Evolutionary Theory

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Evolutionary Theory Not Even Skin Deep

March 2, 2007

A book on skin just was published – no, not one of those books, but a book on the physiology of human skin. Nina Jablonski wrote Skin: A Natural History (UC Berkeley, 2006) and Qais Al-Awqati (Columbia U) reviewed it in Science.1 The reviewer noticed that “In its discussion of the human skin, the book’s […]

Uncategorized

Orchid Deception: Is It Evolution?

February 26, 2007

Orchids comprise the most exotic and diverse group of flowering plants. Some 30,000 species strong, this group contains members with unusual sex organs. Some have organs that look and smell like the female of the insect species that pollinate them. They seduce the males without giving them a reward of nectar for their stopover. How […]

Cell Biology

The Evolution of Electrical Engineering: An Imaginary Tale

January 17, 2007

Nerves carry electrical impulses. Ipso facto, they are subject to laws of physics concerning conductance, capacitance, and resistance. Getting a signal from one end of an animal to the other in time can be a matter of life and death. In order to maintain optimum levels of electrical conductivity to meet their lifestyle requirements, animals […]

Fossils

Fossil Non-Embryos Quench Cambrian Explosion Fuse

January 16, 2007

Alleged fossil animal embryos in Precambrian rock in China are not. Last year (06/18/2006) and before, researchers found what looked like cleaved embryos in the strata under the Cambrian “explosion” layers. Now, a paper in Nature reclassifies them as giant bacteria, not embryos.1 Some evolutionists had hoped the discovery of animal embryos would […]

Fossils

Amphibious Assault Against Gradualism

January 10, 2007

A State of the Salamander Address was printed in PNAS recently.1 An international group of scientists looked for evolutionary ancestry and “Global patterns of diversification in the history of modern amphibians.” It would seem Mr. Darwin has a bit of frog in his throat: The fossil record of modern amphibians (frogs, salamanders, and caecilians) provides […]

Mammals

Are Evolutionists Converging on a Story of Vertebrates?

January 10, 2007

Here’s what the Linnean Society said in 1909, celebrating the 50th anniversary of Darwin’s Origin of Species, about the rise of vertebrates (fish, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals): “When we return home and our friends gleefully enquire, ‘What then has been decided as to the Origin of Vertebrates?’, so far we seem to have no reply […]

Fossils

Incredible Stasis in Evolution: What Does It Mean?

December 26, 2006

Quite often in phylogenetic research, evolutionists find examples of extreme conservation of genes or traits. How they explain the lack of change is almost as interesting as the phenomenon itself. Here are two recent examples. Your cousin the shark: Surprise: you have more in common with horn sharks than bony fishes do. Craig Venter’s international […]

Amazing Facts

Tarantula Spins Silk from Feet

September 27, 2006

Surprise: a Costa Rican tarantula can spin silk from the tips of its feet. A team of German and American scientists writing in Nature1 coaxed one of these heavy, hairy spiders to walk vertically up glass, and was astonished to find it ejecting silky threads that arrested its slipping and enabled it to cling. They […]

Genetics

Do Mammals Depend on Virus Help?

September 12, 2006

Researchers found that sheep depend on a retrovirus to become pregnant. Retroviruses (those that can insert themselves into a genome of a host cell) include the dreaded HIV and generally have a bad reputation. Remnant retroviruses are prevalent in many animal species and have been considered a class of “junk DNA,” having mutated away their […]

Uncategorized

Evolution Is Practically Useless, Admits Darwinist

August 30, 2006

Supporters of evolution often tout its many benefits. They claim it helps research in agriculture, conservation and medicine (e.g., 01/13/2003, 06/25/2003). A new book by David Mindell, The Evolving World: Evolution in Everyday Life (Harvard, 2006) emphasizes these practical benefits in hopes of making evolution more palatable to a skeptical society. Jerry Coyne, a staunch […]

Uncategorized

Evolution Is Slow, Except When It Is Super-Fast

August 14, 2006

Evolutionary biologists seem comfortable with rates of evolution that vary by eight orders of magnitude or more. While some animals found at the alleged dawn of multicellular life at the beginning of the Cambrian have changed little in 500 million years, other organisms seem to evolve right before our eyes. Sara Goudarzi on LiveScience described […]

Fossils

Cambrian Embryo Fossils Show Exquisite Detail in New X-Ray Imaging

August 10, 2006

The news media are all showcasing the detailed color-rendered X-ray tomographs of Cambrian worm embryos from China. Scientists were able to determine that these embryos, alleged to be 500 million years old, are very similar to those of modern, living priapulid worms. Despite their assumed age, some of the embryos were remarkably well preserved, displaying […]

Dumb Ideas

Can Evolution Run in Reverse?

August 7, 2006

Evolutionists in Utah are claiming to have run the evolutionary tape in reverse, says the BBC News: “US researchers have taken a mouse back in time some 500 million years by reversing the process of evolution.” How can this be? By engineering its genetic blueprint, they have rebuilt a gene that was present in primitive […]

Dumb Ideas

Genetic Loss Is Evolutions Gain

July 26, 2006

Three scientists in the University of California system found that “Repression and loss of gene expression outpaces activation and gain” among recently duplicated genes. Surprisingly, publishing in PNAS,1 they claim the non-intuitive hypothesis that this the mother of evolutionary invention. From the abstract: Evolutionists widely acknowledge that regulatory genetic changes are of paramount importance for […]

Birds

More Darwinian Assumptions Shot Down

June 14, 2006

Here are two articles that appear to kick out some once-solid props from evolutionary theory. Readers are encouraged to get the details from the original papers, listed in the footnotes. Environmental Impotence: Many evolutionists have claimed that the environment produces strong selection effects. Indeed, the fitness landscape itself evolves, carrying with it the constraints driving […]

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