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Fossil Frog-amander Claimed to Be Missing Link

It looks like a frog with four equal legs and a tail; is it the ancestor of frogs and amphibians?  It depends on whether you read the original paper or the popular press.     Live Science writer Jeanna Brynner is absolutely certain this puts a feather in Darwin’s cap: “the creature represents a transitional […]

Dinosaurs Walked in Yemen

Dinosaur tracks have been found in Yemen – a region with few fossils of dinosaurs.  The reports on National Geographic News, Science Daily and the BBC News said the tracks had been covered up with rubble and debris.     Dinosaur evidence is “exceptionally rare” in this part of the world.  The paleontologists believe that […]

Update:  Cambrian Explosion Damage Control

Here’s an update to the “State of the Cambrian Explosion.”  Two years ago, our 04/23/2006 entry analyzed a lengthy paper in Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences by Dr. Charles R. Marshall, a Harvard professor of biology and geology.  Dr. Marshall had taken on the arduous task of explaining, in evolutionary terms, the sudden […]

Neanderthals Can’t Get No Respect

Will evolutionary paleontologists ever make up their minds about Neanderthals?  The story seems to change every year.  Just when they had been getting more respect as Homo sapiens brethren, another researcher is demoting them to outsiders.     An Argentinean anthropologist has measured anatomical features and concluded they were a separate species, reported PhysOrg.  Understandably, […]

Human Mind Outwits Darwinian Models

Evolutionists struggle to explain complex human behaviors in Darwinian terms. Sure, corporate squabbles can seem like survival of the fittest, but humans also sacrifice for people they don’t even know and do other weird, un-Darwinian things. In Darwinism, selfishness rules. How does cooperative and altruistic behavior arise from selfish motives? Here are some of the recent attempts to reconcile observations with a theory in which selfishness is key.

Veggie Tales of Human Evolution

Evolutionists may not know who our human ancestors were, but they know they were vegans.  That seems to be the essence of a couple of new twists on the human evolution saga. Pear-shaped tones:  Paranthropus has been called the “Nutcracker Man” because of robust teeth assumed strong enough to munch on nuts and seeds.  Enter […]

Hobbit Prophecy: Somebody Will Take a Big Fall

The men of muddle earth are wondering what to do with their hobbit prisoners.  Elizabeth Culotta wrote in Science about the ongoing debates among paleoanthropologists about how to interpret the diminutive skeletons found in the Liang Bua cave of Flores in Indonesia, affectionately dubbed hobbits.1  After four years of study (10/27/2004, 06/06/2006, 08/21/2006, 10/11/2006), there […]

Inferences from Old Protein

The dinosaur leg bone with the soft tissue was back in the news.  Back in 2005 (03/24/2005), a femur from a T. rex broke open during transport and was found to contain pliable tissue and blood vessels with apparent red blood cells.  This was a “phenomenon, once thought impossible” for such tissues to have survived […]

Evolution Revealed?

When the news reports evidence for evolution in the fossils or genes, it sounds like Darwinism has been all but proved, because scientists have observed its effects.  Can these stories withstand deeper scrutiny? Lungless frog:  Science Daily reported a frog without lungs in Borneo.  Lunglessness in tetrapods has been reported in salamanders and other amphibians, […]

Dinosaur Expert Criticizes Uber-Darwinists More than Biblical Creationists

One of the field researchers most identifiable with dinosaurs is Dr. Robert Bakker, a colorful individual who’s had a long friendly rivalry with an equally iconic figure of the modern dinosaur hunter, Jack Horner (e.g., 11/24/2007).  Brian Switek interviewed Bakker on the Laelops Science Blog.  He introduced him as “one of the most famous paleontologists […]

Not Even Wrong: Darwin’s Tree Suffers Base Blow

Darwin’s “tree of life” icon is suffering another blow.  The root of multicellular life was supposed to be the simplest, most primitive animal.  Now, scientists are seriously considering that the mother of all animals was a complex animal with a gut, tissues, a nervous system and amazing light displays: a comb jelly.     PhysOrg […]

Evolution After the Fact

Many scientific theories are evaluated on their ability to make predictions.  Good theories suggest experiments that lead a researcher to discover new things.  In biology, however, “evolution” is a word often invoked as an after-market explanation for observations that emerged outside of the theory.  Here are some recent examples: Ant farm:  Science Daily reported on […]

Peacocks Don’t Dress for Success

The male peacock’s fancy feather show: an icon of Darwin’s theory of sexual selection, right?  Then why did Japanese scientists tell Discovery News that the females pay them little attention?     The article claims that the male’s appearance fails to interest, much less excite, the females, who seem to pay more attention to his […]

Neanderthals: Random Drift, Not Natural Selection

The differences between Neanderthals and modern humans were not due to evolution for bigger brains or anything of the sort.  They were due to genetic drift, says an article on Live Science.     “A team of anthropologists has compared measurements of Neanderthal skulls to modern human skulls, and argues that most variations among them […]

Were Hobbits Pygmies?

More miniature human skeletons have been discovered in Micronesia.  These ones, found at Palau and reported in PLoS One,1 are unquestionably modern human, but small in stature – less than four feet tall.  They are also recent.  Radiocarbon dates on the bones yielded dates between 1400 and 3000 years old.  The find was reported by […]
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