Elephants are the largest living land animals. Three living species are currently recognised: the African bush elephant, the African forest elephant, and the Asian elephant. They are the only surviving members of the family Elephantidae and the order Proboscidea; extinct relatives include mammoths and mastodons. Distinctive features of elephants include a long proboscis called a trunk, tusks, large ear flaps, pillar-like legs, and tough but sensitive grey skin. The trunk is prehensile, bringing food and water to the mouth and grasping objects. Tusks, which are derived from the incisor teeth, serve both as weapons and as tools for moving objects and digging. The large ear flaps assist in maintaining a constant body temperature as well as in communication. African elephants have larger ears and concave backs, whereas Asian elephants have smaller ears and convex or level backs.
Milford Howell Wolpoff is a paleoanthropologist and professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan and its museum of Anthropology. He is the leading proponent of the multiregional evolution hypothesis that explains the evolution of Homo sapiens as a consequence of evolutionary processes and gene flow across continents within a single species. Wolpoff authored the widely used textbook Paleoanthropology, and co-authored Race and Human Evolution: A Fatal Attraction, which reviews the scientific evidence and conflicting theories about the interpretation of human evolution, and biological anthropology's relationship to views about race.
Nocturnality is a behavior in some non-human animals characterized by being active during the night and sleeping during the day. The common adjective is "nocturnal", versus diurnal meaning the opposite.
SimEarth: The Living Planet is a life simulation game, the second designed by Will Wright. and published in 1990 by Maxis. In SimEarth, the player controls the development of a planet. English scientist James Lovelock served as an advisor and his Gaia hypothesis of planet evolution was incorporated into the game. Versions were made for the Macintosh, Atari ST, Amiga, IBM PC, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega CD, and TurboGrafx-16. It was re-released for the Wii Virtual Console. In 1996, several of Maxis' simulation games were re-released under the Maxis Collector Series with greater compatibility with Windows 95 and differing box art, including the addition of Classics beneath the title. SimEarth was re-released in 1997 under the Classics label.
A humanoid is a non-human entity with human form or characteristics. By the 20th century, the term came to describe fossils which were morphologically similar, but not identical, to those of the human skeleton.
Humans or modern humans are the most common and widespread species of primate, and the last surviving species of the genus Homo. They are great apes characterized by their hairlessness, bipedalism, and high intelligence. Humans have large brains, enabling more advanced cognitive skills that enable them to thrive and adapt in varied environments, develop highly complex tools, and form complex social structures and civilizations. Humans are highly social, with individual humans tending to belong to a multi-layered network of cooperating, distinct, or even competing social groups – from families and peer groups to corporations and political states. As such, social interactions between humans have established a wide variety of values, social norms, languages, and traditions, each of which bolsters human society. Humans are also highly curious, with the desire to understand and influence phenomena having motivated humanity's development of science, technology, philosophy, mythology, religion, and other frameworks of knowledge; humans also study themselves through such domains as anthropology, social science, history, psychology, and medicine. There are estimated to be more than eight billion humans alive.
E.V.O.: Search for Eden is a 1992 action-adventure game developed by Almanic Corporation and published by Enix for the Super NES. Combining traditional platforming mechanics with experience and leveling mechanics originating from role playing games, E.V.O.: Search for Eden involves the player navigating a creature through a number of side-scrolling levels while undergoing bodily evolution to cope with ever-changing environments. It is heavily based on Almanic's original title, 46 Okunen Monogatari ~The Shinka Ron~, released in Japan in 1990 for the PC-9801.
SimLife: The Genetic Playground is a video game produced by Maxis in 1992. The concept of the game is to simulate an ecosystem; players may modify the genetics of the plants and animals that inhabit the virtual world. The point of this game is to experiment and create a self-sustaining ecosystem. SimLife was re-released in 1993 as part of the SimClassics Volume 1 compilation, alongside SimCity Classic and SimAnt for PC, Mac and Amiga.
