24Nov 2023 by Post

Fossil Friday: Cambrian Bryozoa Come and Go

bilaterians, body plans, Bryozoa, Cambrian animals, Cambrian Explosion, Carboniferous strata, chordates, Evolution, evolutionary biology, Fossil Friday, fossil record, great Ordovician biodiversification event, green algae, inkblots, invertebrates, lophophore, Lower Cambrian, Lower Ordovician, metazoans, microCT, Middle Pennsylvanian, molecular clock studies, moss animals, Nevada, Ohio, paleontology, phosphatic fossils, Pywackia baileyi, South China, tentacles
This is a field that often has more in common with the interpretation of inkblots in Rorschach tests than with hard science. Source
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06Oct 2023 by Post

Fossil Friday: A Popular Just-So Story on the Origin of Bird Flight Bites the Dust

adaptation, aerodynamics, arboreal hypothesis, avian flight, birds, China, Chukar partridge, computer modelling, Confuciusornis, cursorial hypothesis, empirical data, Evolution, flapping, Flight, forelimb, Fossil Friday, fossil record, ichthyosaur, kinematics, Liaoning, mechanics, muscles, paleontology, powered flight, storytelling, WAIR hypothesis, wing-assisted incline running, wings
There is a long-running about whether birds first took off by running and flapping from the ground up, or whether they jumped as gliders from the tree down. Source
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23Jun 2023 by Post

Fossil Friday: To Be or Not to Be Homo

African apes, Australopithecines, bone fragments, bones, butchering sites, Darwinian, evolutionists, Fossil Friday, fossil record, handy man, hominin fossils, Homo ergaster, Homo habilis, human oirgins, Human Origins, humans, Louis Leakey, Lucy, missing link, nomadic tribes, Olduvai Gorge, paleoanthropologists, paleontology, rock circles, stone tools, Tanzania, wastebasket taxon
The fossil hominin Homo habilis was described 1964 by Louis Leakey and his colleagues from the 1.9 million year old Olduvai Gorge locality in Tanzania. Source
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26May 2023 by Post

Fossil Friday: A Dinosaur Feather and an Overhyped New Study on the Origin of Feathers

amber, amniotes, biological novelty, biology, birds, chicken embryos, Eastern Kentucky University, Encyclopedia Britannica, Evolution, feathers, Fossil Friday, fossil record, Francis Collins, Germany, homology, integumental structures, Intelligent Design, Karl Giberson, keratin, mammal hairs, ontogenetic pathway, ontogeny, paleontology, radii, rami, reptile scales, scales, Stuttgart Natural History Museum, The Language of Science and Faith, theropod, theropod dinosaurs
Feathers, which are the most complex integumental structures known in the animal kingdom, without doubt required coordinated changes in numerous genes. Source
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28Apr 2023 by Post

Fossil Friday: The Explosive Origin of Mosasaurs in the Cretaceous

Darwinism, ecological niches, Evolution, flukes, Fossil Friday, fossil record, genes, genetic changes, genetic coding, just-so stories, Late Cretaceous, legends, marine reptiles, mathematics, mosasaurs, mutations, North America, paleontology, Plesioplatecarpus planifroms, population genetics, sea serpents, sharks, waiting-time problem
The math of population genetics precludes a Darwinian origin of these new genes in such a short time. Source
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21Apr 2023 by Post

Fossil Friday: The Explosive Origin of Complex Eyes in Trilobites

arthropods, begging the question, Cambrian Explosion, common ancestry, Darwinists, Evolution, evolutionary biology, falsification, Fossil Friday, fossil record, holochroal eyes, immunization, just-so stories, materialists, Molière, opium, paleontology, phylogeny, pseudoscience, schizochroal eyes, Stephen Meyer, trilobites
The theory has been made immune to empirical falsification because it is simply assumed to be true by default as the only viable option for materialists. Source
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14Apr 2023 by Post

Fossil Friday: The Abrupt Origin of Butterflies

abrupt appearance, animal phyla, butterflies, caddisfly, Cambrian Explosion, Darwinian theory, Early Cretaceous, Eocene, Evolution, Florissant, Fossil Friday, fossil record, Hesperiidae, Intelligent Design, Lepidoptera, macrolepidopterans, Mesozoic, moth, Nymphalidae, paleontology, Papillionidae, Pieridae, Prodryas persephone, Tertiary Butterfly Explosion
This phenomenon could rightfully be called a Tertiary Butterfly Explosion analogous to the Cambrian Explosion of animal phyla. Source
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10Feb 2023 by Post

Fossil Friday: The Abrupt Origins of Lagomorphs and Rodents

beavers, Carl von Linné, China, comparative morphology, Cretaceous, Dan Graur, Darwinism, Early Paleocene, East Asia, Euarchontoglires, Evolution, Fossil Friday, fossil record, Glires, guinea pigs, gundis, hamsters, hares, incongruence, Lagomorpha, Lagomorphs, mammals, mice, molecular clock studies, Mongolia, Nebraska, Oligocene, Palaeolagus haydeni, Paleocene, PaleoDB, paleontology, pikas, placental mammals, porcupines, rabbits, rats, Rodentia, rodents, squirrels, Systema Naturae, Tübingen
Molecular biologist Dan Graur mentioned his weird idea that guinea pigs are not rodents at a lecture at my university in Tübingen when I was still a student. Source
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03Feb 2023 by Post

Fossil Friday: The Abrupt Origins of Treeshrews (Scandentia) and Colugos (Dermoptera)

Alfred Brehm, arboreal animals, bats, chimeras, colugos, Cretaceous Period, Cynocephalidae, Darwinian predictions, Darwinian theory, Early Eocene, Euarchotoglires, Eudaemonema webbi, Evolution, flying lemurs, Fossil Friday, fossil record, Galeopithecidae, Late Paleocene, Micromomyidae, Microsyopidae, Mixodectidae, Myanmar, North America, Pakistan, Paleocene, Paleogene, paleontology, phylogenetics, Plagiomenidae, plagiomenids, Plesiadapiformes, primates, Ptilocercidae, Thailand, treeshrews, Volitantia, Western Canada
Even as a paleontologist I admit that calling this a real scientific discipline seems like an insult to sciences like physics or chemistry or molecular biology. Source
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