Since the mid 1980s, scientists have compared mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from several different humans, reconstructing an ancestor of living human mitochondria about 100-200 thousand years ago, which probably lived in Africa (Cann, Stoneking and Wilson 1987). More recently, other researchers reported similar results from a study of human Y-chromosome DNA indicating a common ancestor of a large part of the human Y-chromosome at a similar or more recent time, also in Africa (Hammer, 1995; Hammer, Spurdle and others 1997; Gibbons, 1997).

In March 2009, the ultramodern city of Hong Kong became an unlikely battleground in the war on evolution.

For many years we have needed a collection of essays and historical reminiscences on just how the paleobiological revolution, or in another sense the emergence of macroevolution as a field, got started in the 1960s and 1970s. Looking back on the scientific literature of the time, and contrasting it to what came before, is much like looking at the cultural impact on a civilization when it is invaded (by Romans, Americans, or Visigoths — complete your own preferred metaphor).

On November 13, 2007, most Public Broadcasting Service television stations across the United States aired the NOVA docudrama, Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial. The two-hour program highlighted the controversy surrounding the decision of the Dover, Pennsylvania, school board to require high school biology teachers to read a statement to their classes that "intelligent design" is an alternative explanation for the theory of evolution.