Right now, in the amazing moment that to us counts as the present, we are deciding, without quite meaning to, which evolutionary pathways will remain open and which will forever be closed. No other creature...

Somewhere in our DNA must lie the key mutation (or, more probably, mutations) that set us apart—the mutations that make us the sort of creature that could wipe out its nearest relative, then dig up...

Of the many species that have existed on earth–estimates run as high as fifty billion–more than ninety-nine per cent have disappeared. In the light of this, it is sometimes joked that all of life today...