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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Fossil Friday: Rapid Elongation of Plesiosaur Necks Points to Intelligent Design

allometric growth, BMC Ecology and Evolution, cervical vertebrae, crocodilians, cryptozoologists, Darwinian mechanisms, Early Triassic, end-Permian mass extinction, fish, flippers, fossil record, giraffes, Great Dying, homeotic mutations, humans, ichthyosaurs, Intelligent Design, lizards, Loch Ness monster, lorises, macromutations, mammals, marine reptiles, Mesozoic, mutations, neck, neck length, nothosaurs, pachypleurosaurs, paleontology, Permian, pistosaurs, plesiosaurs, population genetics, pottos, Purussaurus, sea snake, sea turtle, sloths, stem group, vertebrae, vertebrates
The breaking of the conserved number of cervical vertebrae is hard to reconcile with an unguided evolutionary mechanism. Source
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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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Why Intelligent Design Best Explains the Fossil Record Data

bounded adaptation, Casey Luskin, CELS, Center for Science and Culture, complex organisms, Conference on Engineering and Living Systems, Darwinian theory, Discovery Institute, earth, Eric Anderson, explosion model, fossil record, ID The Future, intelligent causation, Intelligent Design, paleomagnetism, paleontology, Podcast, punctuated equilibrium, stasis, Stephen Meyer, Theistic Evolution (book), University of Johannesburg
The fossil record is consistent with the engineering-based theory of bounded adaptation Source
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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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What Do We Know about the Origin of Rhinos?

African elephant, African savanna, biology, Ceratotherium simum, DNA, Donald R. Prothero, Evolution, fossil record, Intelligent Design, Microevolution, mutations, Niles Eldredge, rhinoceroses, Rhinocerotidae, rhinocerotids, Rhinocerotoidea, Stephen Jay Gould, superfamily, Teletaceras, Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig
Although they are not the handsomest or most graceful creatures in the animal kingdom, the Rhinocerotoidea (superfamily) are a fascinating group for research. Source
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Does the Scientific Evidence Support Evolutionary Models of Human Origins?

Adam and Eve, Adam and the Genome, Australopithecines, Australopithecus, BioLogos, chimpanzees, computational biology, Dennis Venema, Endogenous retroviruses, Evolution, evolutionary creation, evolutionary mechanisms, fossil record, Francis Collins, Homo sapiens, human evolution, Human Origins, humans, Joshua Swamidass, Junk DNA, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, Nature (journal), Nature Ecology and Evolution, Nature Reviews Genetics, Ola Hössjer, population genetics, pseudogenes, Queen Mary University London, Richard Buggs, theistic evolution, University of Stockholm, Washington University
The fossil record shows a break between the australopithecines, supposedly directly ancestral to our genus, and the first humanlike members of the genus. Source
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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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