Our modern environment is nothing like the one we evolved for. In our latest video, we speak with Daniel Lieberman, palaeoanthropologist and author of Fed Up, to explore how this mismatch has led to some of the greatest health challenges of our time.

From ultra-processed foods to body fat, Lieberman explains why nothing in diet and health makes sense except in light of evolution.

What is the optimal diet and physical activity level according to evolution? And how can false evolutionary reasoning lead to untenable dieting? Join us as we feast on millions of years of human evolution, and how it never prepared us for modern life.

A wide variety of fruits and seeds that were smothered in the ash from a volcanic eruption nearly 75 million years ago suggest flowering plants were diverse and thriving in the time of the dinosaurs, far earlier than previously known.

Researchers had thought the emergence of large seeds and fruits followed the end-Cretaceous extinction, 66 million years ago, and was tied to the rise of mammals and birds.

鈥淣ow, we have evidence that large fruit and seeds and the related ecological conditions can be traced back to 10 million years before the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs,鈥� says at the University of California, Berkeley.

Lee and his colleagues analysed ancient fossils collected from the Jose Creek Formation in New Mexico over the past three decades. They are so well preserved because, like the Roman city of Pompeii, the plant fossils were locked within a bed of ash from a volcanic eruption.

The team discovered an extraordinary 77 different kinds of fruits and seeds. Such a ready banquet of nutritious fruit would almost certainly have been eaten by herbivorous dinosaurs and other animals.

The findings show flowering plants that enclose their seeds in fruit, also known as angiosperms, were co-evolving with the animals that fed on them as a way of dispersing their seeds.

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鈥淲hile many Mesozoic animals, like dinosaurs, birds, pterosaurs and mammals, were suggested to have consumed angiosperm diaspores, we didn鈥檛 have the botanical evidence supporting this,鈥� says Lee. 鈥淣ow we have.鈥�

The first flowering plants emerge in the fossil record 136 million years ago, but, until now, it was thought early forms were mostly small and weedy and vastly different to the range of species that dominate Earth鈥檚 forests today.

In Cretaceous deposits elsewhere, the fruit and seeds are roughly the size of a poppy seed on average 鈥� far smaller than the blueberry-sized seeds at Jose Creek.

Of the 77 new types of seeds identified by the scientists, nearly a third are classified as fleshy while only 5 per cent are winged, which would imply dispersal by wind rather than animals.

Alongside the flowering plants, the tropical forest also contained several kinds of conifers, including a redwood relative, as well as palms.

While many of the seed shapes are familiar to us today, the forest structure would have been extremely different and unfamiliar, says team member , also at the University of California, Berkeley.

The larger fossils can be compared to blueberries and large acorns in size, she says. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 have a good idea which plant group produced these; for that, you have to find them attached to shoots with leaves,鈥� says Looy. 鈥淗owever, when they are fleshy they are likely dispersed by larger herbivores.鈥�

罢丑别听New 女生小视频 Book Club聽has been reading a popular-science classic in June: Richard Dawkins鈥檚聽, which celebrates its 50^th聽anniversary this year.

I hadn鈥檛 previously read this one 鈥� it had always intimidated me (an English graduate). But my colleague Rowan Hooper, a behavioural ecologist as well as our podcast editor, reread it to see how it holds up today and concluded it pretty much did. He had a few issues with the biology and said it 鈥渇eels its age鈥� 鈥� Dawkins himself admits to 鈥渟exist pronouns鈥� in a 1989 preface 鈥� but Rowan found that 鈥渢he core message remains relevant not just because genes being selfish is a brilliant meme (a term Dawkins coins at the end of the book), but because it is such a powerful way to understand how evolution operates: the metaphor makes us think as if genes behave selfishly鈥�.

