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By: Andy Flick, scientific coordinator, Evolutionary Studies Initiative A team of astronomers have made the discovery of a lifetime that will help answer burning questions on the evolution of stars. The group is led by Evolutionary Studies Initiative member and Stevenson Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Keivan Stassun. Stassun’s… Read More

By Miquéla Thornton Due to a multitude of human-driven impacts, the Earth is experiencing a biodiversity crisis. It has been referred to as the Sixth Mass Extinction, and scientists are examining similar events in the planet’s geological past looking for clues in ancient ecosystems to help us solve… Read More

Vanderbilt National Fossil Day Event (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LLoS5-2WB8) Note: This is a past event. You can watch the event at YouTube. Description: Vanderbilt’s Evolutionary Studies Initiative invites you to attend a virtual webinar. During the webinar, each paleontologists will discuss the fantastic creatures they study and how they became fascinated… Read More

New research from may explain why we sometimes overvalue items we’ve acquired—to an irrational degree—irrespective of their market or sentimental value. This phenomenon is called the endowment effect, and researchers have long puzzled over why it occurs, and why the size of the effect can vary so much across items… Read More

When it comes to our differences from Neanderthals, most of what we know comes from comparing fossils. But fossils can only tell us about bones and not whole living organisms. That’s changing thanks to a new paper from graduate student Laura Colbran in the lab of Tony Capra, Associate… Read More

The La Brea Tar Pits are an one-of-a-kind fossil site in Los Angeles. The site contains fossils of predators that tried to eat horses, bison and camels stuck in the tar over the past 50,000 years and themselves became trapped, offering the best opportunity to understand Ice Age animals… Read More

Amphibian populations have been declining around the world for more than 40 years. One culprit is the fungus B. dendrobatidis, which causes the disease chytridiomycosis. Although amphibians have robust immune defenses, the response to this pathogen is often ineffective, suggesting that the fungus somehow counters the immune response. Evolution@Vanderbilt member… Read More

Evolution@Vanderbilt paleontologists Rachel A. Racicot, visiting scholar, and Simon A.F. Darroch, Assistant Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, and their collaborators are looking into the evolutionary origins of the whistles and squeaks that dolphins and porpoises make – part of the rare echolocation ability that allows them… Read More

Earth’s first dinner party wasn’t impressive, just a bunch of soft-bodied Ediacaran organisms sunk into sediment on the ocean floor, sharing in scraps of organic matter suspended in the water around them. But work from Evolution@Vanderbilt paleontologist Simon A.F. Darroch, assistant professor of earth and… Read More

Most living things have a suite of genes dedicated to repairing their DNA, limiting the rate at which their genomes change through time. But recent work by graduate student Jacob L. Steenwyk in the lab of Antonis Rokas, Evolution@Vanderbilt director, and their collaborators at the University of… Read More