But one group, known as the social skinks in the tribe Tiliquini, show a wide variety of forms from big-bodied, short-legged species to long-tailed and long-legged animals. These wildly divergent skinks are giving biologists the chance to study the very basics of evolution.

The news comes from a recently published paper titled "Computational Life: How Well-formed, Self-replicating Programs Emerge from Simple Interaction." The raw material for the experiments is tens of thousands of pieces of code, written in a programming language called—I'm not making this up—Brainfuck. The researchers call this an "esoteric language chosen for its simplicity" in only allowing two mathematical functions: +1 or -1. These chunks of code were randomly mixed, combined, and "left to execute code and overwrite themselves and neighbors based on their own instructions" over millions of generations.

the story of mammalian evolution hasn’t been a directional “march of progress”, but rather has many characteristics of a random and diffusive walk

there are many more males than females who do not successfully reproduce at all

Stone tools permitted a greater shift to a carnivorous diet because the ability to cut meat into small pieces reduced the amount of chewing required to extract nourishment. Less chewing reduced the need for large, powerful jaws. The advent of agriculture accelerated this trend.

Corruccini reasoned that tooth size is preprogrammed to fit a jaw subjected during growth to levels of mechanical stress in line with a natural childhood diet. Subsequently, when the jaw does not get the needed stimulation during development, the teeth become crowded at the front end and impacted in the rear.

Stone tools permitted a greater shift to a carnivorous diet because the ability to cut meat into small pieces reduced the amount of chewing required to extract nourishment. Less chewing reduced the need for large, powerful jaws. The advent of agriculture accelerated this trend.