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Fossils

Ancient Reptiles Exceed Textbook Explanations
October 7, 2005
Each new fossil from China’s Liaoning province seems to force a rewrite of the textbooks.  National Geographic News reported on fossils of pterosaurs with “much higher diversity… than one could possibly expect.”  Two species found in the Jehol area (02/21/2003) had long beaks with sharp teeth, and wingspans up to 8 feet.  “It was once […]
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Fossils

Spider Blood Survives 20 Million Years – So They Say
September 30, 2005
EurekAlert announced, “Spider blood found in 20 million year old fossil.”  Science Daily repeated the story.  The articles even tell how the spider died (it was climbing a tree and was struck on the head by fast-flowing sap).  The BBC News said, “Spider is ‘20 million years old.’” At least they put quotes around the […]
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Dinosaurs

Were Dinosaurs Gasping for Air?
September 29, 2005
A news story on CNN claims that “the air contained only about 10 percent oxygen at the time of the dinosaurs.”  It climbed to 23% by 40 million years ago, then dropped to its current level at 21%, said the researchers.  They feel that the rise of oxygen “almost certainly contributed to evolution of large […]
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Early Man

Hobbit Update
September 28, 2005
BBC News posted an article updating the story of Homo florensiensis, the so-called “Hobbit Man” miniature-human fossil (see 10/27/2004).  Opponents of the “missing link” interpretation are becoming more ardent in their claim that the fossils represent diseased modern humans with a condition known as microcephaly.  The discoverers are not convinced. Wait for this story to […]
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Early Man

Is Archaeology Like SETI, or is SETI Like Religion?
September 24, 2005
Archaeologists have their Rosetta Stone, but so far, SETI investigators have no artifacts.  Still, Douglas Vakoch wrote for Space.com, archaeologists and anthropologists can teach SETI researchers how to prepare for encountering “exotic cultures with strange languages.”     Vakoch recounted the interest in this angle at an anthropology conference last year: One of the best-attended […]
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Early Man

More Indications Neandertals Were Like Us
September 23, 2005
Two more hints that Neandertals were only variants of modern humans have surfaced recently.  British and American researchers publishing in PNAS1 studied tooth enamel growth patterns, and found that “Neandertal tooth growth and, by extension, somatic growth, appears to be encompassed within the modern human range of interpopulation variation.”  This finding was summarized on National […]
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Amazing Facts

“Beautifully Engineered”: Giant Pterosaur Compared to Aircraft
September 9, 2005
Imagine an “aircraft engineer trying to convert a Eurofighter into a jumbo jet while it was still flying.”  That’s how David Martill (U of Portsmouth, UK) described the abilities of a baby pterosaur growing into a large adult, a BBC News story says.  Evidence suggests that pterosaurs were capable of flying soon after hatching.  Some […]
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Early Man

Men Aren’t Going Extinct – Yet
September 3, 2005
Not long ago, evolutionary biologists were predicting the demise of manhood (see 11/01/2001, 03/31/2004).  The idea was that the Y chromosome, with no redundant copy (unlike the female’s two X chromosomes, and all others) appeared to be shriveling up and mutating itself out of existence.  Now that the chimpanzee genome has been published (see 09/01/2005 […]
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Early Man

Chimpanzee Fossil Upsets Early Man Speciation Theory
September 1, 2005
Paleontologists need no longer lament the complete dearth of chimpanzee fossils.  Nature announced the discovery of the first fossil chimpanzee teeth.  The location, however – the Great Rift Valley in Africa – was unexpected.  The discoverers, Sally McBrearty and Nina G. Jablonski,1 explain: There are thousands of fossils of hominins, but no fossil chimpanzee has […]
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Early Man

Chimpanzee Genome Published: Is There a Monkey in Your Genes?
September 1, 2005
Nature’s cover story September 1 is about the publication of the chimpanzee genome.  Evolutionists are digging through the data for evidence of human common ancestry.  Have they found it?  The results, as usual, are mixed: MSNBC News states the situation concisely: “Genome comparison reveals many similarities – and crucial differences.”  Here is the gist of […]
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Early Man

Paleoanthropology: Start Over?
August 22, 2005
The September issue of National Geographic, featuring the African continent, has arrived in homes.  On page 1, Joel Achenbach of the Washington Post wrote about the quest for early man, asking, “Are we looking for bones in all the right places?”  The bulk of the article describes the “messy” story of human origins.  It used […]
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Fossils

Fossil Brachiopod Shows Soft Part Details
August 18, 2005
American and British paleontologists described in Nature1 the discovery of nearly complete brachiopods with calcified soft parts intact.  They exhibited intricate details never before seen in fossils of these organisms, sometimes called lamp shells.  Brachiopods, a type of marine animal that attached itself to the sea floor with a pedicle or stalk, were very abundant […]
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Fossils

Cambrian Fossil: What Is It?
August 17, 2005
A Cambrian fossil discovered in China may represent a new phylum, reports BBC News.  Vetustodermis, discovered in 1979, looks like a flatworm with eye stalks and antenna.  It resembles a mollusk or arthropod in some ways, but scientists aren’t sure how to classify it.  Forcing it into any existing group requires “pushing and pulling” that […]
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Dinosaurs

Dinolava Theory Back in Eruption
August 12, 2005
Meteor impact or volcanic eruption?  Science Now reports that the volcano theory of dinosaur extinction has rejuvenated, challenging the long popularity of the Chicxulub impact hypothesis.     Notwithstanding all the dramatic animations on science documentaries of a cataclysmic meteor wiping out the dinosaurs, the article by Carolyn Gramling states that “Scientists have long wrangled […]
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Dumb Ideas

History Channel Documentary on Human Ancestry: History or Fiction?
August 9, 2005
The History Channel aired a program called “Ape to Man” Monday evening August 7, alleging that modern science had finally pieced together the solution to the puzzle of human evolution.  Although it included debunking episodes of Piltdown (11/18/2003) and Java Man (02/27/2003), the flavor of the show was that the picture of human origins has […]
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