Evolutionary starting points limit endpoints. Dinosaurs and mammals had different constraints, so dinosaur extinction didn't just cause a temporary drop in diversity, fundamentally different animals evolved- like humans. Nov. 25 2022, The Conversation.

Giant predatory mosasaurs roamed the saes 66 million years ago. They show how the sudden, unexpected asteroid impact ended the age of the dinosaurs. But the evolution of these huge predators may have begun with another mass extinction.

Before Columbus, the New World was discovered at least six times, starting at least 30,000 years ago.

Studying our past provides hints of our future. We’re likely to live longer, become taller, more slender, more beautiful, more agreeable- and our brains will shrink. Imagine tall, willowy, long-lived supermodels- with the personality of a Golden Retriever. Friendly, maybe not that bright.

Stone Age Innovators. Technologies like fire, spearpoints, and the bow tended to be invented once, then spread rapidly. That suggests a handful of creative people had an outsized influence on the course of human history. Dec 30, 2021, The Conversation

Humans are very different from other animals. But until recently, there were other human species, which were far more like us. The division between us and the rest of nature would seem far less clear if they were still here. October 7, 2021, The Conversation.

When- and why- did humans start using drugs and alcohol? July 2021, The Conversation.

Given tens of millions of years, wildly improbable events- like primates crossing oceans- become highly probable. April 29, 2021. The Conversation.

Neanderthals not only fought wars, they must have been very, very good at it- or they wouldn’t have been able to hold us off for so long. The Conversation, November 2020

Archaeology suggests that modern human intelligence evolved recently, DNA suggests a more ancient origin. They may track very different things. The Conversation, Sept 2020.

Why did humans take more than 200,000 years to invent agriculture? Until the extinction of the megafauna, we simply didn’t need to farm.

Nine human species walked the Earth 300,000 years ago. Now, we’re the only species that remains. What happened to all the others? We did.

Are we alone in the universe? It depends on whether intelligence is a likely evolutionary path, or a rare fluke. Our history is full of unique, one-off events that suggests our evolution was very improbable. The Conversation, October 2019.