evolution
evolvingthoughts | March 19, 2009Johann Friedrich Blumenbach is often criticised for his racial classification and supposed racism, but in this work, published in 1775, he not only argues for the unity of the human species, but in other passages for their general equality of intelligence, contrary to the use his ideas were later put to.
And now we must come more closely to the principal argument of our dissertation, which is concerned with this question; Are men, and have the men of all times and of every race been of one and the same, or clearly of more than one species? A question much discussed in these days, but so far…
laelaps | March 19, 2009The big news in this week's issue of Nature was the discovery of a small ornithischian dinosaur covered in bristles, but there was another, shorter paper that caught my eye. In December 2007 Nature printed a short communication on Indohyus, a small artiodactyl that seemed like a good candidate for the type of creature that whales evolved from. Paleontologists Hans Thewissen and Lisa Noelle Cooper explain the significance of Indohyus to whale evolution in this video;
There was something that bothered me about the systematic analysis of Indohyus, however. In the paper's phylogenetic tree…
cmooney | March 19, 2009Ed Brayton, who I admire greatly, has a post that runs afoul of my "death of science journalism" sensitivity meter. You see, Ed came across a National Geographic story that says something dumb about "carbon dating." Ed is surely right on the point of substance, and National Geographic should not have made the error. I certainly don't mind him pointing that out; but when you also get something like this--"I've bitched and complained about the sorry state of popular science writing for years. Here's another textbook example..."--I get uppity.
The sorry state of popular science writing is not a…
evolvingthoughts | March 19, 2009If I may interrupt the politics for a bit with a sciencey note, I strongly recommend reading this blog post at Small Things Considered (the go-to site for all things microbial and smaller): parasitoid wasps insert viral-like particles, or VLPs, into the host caterpillars in which they lay their eggs. They make the immune system of the host non-responsive.
I find this interesting, because one of the unsolved mysteries is the origins of viruses - this shows that at least some of them might have started life as manipulative nucleic acids (although these are DNA not RNA viroids). However, the…
evolvingthoughts | March 19, 2009Ian Musgrave has a brilliant post showing that Dembski's revisiting of the old creationist canard that Dawkins' 1984 Weasel program, designed to show that random variation and selective retention can "evolve" a target phrase, in this case Shakespeare's "Methinks it is a weasel" (oops; I nearly had my own mutation there - I typed "methings"), is a load of old cobbler's. Of course we expect nothing less from Ian*, and nothing better from Dembksi.
* But my title is better than his.
evolvingthoughts | March 18, 2009Most bloggers know that it is hard to write interesting entries (curse PZ Mnhyrs!), but just occasionally, one writes itself.
In one day we get three items about taxonomy: one about real taxonomic disagreement, over whether whales are more closely related to hippos (the whippo hypothesis) than either are to other groups; one about a self-publishing snake [oil] researcher who is meeting the criteria of the ICZN for published species names, although his work is highly suspect, and one on how the UK government has banned Councils from using a bunch of obfuscatory terms, including "systematics"…
edyong | March 18, 2009What happens when you find a feathered dinosaur that really isn't meant to have feathers? That's the question set by a spectacular new fossil that adds a confusing dimension to the origin of feathers.
The concept of dinosaurs with feathers is no longer surprising. Birds certainly have them and they are now considered to be living dinosaurs. The infamous Velociraptor and its relatives were covered in plumes, which ranged from the simple quills of Sinosauropteryx to the flight-capable plumes on Microraptor's four wings. We know about these prehistoric feathers through the beautiful fossil…
pharyngula | March 18, 2009
Several new and spectacular cephalopod fossils from 95 million years ago have been found in Lebanon. "Spectacular" is not hyperbole — these specimens have wonderfully well-preserved soft parts, mineralized in fine-grained calcium phosphate, and you can see…well, take a look.
(Click for larger image)Keuppia levante sp. nov. from the Upper Cenomanian (Metoicoceras geslinianum Zone) of Hâdjoula (Lebanon). A,
holotype, MSNM i26320a. B, sketch of the holotype.
The arms (all eight of them) are intact, right down to the suckers; muscles and gills are preserved; the animal has an ink sac; there is a…
laelaps | March 18, 2009
A very unusual reconstruction of Dimetrodon from the textbook Geology, based on a reconstruction by E.C. Case. Dimetrodon and other sail-backed creatures were once considered to have become too "spiny" to survive.
