Milestones in Adaptation / Two million years ago, nude male Hominins spontaneously develop a classic right-leg-forward stance in response to a major influx of college textbook artists.

"You see Thag. .? Names CAN break your bones. Especially when those names are carved on ROCKS."

"Of course, it's still a complete mystery as to how the ancients even managed to MOVE these massive stones. .."

8000 B.C. Invention of the printing process.

Alternative Models of Mongrel Evolution. [ The sentient stomach model: Amoeba -(Several Steps)- Stomach entity -(One step)- Mobile stomach entity. The leaky plumbing model: Amoeba -(Several Steps)- Bladder entity -(One step)- Mobile bladder entity ]

Eustarch the Younger. The kid who brought the Trojan Horse in through the gates of Troy "just to play with for a while."

Dreams of times past: a school of heavily-moustached gentlemen strain for krill in the warm coastal waters of the Bahamas.

SHE was a Tectonic Plate. HE was several thousand cubic miles of Boiling Magma. TOGETHER they would MOVE A NATION / "CONTINENTAL DRIFTERS" - A STORY OF MOLTEN LOVE ON GEOLOGICAL TIMESCALES

Hmmm, interesting. . . Now, Thog, next YOU go in there and see where all my OTHER research students have gotten to. . . / Proto-Professor Algarth Zag, pioneer in fire research.

Dinosaur brain surgery

Potatoes are recorded as first being domesticated at about 8000-7000 B.C., in Peru. Before this time, potatoes had a reputation of being savage and unpredictable tubers. / Figure 1. An early Peruvian contemplates taming a band of wild potatoes. / Figure 2. The modern domestic potato.

Forget the experts: domestication of the dog only took about 8 seconds.

Uh oh .. . Thag's after our women again. .. What's the bet he's brought more flowers..? / However, flowers weren't getting Thag anywhere. This time he came with a concealed firearm.

Well - there's the party food, and there are the drinks - but where is everybody else..? / Early life-forms

WU-HOO! NO MORE LIVING IN A DAMP CAVE! / Early house hunting

65 MILLION YEARS AGO: Relax everyone, it's just an asteroid. Asteroids are natural. / 79 AD: Don't worry Pompeii, it's only a volcano! Volcanoes are perfectly natural..! / APRIL 14, 1912: Good news everybody - seems we hit an iceberg! We're sure lucky that icebergs are natural..! / TODAY: Droughts, floods, wild weather, rising sea levels, the whole climate change thing .. . all natural. / Experts through the ages

Millions of years ago, giant marshmallows ruled the earth. Having no skeletal system, they left no fossil-record. / Diabetic sugar-eating dinosaurs were their only predator. By igniting the acetone on their breath they could toast the marshmallows to death. These were our 'dragons' of legend. / They were too successful. Marshmallows are defenseless against fire and were eaten to near-extinction. With no food-source, the dragon population also plummeted. / It is thought that no dragons survived. Yet every now and then, while some hapless supermarket employee is out back unpacking a crate of marshmallows. ..

Millions of years ago, giant marshmallows ruled the earth. Having no skeletal system, they left no fossil-record. / Diabetic sugar-eating dinosaurs were their only predator. By igniting the acetone on their breath they could toast the marshmallows to death. These were our 'dragons' of legend. / They were too successful. Marshmallows are defenseless against fire and were eaten to near-extinction. With no food-source, the dragon population also plummeted. / It is thought that no dragons survived. Yet every now and then, while some hapless supermarket employee is out back unpacking a crate of marshmallows. ..

"Call that a BIG BANG, eh God..? Why, back home in Texas. .."

Early evidence for the existence of dogs

Wait! I've had a new idea! Let's try it without the big hairy thing on the end! / Disturbing fact: the first recorded boomerangs were made of mammoth tusk

These days we worry about 'scientists playing God.' But in ancient Greece, they worried about Gods playing scientist. / They had reason to worry. Every Tuesday, the Gods would gather in their Mount Olympus laboratory and carry out scientific experiments on mortals. .. / Zeus liked to play around with genetic modifications to hair colour. Aphrodite specialized in adding pointless organs. Apollo found a way to turn at least one of these organs into a ticking time-bomb. / This is why the human race has gingas. This is why you were born with an appendix. / TICK TICK TICK TICK