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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The Miracle of Man: Reflections on the Westminster Conference

biology, Brian Miller, digital camera, Emily Reeves, Engineering, Faith & Science, fine-tuning, genetics, Howard Glicksman, human beings, human vision, ID The Future, Intelligent Design, mankind, Mark Garcia, Michael Denton, Michael Egnor, paleontology, philosophy, physiology, Podcast, skeletal joints, Steve Laufman, The Miracle of Man, theology, vision, Westminster Conference on Science and Faith
Dr. Miller gives a brief summary of his talk on the fine-tuning of human vision. We’ll be doing a full episode with him on that subject soon. 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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Fossil Friday: Venetoraptor Is Not the Archaeopteryx of Pterosaurs

anatomy, archosauromorph, Argentina, Bill Nye, Brazil, Calcari di Zorzino Formation, cladogram, common ancestry, Darwinian theory, Darwinists, David Attenborough, Evolution, flying reptiles, Greenland, lagerpetids, paleontology, Popular Science, pterosaur wings, Pterosauria, pterosaurs, Scleromochlus, Scotland, Triassic period, Venetoraptor gassenae, Wikipedia
Forget all the pop science ballyhoo, and if you should not trust my word, just check the provided primary sources. 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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Researchers: Neanderthals Invented Process to Produce Birch Tar

23andMe, antiseptic, birch tar, birch wood, Clive Finlayson, Germany, Gibraltar Museum, glue, Homo sapiens, Human Origins, insect repellent, intelligence, Michael Shermer, Middle Palaeolithic, missing link, Neanderthals, Neuroscience & Mind, paleontology, Patrick Schmidt, ScienceAlert, University of Tübingen
The tar can be used for glue, bug repellent, and killing germs. This finding tracks growing recognition of Neanderthals as intelligent. Source
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Scientists Are Skeptical that Intelligence in Homo naledi “Erases Human Exceptionalism”

ABC News, archaeologists, Archaeology, Associated Press, Australia, bioRxiv, burial, cave art, chimpanzees, fire use, Germany, Gibraltar, Griffith University, hominids, Homo naledi, human exceptionalism, Human Origins, intelligence, Kenya, Lee Berger, María Martinón-Torres, Maxime Aubert, Michael Petraglia, National Research Center on Human Evolution, Natural History Museum, Neanderthals, New York Times, Newsweek, paleontology, Phys.org, preprint papers, Rising Star Cave, Science News, Silvia Bello, skeletons, Spain, The Conversation, Wall Street Journal
Berger et al.’s claims about the species have been disputed and their idea that it lived 2-3 million years ago was exaggerated by a factor of 10. 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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