The rise of creationism in the uk to the point where four out of 10 people in the country believe it to be the literal truth

The germs that help cattle eat grass and gorillas gorge on leaves may have been the secret weapon that let mammals populate the planet, researchers reported on Thursday. Two separate teams of researchers reported on the bacteria living in and on the bodies of humans and other animals, and found they are surprisingly well-adapted to their hosts -- so well that they may have helped different species evolve. "We have evolved together with our bacteria," Dr. Julie Segre of the National Human Genome Research Institute said in a telephone interview.

Scientists have discovered the tracks of a herd of 11 long-necked sauropods walking along a coastal mudflat in what is now the Republic of Yemen, the first discovery of dinosaur footprints on the Arabian peninsula. Sauropods, the largest land animals in earth's history, walked on four stout legs and ate plants. "The nice thing is we finally filled in a bit of a blank spot in the dinosaur map," said Anne Schulp, a palaeontologist at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, who worked on the study.

While global warming is expected to be strongest at the poles, it may be an even greater threat to species living in the tropics, scientists say. Tropical species are accustomed to living in a small temperature range and thus may be unable to cope with changes of even a few degrees, according to an analysis in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A new study has claimed that lack of a heatgenerating tissue may have contributed to the extinction of dinosaurs. A team of researchers at New York Medical College came to the conclusion after discovering why birds, unlike mammals, lack a tissue that is specialised to generate heat, the

Dutch ecologist Roxina Soler and her colleagues have discovered that subterranean and aboveground herbivorous insects can communicate with each other by using plants as telephones. Subterranean insects issue chemical warning signals via the leaves of the plant. This way, aboveground insects are alerted that the plant is already '

Two computer screens display images of the first edition copy of Charles Darwin's "On the origin of species" in London on Thursday. About 90,000 pages of manuscripts, field notes, photographs, and sketches connected with Charles Darwin are being placed online, where they can be viewed free. Among the gems are his first formulation of the theory of natural selection, his first written doubts that species were fixed and touching correspondence from his wife on religious faith.

Scientists with the European Space Agency have shown that plants and flowers can be grown on the Moon by demonstrating that marigolds can grow in crushed rock very much like the lunar surface, with no need for plant food. According to a report by BBC News, the new research was presented at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) meeting in Vienna. The new step, taken in the experiment, is to remove the need for bringing nutrients and soil from Earth.

A fossilised jawbone and teeth found in a cave in northern Spain may have belonged to one of the first human ancestors to set foot in western Europe.

Scientists claim to have uncovered evidence that the evolution of animal life on Earth was delayed by almost two billion years.