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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Günter Bechly: Species Pairs Wreck Darwinism

African elephants, Asian elephants, biology, bison, Casey Luskin, cattle, chimps, Darwinian theory, donkeys, Evolution, Günter Bechly, Hawaiian Silverswords, horses, human exceptionalism, humans, ID The Future, Intelligent Design, mice, phenotypic plasticity, pygmy hippo, rats, river hippo, river hippos, species pairs, spectacled bear
Bechly and host Casey Luskin discuss cattle and bison, horses and donkeys, the Asian black bear and the South American spectacled bear, and more. Source
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Rats Are People, Too!

ambassador, Animal Welfare Act, animals, anthropocentrism, bioethicists, Culture & Ethics, human exceptionalism, humans, Jane Goodall, Kristen Andrews, lab rats, medical experiments, Medicine, mice, misanthropy, monkeys, Nuremberg Code, philosophy, rats, reduction, refinement, replacement, Susana Monsó
If animal-rights activists ever had their way, all uses of animals by humans would cease — no matter how beneficial to our welfare and thriving. That emphatically includes animal research in medical and scientific experiments.  Animal rights activists falsely claim that no value to humans comes from such experiments — a claim I have rebutted often. Not only does animal research save human lives and offer invaluable information about biology, but it has also been deemed a crucial human-rights protection. The Nuremberg Code specifically stated that animal studies must be conducted before human subject research. International laws and protocols have encoded this wisdom. Rats Are “Empathetic”? But animal rights activists keep fighting. The latest effort — by Kristen Andrews, a professor of philosophy, and Susana Monsó, a bioethicist — argues that…
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