The Friends of Charles Darwin

In the ongoing struggle between evolution and creationism, says philosopher of science Michael Ruse, Darwinians may be their own worst enemy.

Fossils of an ancient fish—dating back 450 million years, when the creatures had neither bones nor teeth—have been found in South Africa. The finds, which are 50 million years older than any other fossil fish in Africa, will help provide a "missing link" in the evolution of early fish.

The "mass graveyard" of a bird-like dinosaur has been uncovered in Utah, US, Nature magazine reports this week. Scientists believe the previously unknown species was in the process of converting to vegetarianism from a rather more bloodthirsty diet.

Britain has made good progress in trying to preserve some of its rarest wild plants, but it has largely failed to halt widespread species decline. That is one key message to come out of the new Vascular Plant Red Data List for Great Britain, published by a coalition of botanists. The report represents the most comprehensive assessment to date of the state of the UK's flora.

The world famous mural of author HG Wells in Bromley town centre will not be returning - instead it will be replaced by one celebrating Charles Darwin, the council has revealed.

Radar has helped resolve a long-standing controversy about the purpose of a strange dance performed by bees, Nature magazine reports. The famous "waggle" dance contains information about the whereabouts of nectar, just as was originally proposed in the 1960s, scientists now claim. The theory met with scepticism, partly because people did not believe bees could decode such a complex message. But now radar tracking has proved they do follow waggle dance instructions.

Many fish species in the North Sea are steadily moving northwards to escape warming waters, researchers report. Commercially important fish such as cod, whiting and anglerfish have shifted significantly north, while some other species moved to colder depths. Scientists warn in Science magazine that some fish may disappear from the North Sea by 2050.

The first humans who left Africa to populate the world headed south along the coast of the Indian Ocean, Science magazine reports. Scientists had always thought the exodus from Africa around 70,000 years ago took place along a northern route into Europe and Asia. But according to a genetic study, early modern humans followed the beach, possibly lured by a seafood diet. They quickly reached Australia but took much longer to settle in Europe.

A completely new family of rodents has been recognised to take account of a rat-like creature from Laos. The animal has long whiskers, stubby legs and a tail covered in dense hair and was on sale in a hunters' market… Known by locals as Kha-Nyou, the rodent is said to be a nocturnal vegetarian that prefers the cover of the forest.

A volcano spewed ash and lava onto part of the ecologically delicate Galapagos Islands on Friday, threatening to kill vegetation and some animals on the island of Fernandina, officials said. The islands, of the coast of Ecuador, are considered one of the most important natural preserves in the world.

Efforts are under way to restore part of Siberia to the way it was more than 10,000 years ago, before the end of the last ice age. The "Pleistocene Park" experiment will try to turn the wet, boggy tundra back to the dry grasslands that once were home to large herds of stampeding mammals.

It may be more than 200 years old, but the story of the "first platypus" is still told in Australian schools. When European settlers sent back a specimen of this bizarre creature, scientists were baffled and concluded it was probably a fake. It was only when more examples arrived from "Down Under" that the issue was resolved. But what happened to that original specimen that so famously bamboozled the experts? Well it's still intact in a London museum, and in surprisingly good condition.

A spider relative called a harvestman trapped in amber could shed light on how arachnids were affected by the extinction that wiped out dinosaurs.

A previously unknown monkey species has been found in the mountains of southern Tanzania. The animal is believed to be a critically endangered species, with no more than perhaps a thousand individuals remaining. The highland mangabey, as it is called, lives in the trees and is thought to be closely related to the baboon family.

Ornithologists say they are increasingly concerned about the "alarming" decline of some of Britain's woodland birds species. What is most perplexing them is that while there are many theories, there appears to be no obvious explanation, so it is very difficult to try to halt the trend. Something is happening in the dappled glades and airy canopies of Britain's woodlands.

The Homo floresiensis find proved how little we know about our species. Tim Radford meets Chris Stringer, who is piecing together the messy evidence of human evolution.

As the Religious Right tries to ban the teaching of evolution in Kansas, Richard Dawkins speaks up for scientific logic.

Cayman Island scientists are calling for assistance to pull a unique species of blue iguana back from the brink. The animal has a long history: DNA evidence suggests it has been around for the past three million years. However, the mere 25 of them left on Grand Cayman seemed recently to face a dismal future.

Giant squid are rare and mysterious, but the Natural History Museum has just landed itself a 30ft specimen. Alok Jha meets a monster.

A species of Alpine cricket has proved itself to be an uncharming lothario who can mate every 18 seconds, European scientists report. While most crickets serenade their lady friends before making a move, this particular species is somewhat brutish, often causing injury during sex. Anonconotus alpinus will sneak up on any passing female, clamping her violently with his sharp pincers.

Horny male trilobites may have been fighting it out over the females hundreds of millions of years ago, making them the earliest combatants known to take part in such sexual contests.

…I have come on this expedition to join Col Bailey and a group of friends on a tiger hunt. The fact that the Tasmanian "tiger" was officially declared extinct nearly 70 years ago does not deter Col and his fellow tiger hunters one bit.

It is unlikely humans exterminated the immense marsupial Diprotodon and other huge beasts that once roamed Australia in a short killing spree. Two new studies refute the theory that humans moving on to the continent more than 45,000 years ago took out its megafauna in a 1,000-year "blitzkrieg". The studies suggest instead a more complex pattern to the extinctions. Their authors say humans certainly had a role but it was not as important as the period's climate changes.

University teams in Yorkshire and the United States have found proof to confirm a theory started by Charles Darwin on how pruning helps shape plants. Their discoveries, published in science magazine Nature, are the result of 15 years of work, continuing a line of investigation started in the 1880s. Darwin guessed there was a substance in the growing tips of plants which affected their growth. Fifty years later, it was identified as a hormone (a signalling chemical) called auxin, extracted from plants for many years and used in rooting powders. But no one could work out how the plant measured its own auxin levels and decided to put out more shoots when its original auxin producers were lost.

Ecuador on Tuesday lifted a ban on the fishing of lucrative sea cucumbers from the Galapagos islands in a move that environmental groups have said could threaten conservation efforts. The authorization by the Galapagos reserve management authority will permit fisherman from the islands to capture up to three million sea cucumbers in 60 days from June 12.

In a stunning example of evolution at work, scientists have now found that changes in a single gene can produce major changes in the skeletal armor of fish living in the wild. The surprising results, announced in the March 25, 2005, issue of journal Science, bring new data to long-standing debates about how evolution occurs in natural habitats. "Our motivation is to try to understand how new animal types evolve in nature," said molecular geneticist David M. Kingsley, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the Stanford University School of Medicine. "People have been interested in whether a few genes are involved, or whether changes in many different genes are required to produce major changes in wild populations."