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Speculative evolution is a subgenre of science fiction and an artistic movement focused on hypothetical scenarios in the evolution of life, and a significant form of fictional biology. [1] It is also known as speculative biology [ 2 ] and it is referred to as speculative zoology [ 3 ] in regards to hypothetical animals . [ 1 ]
In 1942 the German pathologist Max Westenhöfer (1871–1957) discussed various human characteristics (hairlessness, subcutaneous fat, the regression of the olfactory organ, webbed fingers, direction of the body hair etc.) that could have derived from an aquatic past, quoting several other authors who had made similar speculations.
The only human fossils found before the discovery of Java Man in the 1890s were either of anatomically modern humans or of Neanderthals that were too close, especially in the critical characteristic of cranial capacity, to modern humans for them to be convincing intermediates between humans and other primates. [108]
The genetically engineered humans of the future, in total numbering about 40 species through the book, occur in several different and diverse forms, with genetically engineered forms first being slave races created to survive underwater and in space without the need of protective gear and suits, described as the "ultimate triumphs of the ...
In total, over a hundred different invented animal species are featured in the book, described as part of fleshed-out fictional future ecosystems. Reviews for After Man were highly positive and its success spawned two follow-up speculative evolution books which used new fictional settings and creatures to explain other natural processes: The ...
The PAH world hypothesis is a speculative hypothesis that proposes that polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), known to be abundant in the universe, [173] [174] [175] including in comets, [176] and assumed to be abundant in the primordial soup of the early Earth, played a major role in the origin of life by mediating the synthesis of RNA ...
According to a new study published in the journal Science by Scripps Research Institute biologists, the avian H5N1 virus has the potential to quickly shift from a bird flu to a human flu. The ...
Cave paintings (such as this one from France) represent a benchmark in the evolutionary history of human cognition. Victorian naturalist Charles Darwin was the first to propose the out-of-Africa hypothesis for the peopling of the world, [39] but the story of prehistoric human migration is now understood to be much more complex thanks to twenty-first-century advances in genomic sequencing.