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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26Mar 2020 by Post

Ancestor of All Animals in 555-Million-Year-Old Ediacaran Sediments?

annelids, arthropods, bilaterian animals, Buddenbrockia plumatellae, burrowing, Cambrian Explosion, Cambrian News, China, cnidarians, Deuterostomia, Ediacaran animals, Evolution, Germany, habitus, Helminthoidichnites, Ikaria wariootia, incertae sedis, microbial mats, mortichnia, Nephrozoa, PNAS, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Protostomia, Scyphozoa, South Australia, UC Riverside, University of California, Xenacoelomorpha, Yilingia spiciformis
For my series of articles about alleged Ediacaran animals predating the Cambrian explosion there is a new candidate that deserves a closer view: New research on Ediacaran fossils was just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by a team of scientists from UC Riverside (Evans et al. 2020), and it has already made global news headlines including, “Ancestor of all animals identified in Australian fossils” (University of California 2020) and the even more sensational, “Fossil hunters find evidence of 555m-year-old human relative” (Davis 2020). What did those scientists discover and are their far-reaching conclusions really justified?  Grains of Rice The authors of this study looked at fossil layers from the National Heritage Nilpena site in the Flinders Range of South Australia, which are slightly older than…
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