Read an extract from The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

Dive into the opening of The Selfish Gene's first chapter 'Why are people?', the New 女生小视频 Book Club鈥檚 read for June to mark 50 years since the popular science classic was first published

It was time to gird my loins and embark on a book I鈥檝e always been a bit embarrassed for omitting. I have to admit to being a little exhausted at first: there was preface after preface in my edition, in which Dawkins was arguing with all sorts of people about how the book had been received. This was somewhat confusing, given I hadn鈥檛 鈥� yet 鈥� 聽read it. I should have skipped straight to the first chapter.

Once I got into it, though, I found myself (mostly) carried along swimmingly by Dawkins鈥檚 writing. He certainly has a knack for a good metaphor 鈥� I particularly liked the idea of our bodies as 鈥渟urvival machines鈥� for genes. Without having studied any biology after the age of 16, I got my head around his central point: that natural selection works because genes, or copies of them (replicators, as he calls them), are out to survive, building the optimal bodies (or survival machines) in order to do so.

I did find his tone a little irascible and hectoring at times. It was like he was having conversations with various colleagues/rivals about his points, rather than the general reader. For example, talking about how 鈥渙ne gene may be regarded as a unit that survives through a large number of successive individual bodies鈥�, he writes that 鈥渋t is an argument that some of my most respected colleagues obstinately refuse to agree with, so you must forgive me if I seem to labour it!鈥�. We鈥檙e also firmly told about the correct pronunciation of 鈥渁lgae鈥� (a hard 鈥済鈥�, people). There鈥檚 a lot of that sort of thing, but I finished feeling pleased to have got my head (mostly) around his argument.

Book club members were less impressed 鈥� this is, I think, the book that has received the most negative comments of any we鈥檝e read, with a handful of members deciding not to join us in reading it at all, as they disagreed with some of Dawkins鈥檚 personal views. (I share the perspective of member pwhipp, who wrote on our channel: 鈥淚 don鈥檛 think we should reject serious scientific writing simply because the author is combative, controversial, or personally irritating. If we did that consistently, the shelves would become very thin indeed.鈥�) Pwhipp, by the way, called The Selfish Gene 鈥渁n important and very well-written book, whatever one thinks of Dawkins鈥� public persona or his outspoken atheism鈥�.

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Pwhipp was in the minority, however. Alan P was one re-reader who felt 鈥渦nderwhelmed鈥� by The Selfish Gene. 鈥淭he text is (as he admits himself but doesn鈥檛 change) sexist throughout. It鈥檚 not just the assumption of male pronouns for general statements, but there are some comments in the end notes and the text of the book itself that even for the eighties are questionable,鈥� he wrote. 鈥淭he tone is argumentative 鈥� sometimes I鈥檓 not clear that it isn鈥檛 argument for its own sake 鈥� but it鈥檚 definitely jarring. The endless footnotes contradicting the text are really difficult to follow. If the science has changed then the text of the book needs to change as well. So it may be that it was a masterly summary of the known science in its day 鈥� but now it鈥檚 a bad tempered, difficult to follow, mess.鈥�

Alan did enjoy the new chapter 鈥淣ice guys finish first鈥�, added to later editions: 鈥淚 was always of the opinion that genes don鈥檛 make ethics so it鈥檚 nice to have the idea that even if genetic determinism was a thing, that cooperation is a successful strategy in the wild.鈥�

The Selfish Gene at 50: Why Dawkins鈥檚 evolution classic still holds up

When Richard Dawkins鈥檚 first blockbuster book was published half a century ago, few genes had ever been sequenced or studied in detail. Yet the book鈥檚 gene-centred view of evolution still has much to teach us in today鈥檚 genetic age

Dee55, meanwhile, first read The Selfish Gene back in the early 80s and found it 鈥渁n absolute revelation鈥� at the time. Going back to it was 鈥渋nteresting鈥�, but, as a humanities graduate, Dee55 found 鈥渟pecific challenges in following some of the arguments鈥�. 鈥淚 enjoyed the Chapter 5 stuff on the ESS (evolutionary stable strategy) as a fun ride, but I think I need to reread it before continuing. I am very aware that I am just not in a position to assess RD鈥檚 ideas in the context of other evolutionary biology thinking,鈥� Dee55 wrote.

