VIEW HEADLINES ONLY
Fossils

Oldest Fossil Insect Alleged
February 11, 2004
In a pattern that sounds familiar, an insect fossil has been found that (1) is the oldest ever discovered, and (2) shows that “winged flight may have emerged earlier than previously thought.”  Estimates put this fossil at about 400 million years old, among the first creatures to colonize the land.  Though wing impressions were not […]
CONTINUE READING
Fossils

Hundreds of Whales Buried Suddenly in Diatoms
February 2, 2004
A remarkable fossil find has been found in Peru: 346 whales buried in diatomaceous earth.  The preservation of the whales is so pristine and complete, the authors of the paper in the Feb. 2004 issue of Geology1 conclude that the whales had to be buried rapidly, in days or weeks.  If so, it represents a […]
CONTINUE READING
Fossils

Extinction Puzzle Explained as Selection Effect
February 1, 2004
It’s not evolution, it’s statistics.  That’s the conclusion of Robert Scotland and Michael Sanderson in the Jan. 30 issue of Science.  What’s the puzzle? When biodiversity is examined in the context of species richness, a consistent feature emerges: Most taxonomic groups are species-poor, relatively few are species-rich, and the frequency distribution has the shape of […]
CONTINUE READING
Birds

La Brea Tar Pits Trap Scientists
January 24, 2004
Sid Perkins of Science News dropped in at La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, and got stuck, not in tar, but in the sticky evolutionary interpretations of these world-famous fossil deposits.  This fossil bed, right in one of the ritziest parts of Los Angeles (adjacent to the County Art Museum), Perkins whimsically calls “L.A.’s […]
CONTINUE READING
Fossils

Fossil Worm: Does It Help Solve Cambrian Explosion Puzzle?
January 14, 2004
A soft embryo of a Cambrian worm, exquisitely preserved, makes Graham Budd (U. of Uppsala, Sweden) ask some hard questions about it and other recently-discovered embryo fossils in the Jan. 15 issue of Nature:1 These fossils raise several questions, to say the least.  First, how could they possibly be preserved?  Second, why are they concentrated […]
CONTINUE READING
Fossils

Chinese Puzzle: New Primate Fossil Raises Eyebrows
January 1, 2004
A new fossil primate skull from China, alleged to be 55 million years old, provides “much-needed substantial evidence of early primates in Asia,” says Robert Martin (Field Museum, Chicago), reporting in the Jan. 1 issue of Nature.1  But “interpretation of the creature’s eye size and activity pattern,” he says, “will spark debate.”  (This is code […]
CONTINUE READING
Fossils

Despite New Fossil, Origin of Marsupials Still Puzzles Evolutionists
December 12, 2003
Although the earliest known marsupial has just been found in China1, Richard L. Cifelli and Brian M. Davis, writing in the Dec. 12 issue of Science2 consider the phylogenetic trees of marsupial and placental mammals conflicting and puzzling.  Problems include (emphasis added): Switcheroo:  Fossil marsupials are predominately found in North America, but living ones are […]
CONTINUE READING
Fossils

New Record-Setting Living Fossil Flabbergasts Scientists
December 5, 2003
A remarkably-detailed fossil ostracode, a type of crustacean, has been announced in the Dec. 5 issue of Science1 that is blowing the socks off its discoverers.  Erik Stokstad in a review of the discovery in the same issue2 explains its significance in the evolutionary picture of prehistory: Over the past half-billion years, evolution has dished […]
CONTINUE READING
Fossils

Got That?  The Complex Story of African Mammal Evolution
December 3, 2003
The article by Jean-Jacques Jaeger in the Dec. 4 issue of Nature1 is pretty upbeat about the evolutionary history of African mammals, but takes a bit of untangling to follow.     He begins confidently, “For some 40 million years, the Afro-Arabian landmass existed in splendid isolation.  A newly described fossil fauna from the end […]
CONTINUE READING
Fossils

Fossil Fingers Fuddle Phylogeny
December 3, 2003
Another fossil complicates the evolutionists’ picture of tetrapod origins (see Aug 9 headline).  Chinese paleontologists have reported1 a new marine reptile from Triassic strata (242 million years old, more or less).  Unexpectedly, it has extra digits (a condition called polydactyly) just like the putative ancestors of tetrapods from the earlier Devonian strata (370-354 million years […]
CONTINUE READING
Dinosaurs

Dinosaur Family Tracks Discovered
December 2, 2003
A set of dinosaur tracks of different sizes pointing in the same direction has been found on the Isle of Skye, reports the BBC News.  It seems to indicate one adult and 10 juveniles, all of the same species, were moving together.  To Neil Clark, curator of the Glasgow Museum, these tracks tell a story […]
CONTINUE READING
Darwin and Evolution

Evolution As Assumption
December 20, 2002
51; Reasoning requires premises: axioms or truths taken for granted.  Notice the premise of reasoning stated in a recent article on Science Daily: “Because all living organisms inherit their genomes from ancestral genomes, computational biologists at MIT reasoned that they could use modern-day genomes to reconstruct the evolution of ancient microbes.”  They used an evolutionary […]
CONTINUE READING
Fossils

How Bambi Gave Rise to Moby Dick
December 20, 2002
The title of this entry, in Kipling Just-So Story format, is only slightly modified from an article from The Guardian, titled, “How Bambi evolved into Moby-Dick.”  This is not a joke; check on the link and see.     The article is about the latest fossil claimed to be ancestral to whales.  Hans Thewissen (Northeastern […]
CONTINUE READING
Fossils

Another Tetrapod Ancestor Claimed
October 20, 2002
Maybe the Aussies want their share of missing link notoriety; an unusual fish with bony fins has been discovered in western Australia, reported in Nature.1  The bigger the splash a missing link makes for reporters, the better.  The story on Science Daily said, “A fossil fish discovered in the West Australian Kimberley has been identified […]
CONTINUE READING
Early Man

Press Goes Ape Over Baby Lucy
September 20, 2002
The news media, especially National Geographic, BBC News, and Associated Press (see Fox News) have new fodder for human-evolution stories and artwork, now that a partial skeleton of Australopithecus afarensis has been reported in Nature.1  The teeth, cranium, shoulder blades, fingers, inner ear, hyoid bone and other well-preserved parts match “typical African ape morphology.”  This […]
CONTINUE READING
All Posts by Date