Fossils – Page 82

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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 […]

Fossils

La Brea Tar Pits Trap Scientists

January 24, 2004

Visitors to the La Brea Tar Pits are not told the whole truth about the fossils.

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Dinosaurs

Farewell, Cannibal Dino

September 20, 2002

Whoops, We Were Wrong Dept.: Fossils of Coelophysis found in 1947 included members of the same species in the stomach, so they were cannibals, right? Not so fast, corrects an article in BBC News. The food now looks more like filet of crocodile. After re-examining the evidence, researchers from Columbia University and the American Museum […]

Early Man

Dmanisi Homo erectus Fossil Count Grows

September 20, 2002

More bones matching the skulls from the purported Eurasian Homo erectus skulls in Dmanisi, Republic of Georgia have been found (for background, see 08/31/2005 bullet 5, 03/20/2005, 08/01/2002, 11/29/2002). The find was reported in Nature1 with commentary by Daniel Lieberman in the same issue.2 The bones, including ribs, leg bones and arm bones, fingers and […]

Dinosaurs

Waltzing with Dinosaurs

September 20, 2002

51; An international team of paleontologists wrote a kind of “State of the Tyrannosaur Address” in Science last week,1 boasting about all that is known of these creatures: Tyrannosaurs, the group of dinosaurian carnivores that includes Tyrannosaurus rex and its closest relatives, are icons of prehistory. They are also the most intensively studied extinct dinosaurs, […]

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