Nagraj Sambrani of Hoxful Monsters

If any of you have not read Hoxful Monsters, you should leave me and go there immediately.

I swear - everytime I read a post by Nagraj Sambrani, I find myself at least a tenth of an IQ point smarter (that's a joke - no IQ debates here...). That adds up!

Nagraj's latest post (New tree of animal suggests nervous system evolved only once in animal history) is on a recent huge study that analyzed a large number of genes throughout the "early" metazoan lineages, coming to the conclusion that the nervous system only evolved once (among other conclusions).

The amazing thing about Nagraj is that he has about as in-depth a grasp of the intricate data of metazoan taxonomy and phylogeny as possible (not to mention his expertise in developmental biology - a huge plus in my eyes).  And for someone for whom English is not a first language, he is an incredibly excellent writer, and getting better all the time.

I just wanted to give a quick shout out to Nagraj and point some more readers his direction, as he is most assuredly among the best writers to cover the detailed evolutionary and developmental science being published.

Scientifically speaking, Hoxful Monsters is most definitely my absolute favorite blog!