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Horizon highlights – Darwin edition

February 6, 2009

Our regular roundup of sci-tech stories from across the Web throws Charles Darwin a 200th birthday party. Let’s kick it off:

Book review: "Darwin’s Sacred Cause"
"Darwin, ironically, shared that passion with abolitionist º£½Ç´óÉñs, with both declaring the brotherhood and essential equality of all humans, regardless of race. While º£½Ç´óÉñs found their justification in the Bible – all humans as the children of one God – Darwin sought evidence in nature, gleaning it from years of collected data in the field and piecing together the meaning, a process that persuaded him that humans were indeed a single species derived from a common ancestor." [via CSMonitor Books]

Looking back:
"On the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birthday two myths persist about evolution and natural selection." [via Scientific American]

Looking ahead:
Thinkers share their questions and predictions about where Darwin's theory will go from here, and explain what scientists still don't know about evolution. [via New Scientists]

Unnatural selection:
"Living creatures took millions of years to evolve from amphibians to four-legged mammals - with larger, more complex brains to match. Now an evolving robot has performed a similar trick in hours, thanks to a software 'brain' that automatically grows in size and complexity as its physical body develops." [via New Scientists]

Experiments:
"The Pyrenean ibex, a form of wild mountain goat, was officially declared extinct in 2000 when the last-known animal of its kind was found dead in northern Spain." [via The Telegraph]

Specimens:
"It's official: birds within the family Zosteropidae, also called white-eyes, evolve more rapidly than any other known bird." [via Wired Science]