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Birds

Evolutionary Explanation Is Always a Work in Progress
November 19, 2009
As evolutionary biologists examine diverse plants and animals, it seems they are never able to give a definitive answer as to how they got that way.  Their work merely begins or continues to search for clues.  Like mothers, their work is never done.  At least this provides them job security. Box jellyfish:  There are about […]
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Early Man

In Brains, It’s Quality, Not Quantity, that Counts
November 17, 2009
Most anthropologists are obsessed with brain size.  How many cc’s (cubic centimeters) of brain could fit in the skull of this or that hominid?  PhysOrg reminds us that “Bigger not necessarily better, when it comes to brains.”  Here’s a shocker from scientists at Queen Mary University: “Tiny insects could be as intelligent as much bigger […]
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Early Man

Darwinizing Everything
November 16, 2009
150 years after The Origin of Species, it’s clear that Darwin succeeded in one thing: granting biologists free rein to speculate about how everything under the sun evolved.  Anything not understood, or seemingly contrary to the law of natural selection, or to previous speculations, can be shuttled off to future research. Noble amoebas:  You may […]
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Early Man

Darwinizing of Religion Continues
November 9, 2009
In an ongoing series for the Year of Darwin in Science magazine,1 Elizabeth Culotta wrote an article with the Darwinesque title, “On the Origin of Religion.”2  The editor’s summary acknowledges that “No consensus yet exists among scientists,” but sought the only answer in Darwinian terms: “in the past 15 years, a growing number of researchers […]
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Fossils

Soft Muscle Tissue Found in Fossil Salamander
November 6, 2009
More soft tissue has been found in a fossil – this time in a salamander said to be 18 million years old.  The article on PhysOrg called it “the highest quality soft tissue preservation ever documented in the fossil record.”     Unlike the previous discoveries of fossil tissue inside bone or amber, the recognizable […]
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Darwin and Evolution

What Is Man?
November 5, 2009
Science often makes pronouncements about the human species.  We should be mindful of the worldview behind them.     Live Science published an article with the confident-sounding title, “Human Evolution: Where We Came From,” accompanied by the iconic sketch of Ardi (see 10/02/2009) and an obligatory reference to Darwin.  Even though reporter Charles Q. Choi, […]
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Fossils

No Evolution in 58 Million Years
October 30, 2009
“Plant fossils give first real picture of earliest Neotropical rainforests,” announced a press release from University of Florida.  The fossils from Colombia show that “many of the dominant plant families existing in today’s Neotropical rainforests – including legumes, palms, avocado and banana – have maintained their ecological dominance despite major changes in South America’s climate […]
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Cosmology

Materialists: What Do You Know?
October 28, 2009
For people who brag about their work, scientists are an odd lot.  At one moment they are touting science as the surest path to knowledge and understanding.  The next moment it seems like they are at square one.  This is particularly true of materialist cosmologies and Darwinian theories for the origin and development of life.  […]
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Dumb Ideas

Cambrian Explosion Solved: Elementary, My Dear Darwin
October 28, 2009
Two articles announced solutions to the evidential problem that most troubled Darwin – the sudden appearance of complex animals at the base of the Cambrian fossil record.  Both of them involve chemical elements.  The only difference is which element.     Science Daily announced a “Novel Evolutionary Theory For The Explosion Of Life.”  The article […]
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Fossils

Trilobites Found in Fool’s Gold: What Does It Mean?
October 27, 2009
Trilobites are icons of the Cambrian and Ordovician periods.  When thousands are found in beds over a wide area encased in pyrite, with no sign of decay, what does it mean?  A team publishing their findings in Geology suggests it means rapid burial.1  Here’s the abstract from their paper: Pyritization of soft tissues is extremely […]
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Early Man

Modern Men Are Wimps
October 23, 2009
Whatever happened to survival of the fittest?  Our ancestors were much stronger, says the author of a new book on anthropology.  PhysOrg reported on a book by Peter McAllister that says today’s males don’t measure up physically to their counterparts even a century ago, let alone those in the Roman empire and earlier.     […]
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Dumb Ideas

Beethoven: It All Began With a Thump
October 17, 2009
Live Science in all seriousness, “When monkeys drum, they activate brain networks linked with communication, new findings that suggest a common origin of primate vocal and nonvocal communication systems and shed light on the origins of language and music.”     Choi reported on work at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics to determine […]
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Dumb Ideas

What’s in a Name?  Sima Fossils Confuse Human Evolution Story
October 14, 2009
“A hush fell over the room….”  Ian Tattersall had just astonished paleoanthropologists gathered for a meeting on human origins in Gibraltar.  The group was puzzling over a treasure trove of hominin bones found in the mid-1990s at Sima de los Huesos in Spain.  What should they be called?     The co-discoverer, Juan Luis Arsuaga, […]
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Dumb Ideas

Fossil Said to Enlighten Evolution of the Ear
October 13, 2009
Did mammal ear bones evolve?  If so, it was not a straightforward Darwinian progression.  Authors of a paper in Science who announced a new Cretaceous mammal fossil from China had to invoke convoluted explanations to keep the evolution story intact. Science Daily shows an artist’s conception of Maotherium, a chipmunk-sized mammal said to have lived […]
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Birds

Dino Clawprints in the Sandstones of Time
October 6, 2009
Some of the largest dinosaur tracks ever found have been uncovered in France.  The BBC News has a picture of tracks nearly 5 feet across made by sauropods that weighed 30 tonnes.  Tracks of ornithischian dinosaurs in South Africa are being analyzed for clues to dinosaur behavior, reported Science Daily.  The team believes that tracks […]
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