鈥淚f the date were confirmed this would refute, not the general idea that early people in Australia eliminated the giant fauna, but the idea that they did it very quickly, within say 5000 years of them arriving.鈥�
Colin Groves of the Australian National University on the jawbone, found west of Sydney, of a giant wombat that lived between 20,000 and 40,000 years ago (Sydney Morning Herald, 27 July)
鈥淎lthough I knew that having sex has consequences for reputation, it surprised me that people, notably men, would be motivated to have sex solely for social status and reputation enhancement.鈥�
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Evolutionary psychologist David Buss of the University of Texas, Austin, who quizzed 2000 people on their reasons for having sex (The New York Times, 31 July)
鈥淚f I鈥檇 been there, I鈥檇 have jumped out of the boat and swum with it.鈥�
Brave 鈥� or foolhardy 鈥� Australian shark-watcher Dave 鈥淪harkman鈥� Baxter insisting that footage shot off the coast of south-west England is of a great white shark (The Sun, London, 31 July)
鈥淒eep down, the digital world can be considered, in its way, mission territory.鈥�
Priest Antonio Spadaro, writing in the Jesuit journal La Civilt脿 Cattolica, urges Catholics to convert non-believers they encounter in the computer simulation Second Life (Reuters, 30 July)
鈥淎symmetry is a fundamental feature of the human brain that is disrupted in many psychiatric conditions.鈥�
Clyde Francks of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics at the University of Oxford on LRRTM1, a gene that appears to increase the chances of left-handedness and may also be linked to schizophrenia (BBC online, 31 July)