Hero System Bestiary is a compilation of creatures designed for use with Hero System role-playing game rules. It is presented in the form of a bestiary and was published in 2002 for the 5th edition of the Hero System. The cover is made of thick paper and illustrated in color, while the interior consists of 239 pages illustrated in black and white. An earlier edition of The Hero System Bestiary was published in 1992 for the prior edition of the Hero System.
Impossible Creatures is a 2003 steampunk real-time strategy game developed by Relic Entertainment and published by Microsoft Game Studios. Its unique feature is that the armies used in gameplay are all created by the player, and involve combining two animals to make a new super creature with various abilities. The concept was inspired by H. G. Wells' novel The Island of DoctorMoreau. The player-created armies are capped at 9 creatures; each one is a combination of any two animals from a list of 76. Many animals possess inherent abilities and players can multiple such abilities or compensate for weaknesses as they plan units and armies. There is an extensive single-player campaign as well as online multiplayer functionality with different game modes, add-ons, custom maps, mods, and scenarios.
The evolution of human intelligence is closely tied to the evolution of the human brain and to the origin of language. The timeline of human evolution spans approximately seven million years, from the separation of the genus Pan until the emergence of behavioral modernity by 50,000 years ago. The first three million years of this timeline concern Sahelanthropus, the following two million concern Australopithecus and the final two million span the history of the genus Homo in the Paleolithic era.
Life simulation games form a subgenre of simulation video games in which the player lives or controls one or more virtual characters. Such a game can revolve around "individuals and relationships, or it could be a simulation of an ecosystem". Other terms include artificial life game and simulated life game (SLG).
Seventh Cross: Evolution, known in Japan as simply Seventh Cross, is a video game for the Sega Dreamcast video game console. It was released in Japan on December 23, 1998. A sequel titled Ninth Will was announced shortly after the game's North American release, but it was apparently cancelled.
The evolution of the brain refers to the progressive development and complexity of neural structures over millions of years, resulting in the diverse range of brain sizes and functions observed across different species today, particularly in vertebrates.
Spore is a 2008 life simulation real-time strategy god game developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. Designed by Will Wright, it covers many genres including action, real-time strategy, and role-playing games. Spore allows a player to control the development of a species from its beginnings as a microscopic organism, through development as an intelligent and social creature, to interstellar exploration as a spacefaring culture. It has drawn wide attention for its massive scope, and its use of open-ended gameplay and procedural generation. Throughout each stage, players are able to use various creators to produce content for their games. These are then automatically uploaded to the online Sporepedia and are accessible by other players for download.
A tooth is a hard, calcified structure found in the jaws of many vertebrates and used to break down food. Some animals, particularly carnivores and omnivores, also use teeth to help with capturing or wounding prey, tearing food, for defensive purposes, to intimidate other animals often including their own, or to carry prey or their young. The roots of teeth are covered by gums. Teeth are not made of bone, but rather of multiple tissues of varying density and hardness that originate from the outermost embryonic germ layer, the ectoderm.
B.C. was an action-adventure video game in development by Intrepid Computer Entertainment, a satellite of Lionhead Studios, which was to be published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox. It was cancelled in 2004 for unknown reasons. The player controls a tribe who has to evolve and migrate to become the best species in the game. Tribe members can be of different classes and each can level up different ways to evolve. The main enemies in the game are an ape-like creature called the "simians"; however, the world is also inhabited with many types of dinosaurs as well as other creatures, including the dodo.
"Living Fossil" is a science fiction story by American writer L. Sprague de Camp, on the concepts of human extinction and future evolution. It was first published in the magazine Astounding Science-Fiction for February 1939. It first appeared in book form in the anthology A Treasury of Science Fiction ; it later appeared in the anthologies Gates to Tomorrow, and The SFWA Grand Masters, Volume 1. The story has been translated into Danish, Swedish and Italian.
Evolution: Random Mutations is a card game created by Dmitriy Knorre and Sergey Machin in 2010. The game is inspired by the evolutionary biology. It was published by SIA Rightgames RBG. Publishing of the game was financed in Boomstarter. English, French and German game editions were published in 2014.
