Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It takes 24 million generations for a mouse-sized animal to evolve to the size of an elephant, according to new findings that describe increases and decreases in mammal size following the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

A team of biologists and palaeontologists discovered that rates of size decrease are much faster than growth rates, taking only 100,000 generations for very large decreases that lead to dwarfism.

Charlottesville, VA, USA. Small groups of male beetles that live on the fringes of society with their buddies are less likely to meet up with females, copulate and pass on their genes to offspring, social interactions that likely influence evolution by natural selection.

Vince Formica and Butch Brodie are evolutionary biologists in the University of Virginia College of Arts & Sciences. They study the beetles in a remote forest near U.Va.'s Mountain Lake Biological Station (MLBS).

Berkeley, CA, USA. Scientists have reported the first 3-D images of an individual protein ever obtained with enough clarity to determine its structure.

The 3-D images reported in PLoS ONE include those of a single IgG antibody and apolipoprotein A-1 (ApoA-1), a protein involved in human metabolism.

East Lansing, MI, USA. Prejudice against people from groups different than their own is linked to aggression for men and fear for women, suggests new research findings.

Men throughout history have been the primary aggressors against different groups as well as the primary victims of group-based aggression and discrimination, while women live under the threat of sexual coercion by foreign aggressors and are apt to maintain a fear of strangers to protect themselves and their offspring.

Chicago, IL, USA. Small, high-probability cell mutations over time can produce complex systems called molecular machines, physical complexes of specialized proteins working together to carry out some biological function.

How the minute steps of evolution produced these constructions has long puzzled scientists, and provided a favorite target for creationists.