Paleo – Page 108

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Nobody Nose What Dino Crest Was For

January 28, 2006

Some duck-billed dinosaurs, like the Lambeosaur, had tall bony crests. No one is quite sure what these odd appendages were used for. David Evans (U of Toronto) decided to test the theory that they were for enhancing the sense of smell, reported Bjorn Carey in LiveScience. Evans created the first brain cast of a Lambeosaur, […]

Dumb Ideas

Human Evolution: Clear as Mud

January 24, 2006

Evolutionists speak of our descent from apes with an air of confidence and certainty, but connecting the dots requires a bit of artistic license. Here are some examples of how any data, no matter how puzzling, can be made to fit the Darwinian picture. Stretchy Clocks: A famous painting by Salvador Dali portrayed clocks draped […]

Early Man

Where Did Humans Learn Geometry?

January 22, 2006

In Plato’s dialogue Meno, Socrates illustrated his view that certain foundations of knowledge are innate rather than learned.1 He took an untutored slave boy and, with a series of sketches in the sand, got the boy to deduce the Pythagorean Theorem by his own reasoning (see Encarta). In a modern version, Harvard scientists […]

Fossils

How to Squeeze Fossils Into Evolutionary Trees

January 18, 2006

Fossils do not come with dates or labels on them. Sometimes it is quite a puzzle to figure out where they fit in Darwinian ancestral trees. One such example was published in Nature on January 12 by Chinese scientists who found an oddball in the famous Liaoning fossil beds.1 They called it a “Cretaceous symmetrodont […]

Dumb Ideas

How Apemen Learned to Give Christmas Presents

December 25, 2005

For your Christmas amusement, some scientists think they have solved the evolution of gift giving. In an announcement on EurekAlert called “Why we give: New study finds evidence of generosity among our early human ancestors,” the introduction states, “A groundbreaking new study examines the origins of holiday giving and finds that our early human ancestors […]

Fossils

Cambrian Explosion Still Troubling to Evolutionists

December 22, 2005

Despite Darwinian efforts to muffle it or spread it into a diffuse rumble, the Cambrian explosion (the near-sudden emergence of most animal body plans in the fossil record) was loud and snappy. A new phylogenetic study by Antonis Rokas (MIT), Dirk Krüger, and Sean B. Carroll (U of Wisconsin), published in Science this week,1 could […]

Dinosaurs

Were Dinosaurs Cold-Blooded?

December 16, 2005

A paper in Science1 shows that at least one dinosaur species came in large and small forms. Martin Sander and Nicole Klein studied fibrolammelar bone on plateosaurs (a heavy two-legged dinosaur with an elephant-like body and long neck), and found that the growth rates were poorly correlated with body size. Some plateosaurs were full-grown at […]

Birds

Archaeopteryx in the Headlines Again: New Specimen Reported

December 2, 2005

The best-preserved fossil yet of Archaeopteryx was announced in Science this week,1 the tenth in all. This one, described by Gerald Mayr of the Senckenberg Natural History Museum (Frankfurt, Germany), had a better-preserved foot than the others (all found in the Solnhofen Limestone beds of Bavaria) with indications it had a hyperextendable second toe somewhat […]

Early Man

Mexican Footprints 1.3 Million Years Old? Impossible, Señor

November 30, 2005

Paleoanthropologists have a major conundrum on their hands, or feet. EurekAlert reported about controversial footprints found in Mexico ash deposits that had been thought to be 44,000 years old. Even that was too old for many to swallow, but new argon-argon dates show them to be 1.3 million years old – far older than those […]

Dumb Ideas

On the Origin of Hee-Hees by Natural Selection

November 22, 2005

From slime to smile in 200 million years: some Darwinists feel they have explained the evolution of laughter. In all seriousness, EurekAlert announced, “The first laugh: New study posits evolutionary origins of two distinct types of laughter.” The story is about a new hypothesis by Matthew Gervais and David Sloan Wilson. The origin of comedy, […]

Birds

News from the Cretaceous

November 16, 2005

Here are some recent stories about extinct reptiles and bird-like creatures from the age of dinosaurs. T. Rex Smelled Good: A story in Science1 listed evidence that Tyrannosaurus rex had a large olfactory bulb, giving it a good sense of smell. Analysis of the visual and auditory parts of the skull suggest that it also […]

Amazing Facts

Sea Monsters Were For Real

November 11, 2005

A large fossil crocodile-like sea monster with a bullet-shaped snout has been reported in Science.1 See MSNBC News for a summary. For an artistic rendering of what Dakosaurus andiniensis might have looked like, see National Geographic News, which states that the discovery will be the December cover story of their magazine. Dubbed “Godzilla” by its […]

Early Man

Dispute Over Hobbit Man Intensifies with New Bones

October 25, 2005

The debate over the status of Homo florensiensis has not calmed down (see 09/28/2005), even with the discovery of more bones in the Ling Bua cave on the island of Flores as announced in Nature (437, 1012-1017 (13 October 2005) | doi: 10.1038/nature04022). Michael J. Morwood and colleagues are still sticking with their identification of […]

Birds

Archaeopteryx Meets Its Younger Grandpa, and Other Flights of Fancy

October 24, 2005

Science Now said that a “slightly embarrassing gap” in the fossil record has been filled by a find in Wyoming. The oldest known bird, Archaeopteryx was older than its presumed ancestors, the Maniraptorans, its closest dinosaurian relatives. A team near Thermopolis, Wyoming found a maniraptoran dating from about the same time as Archaeopteryx. This new […]

Birds

Have We Been Sold a Bill of Goods About Feathered Dinosaurs and Bird Evolution?

October 10, 2005

Most people remember the poignant moment at the end of Jurassic Park when the professor, on a flight away from his harrowing experiences on the island of dinosaurs run amok, sees a flock of modern birds and ponders their peaceful existence as descendants of the velociraptors and tyrannosaurs that nearly killed him and his friends. […]

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