03Jan 2025 by Post

Fossil Friday: A Scientific Controversy About Warm-Blooded Animals

birds, Brian Gardiner, Charles Darwin, convergent adaptations, Darwinism, dinosaurs, Dromaeosauridae, Evolution, Fossil Friday (series), Green River Formation, Haematothermia, Intelligent Design, John Ray, mammals, Nahmavis grande, paleontology, Philippe Janvier, physiology, pterosaurs, Richard Dawkins, Richard Owen, spermatozoa, synapsid, Søren Løvtrup, warm-blooded animals, Wyoming
How do popularizers of Darwinism such as Richard Dawkins react? Unsurprisingly, they just ignore the evidence. Source
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29Dec 2024 by Post

No. 4 Story of 2024: Darwin’s Abominable Mystery Corroborated Again

abominable mystery, angiosperms, biological novelty, biology, Charles Darwin, diversification, Early Cretaceous, Evolution, flowering plants, Fossil Friday (series), genomes, Intelligent Design, jumps, Las Hoyas, Late Jurassic, Lower Cretaceous, Montsechia vidalii, nature, Nature (journal), paleontology, Philip Donoghue, Spain
This notorious discontinuity in the fossil record did not get any smaller with 160 years of research since Darwin, but instead became more and more acute. Source
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28Dec 2024 by Post

No. 5 Story of 2024: New Evidence Against Dino-Bird Ancestry

Alan Feduccia, antitrochanter, birds, dinosaur-bird hypothesis, dinosaurs, Evolution, evolutionary biology, Fossil Friday (series), fossil record, Germany, Hesperornis gracilis, iliac, ischium, Jurassic Park, Karlsruhe, Late Cretaceous, marine birds, microraptorids, paleontology, paleornithologists, penguins, phylogenetics, Temporal Paradox, theropod dinosaurs, troodontids, University of North Carolina, vertebrates
Few hypotheses in evolutionary biology have become as popular among lay people as the postulated ancestry of birds from bipedal dinosaurs. Source
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24Dec 2024 by Post

No. 9 Story of 2024: Suppressed Dissent About Neanderthal DNA in Modern Humans

"Out of Africa", Africans, bioRxiv, Current Biology, evolutionary genetics, evolutionary rate, Fossil Friday (series), heterozygous sites, Human Origins, Intelligent Design, introgression, Kafkaesque, Nature (journal), Nature Genetics, Neanderthal DNA, Neanderthals, Nobel laureates, non-Africans, paleontology, Philip Magness, PLOS, PNAS, population size, Science (journal), Scientific community, Svante Pääbo, Sydney Brenner, University of Cambridge
The case of Professor William Amos represents an interesting parallel with dissenters in the intelligent design community. Source
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20Dec 2024 by Post

Fossil Friday: Nakridletia — The Rise and Fall (and Possible Resurrection) of a Fossil Insect Order

aquatic flies, biology, China, Daohugou site, Darwinian theory, ectoparasites, Evolution, fleas, forewings, Fossil Friday (series), fossil record, gyroscopes, holometabolan insects, insects, Intelligent Design, Middle Jurassic, mouthparts, Nakridletia, paleontology, parasites, parasitic insects, pincers, pterosaurs, scorpionflies, Strashila incredibilis, Strashilidae, strashilids, Vosilidae, wings
So, were strashilids a distinct order of parasitic insects or just aquatic flies? Source
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29Nov 2024 by Post

Fossil Friday: Evolutionary Stasis in Beetles

academia, adults, amber, antennae, astrology, Basilosaurus, beetles, Carabidae, catching cage, Collembola, Dorudon, Evolution, Fossil Friday (series), Indohyus, K/Pg impact event, larvae, living fossils, Loricera, maxillae, Myanmar, Neo-Darwinism, Pakicetus, paleontology, psychoanalysis, unguided evolution, Wired
Natural selection is the great magician in evolutionary fantasy land, where it explains rapid change in explosive radiations as well as no change at all. Source
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15Nov 2024 by Post

Fossil Friday: New Research on How Delicate Soft-Bodied Organisms Can Be Perfectly Preserved

arthropods, bacterial decay, Burgess Shale, Cambrian Explosion, Charles Doolittle Walcott, China, clay mineralogy, Devonian Hunsrück Shale, digestive tracts, Emu Bay Shale, Evolution, eyes, Fossil Friday (series), fossils, Intelligent Design, Kangaroo Island, Karl Popper, microbes, mudslides, paleontologists, paleontology, preservation, South Australia, taphonomic processes, Theodosius Dobzhansky, turbidites, Waptia fieldensis
All the just-so-stories of macroevolution are completely dispensable in real (experimental) biology. Source
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08Nov 2024 by Post

Fossil Friday: An Ediacaran Animal with a Question Mark

A. Yu Ivantsov, animals, dickinsoniids, Ediacaran biota, Epibaion, Evolution, Evolution & Development, flatworms, Fossil Friday (series), IFLScience, jello, microbial mats, multicellular animal, muscles, nervous system, Nilpena Ediacara National Park, outback, paleontology, placozoan, Precambrian, protists, Quaestio simpsonorum, Roomba, sandstone, South Australia, trace fossils, Tribrachidium
To claim that such undefinable blobs in sandstone represent fossils of the oldest motile animals is massively overselling the evidence to say the least. Source
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01Nov 2024 by Post

Fossil Friday: New Fossil Evidence Challenges Another Icon of Evolution

Brasilodon quadrangularis, convergent evolution, cynodonts, Cynognathus crateronotus, Early Jurassic, Evolution, evolutionary icons, Fossil Friday (series), Gondwana, Great Britain, James Rawson, Jonathan Wells, mammalian origins, mammals, middle ear bones, Oligokyphus major, paleontology, Reichert-Gaupp theory, reptiles, Riograndia guaibensis, South America, transitional series, University of Bristol, Zhe-Xi Luo
This would have been very interesting news to my friend and colleague Jonathan Wells, who had described many such cases in his ground-breaking books. Source
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