Research on evolution continues to offer stunning new insights into life and its history. This course will present new research on a few of these topics: (1) How rapid can evolution be? (2) How do dramatically new ways of life evolve? (3) How do we now see the ancestry of Homo sapiens? (4) Are we Homo sapiens evolving, and how, where and when? At each class we will also examine fascinating creatures that have evolved bizarre (but always useful) new characteristics. Examples will include life in the sea, on land and in the air; living and fossil; giant and microscopic and frightening and charming, all of which make sense in their own world.