events. Such clouds - which can be as large as the Spanish mainland - form all year round, as dust is whipped up from the continent's arid savannahs and carried across the north Atlantic to the Caribbean and beyond. The dust blowing off Africa contributes most of some 2bn tonnes' worth shunted around the atmosphere each year (the rest originating in Asia, South America, the US and Australia). But while those immediately downwind of the clouds know well the mayhem they can cause, new research is revealing a hitherto unforeseen danger the dust clouds may pose.

Scientists in Brazil say they have uncovered a new species of dinosaur [Unaysaurus tolentinoi]. The creature, identified from fossils, is thought to have lived more than 200 million years ago, making it one of the earliest dinosaurs known to science. The research team, from the University of Rio de Janeiro, says there are strong similarities with its creature and remains discovered in Europe. This lends weight to the view that the world's landmasses were once joined as a single continent in Triassic times.

Original documents from the 1881 census can be viewed online as part of the National Archives' plan to publish all censuses dating from 1841 to 1891… Famous names in the 1881 census include Winston Churchill and Charles Darwin.

They were not us. That is, Neandertals were probably not members of our own species, judging from recent analyses of mitochondrial DNA. Nonetheless, Neandertals were clearly built on a human-like plan (or vice versa) with some crucial modifications.

Snakes in Australia have evolved to counter the threat of invasive, poisonous cane toads, scientists have found. The toads (Bufo marinus) were only introduced in the 1930s but have already overwhelmed the local wildlife in Queensland with their rapid reproduction and toxic flesh, which kills many predators foolish enough to make them a meal. But for two species of snake, at least, natural selection has produced a defence: the snakes have developed relatively smaller heads and longer bodies.

Left-handed people may be better equipped for close range mortal combat than those who rely on their right hands, according to researchers… They discovered a correlation between levels of violence and the proportion of the left-handed population—the more violent a culture, the higher the relative proportion of left-handers. The cause for this, the researchers suggest, is that left-handers are more likely to survive hand-to-hand combat. The news could provide comfort for those who routinely struggle with right-handed scissors and can-openers, but some experts are unconvinced by the link. Left-handed people are more prone to some health problems, suggesting the trait ought to disappear naturally over many generations through natural selection. But left-handers continue to make up a small proportion of the human population, hinting there could also be some evolutionary advantage to being left-handed.

UK researchers have collected the first hard evidence of monkeys using tools, Science magazine reports. Cambridge researchers observed wild capuchin monkeys in the Brazilian forest using stones to help them forage for food on an almost daily basis.

A lone whale with a voice unlike any other has been wandering the Pacific for the past 12 years. Marine biologist Mary Ann Daher of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, US, and her colleagues used signals recorded by the US navy’s submarine-tracking hydrophones to trace the movements of whales in the north Pacific. The partially declassified records show that a lone whale singing at around 52 hertz has cruised the ocean every autumn and winter since 1992. Its calls do not match those of any known species, although they are clearly those of a baleen whale, a group that includes blue, fin and humpback whales.

If it walks like a flamingo and looks like a flamingo, it is not necessarily a flamingo - or even a close relative. A controversial genetic study suggests we have completely misunderstood how the majority of birds are related, and that some species that look almost identical are not related at all. The discovery comes from an analysis of the evolution of the bird gene beta-fibrinogen. It suggests that the Neoaves, a group that includes all modern bird species except waterfowl, landfowl and flightless birds, actually comprises two distinct lineages called the Metaves and Coronaves, and that many birds which look alike are not in the same lineage. …But Joel Cracraft at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, US, is not convinced. "The base of modern birds is a very difficult problem to resolve. This is a welcome data set, but it’s not going to be this simple," he says. [The researchers] are working with 11 other genes to corroborate their results.

Rising levels of greenhouse gases may not be quite as bad for coral reefs as was previously thought. A team of Australian scientists say that the damage done by increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the oceans will be offset by warmer waters, which will make coral grow faster. But other researchers counter that warming will do more harm than good.

A species of monkey unknown to science has been photographed in India by an international team of researchers. The monkey, a member of the macaque family, was sighted in the state of Arunachal Pradesh, which lies in the country's remote north-eastern region.

More than 300 hybrid lions housed in zoos and safari parks across India will be prevented from reproducing and allowed to die out over the next few years. The country's Central Zoo Authority (CZA) has ordered all establishments holding Asiatic lions which have been mated with African lions to be sterilised so that they become extinct. The authorities say the hybrid lions have weakened the blood pool of India's lions and have turned out to be mangy, emaciated and suffering from mental and physical defects.

Diana monkeys possess a complex vocal tract whose shape can be adjusted to articulate sophisticated sounds - just as humans do, scientists report. Non-human primates were thought to have vocal tracts resembling simple tubes incapable of sophisticated articulation. But a British-US-German team reports in the Journal of Human Evolution that the alarm calls of Diana monkeys would be impossible without a complex tract. It says the finding may shed light on how and when human speech evolved.

A first edition of Charles Darwin's famous work in which he set forth his theory of evolution was among the rare items stolen Dec. 17 from the Transylvania University library. Darwin’s book, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, was published in 1859. The first edition may have been limited to about 1,600 copies.

The devastating earthquake that struck the Indian Ocean probably caused some islands to move by several metres. The massive thrust of the tectonic plates may have heaved the Indian Ocean floor towards Indonesia by about 15 metres, seismologists think.