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Dinosaurs

Hadrosaur Skin Flick
December 3, 2007
The press is abuzz with the story of a mummified hadrosaur found in North Dakota with skin and fossilized soft parts; see PhysOrg, Science Daily, Associated Press and BBC News.  Since the fully-articulated, uncollapsed, mummified fossil named “Dakota” was discovered in 1999, though, it appears that the announcement is being made now primarily as publicity […]
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Dinosaurs

New Dinosaur Finds Astonish Paleontologists
November 30, 2007
Some recent dinosaur discoveries on different sides of the world have produced amazement among scientists and the public as well. Tire tracks uncover dino tracks:  ATVs and dirt bikes have ridden for years over a place that is now found to be loaded with dinosaur tracks.  Near Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park in Utah, […]
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Fossils

Early Platypus Stuns Evolutionists
November 27, 2007
With the possible exception of a monotreme tooth assumed to be 62 million years old, the oldest known platypus fossil was dated 15 million years old.  Now, a fossil from Australia reported in Science sets a new record: 112 million years old.1     “It’s really, really old for a monotreme,” Timothy Rowe of the […]
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Dinosaurs

Multiple Dinosaurs Reclassified as One Species
November 24, 2007
It’s tough sometimes to draw the line between species – especially when dealing with fossils.  A report in Science suggests that three bone-headed dinosaurs are probably just different stages of one species.1  These had been named Pachycephalosaurus, Stygimoloch and Dracorex.     Erik Stokstad, reporting on activities at the meeting of the Society of Vertebrate […]
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Fossils

Darwin As Prognosticator
November 15, 2007
How good was Darwin at making predictions?  A good scientific theory should make predictions, at least according to a common assumption about science.  PBS thinks Darwin hit a home run, according to an interactive feature on the website for Judgment Day, the documentary about evolution vs intelligent design shown on Nova this week (11/14/2007).  The […]
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Fossils

Cambrian Jellyfish Found
November 2, 2007
It’s official: jellyfish were part of the Cambrian explosion.  National Geographic News has pictures of well-preserved jellyfish fossils from Utah that show even the “distinct bell shape, tentacles, muscle scars, and possibly even the gonads.”     These fossils are dated by evolutionary standards at 500 million years old, into the period of the Cambrian […]
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Cell Biology

Month-End Close-Out
October 31, 2007
Sometimes the creation-evolution news comes in too fast.  Here’s a baker’s dozen from the October shelf, lest they go stale; time to start a new batch for November. Charity begins at worldview:  David Cyranoski in Nature (450, 24-25, 10/31/2007) investigated why the level of charitable giving in prosperous Japan is a tenth of that in […]
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Fossils

Amphibian Imprints Found
October 30, 2007
Full-body imprints of amphibians claimed to be 330 million years old have been reported from Pennsylvania.  “The imprints show the unmistakably webbed feet and bodies of three previously unknown, foot-long salamander-like critters that lived 100 million years before the first dinosaurs.”     The story in a press release from the Geological Society of America […]
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Amazing Facts

Mega-Dinosaur Found in Argentina
October 18, 2007
Check out this dinosaur: 105 feet long, 43 feet tall, having a neck 56 feet long.  The spinal column alone probably weighed 9 tons.  That’s Futalognkosaurus dukei, one of the largest dinosaurs ever found, recently reported from Argentina (see BBC News and PhysOrg).  A single vertebral bone was nearly 3 feet long.  National Geographic called […]
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Dinosaurs

The Daily Dinosaur Media
October 9, 2007
Dinosaur discoveries continue to make news.  Here are some recent findings by those who dig getting out and digging for what they can get out: Giant Ascending the Grand Staircase:  A new species of duck-billed dinosaur was found in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, reported Science Daily, EurekAlert, Live Science and National Geographic.  High school […]
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Fossils

Modern Crustacean Found in Early Cambrian
October 4, 2007
A “crown-group crustacean” that is “markedly similar to those of living cephalocarids, branchiopods and copepods” has been found exquisitely preserved in early Cambrian fossil beds from China, an international team reported in Nature.1  Though such organisms have been found in middle and later Cambrian rocks, this pushes the origin of eucrustacea (crustaceans of modern aspect) […]
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Fossils

Exceptional Preservation: Can It Last Hundreds of Millions of Years?
October 3, 2007
What can happen in 460 million years?  A lot, according to the standard geological timescale.  In this diagram of geological and biological evolution, accepted by nearly all geologists, all the continents came together 260 million years ago, broke up 200 million years ago, and broke into our familiar continents 100 million years ago (mya).  In […]
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Dumb Ideas

Early Beetle Was Armed
September 23, 2007
According to Live Science, a beetle preserved in amber, dated at 100 million years old, was caught in the act of using chemical warfare.  “Soldier beetles” capable of this kind of advanced defense system were not thought to have evolved till 60 million years later.     This article contains several statements worthy of the […]
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Birds

Was Velociraptor a Dragon?
September 22, 2007
As if Velociraptor, the terror of Jurassic Park, was not scary enough, some scientists are now saying it was feathered.  (This, of course, does not imply it could fly after its human prey like some movie dragon.)  The latest claim in Science is based on the apparent presence of “quill knobs” on the radius bone […]
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Dumb Ideas

Early Reptile Had Modern Ears
September 18, 2007
Modern ears are nothing new; they go back 260 million years.  That’s the gist of a paper in PLoS ONE that reported on a Russian reptile fossil.1  The research team was surprised to discover that the creature had impedance-matched ears, a novelty thought to have evolved 50 million years later.  Somehow this innovation survived one […]
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