Rowan took a deeper dive into the book in a longer piece for New 女生小视频, speaking to biologists about its message and what still stands today. Taking into account developments in the field that have happened over the past 50 years, Rowan wrote that 鈥渁ll the evolutionary biologists I spoke to for this piece struggled to find major problems with The Selfish Gene鈥�. There was one exception: the idea of the meme, which, despite its memetic proliferation today, 鈥渄oesn鈥檛 hold up鈥�, he was told.

Overall, then, a thorny choice: this particular piece of popular science was notedly unpopular for the New 女生小视频 Book Club.

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A set of exquisitely preserved 300-million-year-old fossils suggests that early four-limbed vertebrates did not undergo a metamorphosis between their juvenile and adult stages, challenging conventional ideas about the evolution of life on land.

鈥淲e have for a very long time assumed that these animals were broadly amphibian-like, and that this life cycle would have bridged the gap between life in the water and life on land,鈥� says at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.

Today鈥檚 reptiles, birds, mammals and amphibians belong to a group called tetrapods, which evolved from lobe-finned fish around 390 million years ago. But almost nothing was known about the early developmental stages of these ancestral lobe-finned fish, says at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia.

Pardo and his colleague , also at the Field Museum, examined a collection of fossils that were unearthed between the 1960s and 1990s at the Mazon Creek fossil site, south-west of Chicago. The preserved animals lived 307 million to 309 million years ago, during the Carboniferous Period.

Embolomeres, which had a body around 2 metres long in adulthood, were the largest tetrapods in the Carboniferous and one of the top predators. They spent most of their time in water, but had small legs with which they could have clambered onto the land.

The fossils included two 2-centimetre-long baby embolomeres, which were so well preserved that the scientists could see soft tissues and even egg yolk.

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In tadpoles, the yolk sac remains inside the body for a few days after hatching as a store of energy. But the young embolomeres had a yolk sac outside the body, similar to the case for some young fish such as lungfish.

Amphibian larvae, such as tadpoles, have external gills that enable them to breathe underwater, but the young embolomeres did not. 鈥淭he absence of external gills across early development in these animals is the smoking gun,鈥� says Pardo.

The skull and skeleton have 鈥渁ll the important parts seen in an adult embolomere鈥�, says Pardo. The fossils show that embolomeres remained more or less the same from the time they hatched from their eggs until they reached adulthood.

鈥淗uman bodies basically work the same way from birth through adulthood, but we get bigger and our proportions change, but we don鈥檛 undergo the sort of fast, rapid change you see in a frog or salamander,鈥� says Pardo. 鈥淥ur fossils show that this sort of life cycle was the norm for our earliest terrestrial ancestors, too.鈥�

Although embolomeres were aquatic, Pardo argues that the evidence available suggests our earliest terrestrial ancestors did not have a tadpole-like stage either. The team also studied the fossil remains of two other early tetrapod species that were alive at the same time and in the same place as the embolomeres.

鈥淣one of these show any evidence of a tadpole-like stage,鈥� says Pardo. 鈥淣either do other fishy tetrapod relatives such as early lungfishes and coelacanths. So is it impossible that a tadpole stage showed up somewhere and was subsequently lost? Maybe, but it seems vanishingly unlikely with the data we have.鈥�

This study fills in a much-needed knowledge gap, says Long. 鈥淚t shows how early tetrapod-like fishes living about 308 million years ago did not need to develop a tadpole phase in order to invade land, as was previously thought by some scientists.鈥�

Fossil hunting in the Australian outback

Join this extraordinary adventure through the heart of Australia鈥檚 fossil frontier. Once a shallow inland sea millions of years ago, eastern Australia is now a hotspot for fossils. Over 13 unforgettable days, you鈥檒l travel deep into the outback, tracing the footsteps of prehistoric giants and uncovering the secrets of Earth鈥檚 ancient history.

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