According to the old, if inaccurate, aphorism ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, or the development of an individual organism replays its evolutionary history. This idea was seen in the work of various scholars, from Ernst Haeckel to Sigmund Freud, but at the turn of the 20th century some paleontologists thought it could hold true stated the other way. Might the evolution of a…
ksharpe | March 18, 2009Originally posted by Brian Switek
On March 15, 2009, at 12:05 PM
Ancestors are important. We like to know where we came from and what sort of legacy our forebears left, but it has only been recently that we have been able to trace the concept of "ancestor" through the depths of geological strata. I may not know the detailed history of my family during the last hundred years or so, but I do know that a number of hominins figure into my family tree.
I am not proud or ashamed of this deeper ancestry which I share with every other Homo sapiens on the planet. It is simply historical fact, but I…
hrynyshyn | March 17, 2009Remarkable words from Canada''s Parliament Hill:
Canada's science minister, the man at the centre of the controversy over federal funding cuts to researchers, won't say if he believes in evolution.
"I'm not going to answer that question. I am a Christian, and I don't think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate," Gary Goodyear, the federal Minister of State for Science and Technology, said in an interview with The Globe and Mail.
A funding crunch, exacerbated by cuts in the January budget, has left many senior researchers across the county scrambling to find the money to…
amillikan | March 17, 2009
There are several misconceptions circulating about Charles Darwin and his revolutionary ideas and theories in the field of evolution. That's why, in honor of Darwin's birthday last month, ScienceBlogger John Wilkins from Evolving Thoughts took it upon himself to clear things up. In his eight-part series, "Myths about Darwin," Wilkins addresses and debunks claims such as those that paint Darwin as a social Darwinist or Lamarckian and sets the record straight.
Related ScienceBlogs Posts:
Myth 1: Darwin Did Not Believe in the Reality of Species
Evolving ThoughtsFebruary 10, 2009
Myth 2: Darwin…
laelaps | March 17, 2009
A mount of Dimetrodon at the AMNH. From the Bulletin of the AMNH.
The predatory pelycosaur Dimetrodon has always been a favorite of mine. Though not a dinosaur it has an appearance as bizarre as any dinosaur you care to name, and the function of the huge sail on its back is remains an enigma. What could such an impressive structure be used for?
Slight differences in the bony back struts of a similar animal that inhabited the same habitat as Dimetrodon provided paleontologist E.D. Cope with a clue. Where Dimetrodon was a large apex predator "Naosaurus" appeared to be a more peaceful…
hrynyshyn | March 16, 2009A couple of weeks ago, New Scientist published an insightful but hardly controversial little essay on the challenges a science book editor faces when she has to deal with creationist literature. Amanda Geftner's piece, "How to spot a hidden religious agenda" disappeared from the magazine's website last week (Of course, it's still available elsewhere, like here.) As of this morning, if you try to find it at the New Scientist site, you get a message from the editors:
New Scientist has received a legal complaint about the contents of this story. At the advice of our lawyer it has temporarily…
laelaps | March 16, 2009
A visual summary of horse evolution published in 1921 (derived from an earlier diagram by W.D. Matthew). From An Introduction to the Study of Fossils.
When Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in 1859 he faced a substantial problem. His evolutionary mechanism predicted that the fossil record would contain finely-graded transitions revealing what G.G. Simpson would later term the "tempo and mode" of evolution, yet such transitional creatures proved elusive. This was a major problem for paleontologists who believed that studies of European geology…
clock | March 16, 2009From SCONC:
Tuesday, March 31
6:30 p.m.
"Life after Darwin: Are there still big discoveries to be made in biology?" NC State ecologist Rob Dunn continues the NC Museum of Natural Science's Charles Darwin Lecture Series. Free lecture; doors open at 6. Museum of Natural Science, downtown Raleigh. Please RSVP to museum.reservations@ncmail.net.
(Next in the series: Anne Yoder, director of the Duke Lemur Center, and paleontologist Paul Brinkman on Darwin's use of fossil evidence.)
evolvingthoughts | March 14, 2009A while back I excerpted some Whewell on classification by types. Here is John Stuart Mill disagreeing with him, and, I think, starting off the modern literature on natural kinds.
Kinds are Classes between which there is an impassable barrier; and what we have to seek is, marks whereby we may determine on which side of the barrier an object takes its place. The characters which will best do this should be chosen: if they are also important in themselves, so much the better. When we have selected the characters, we parcel out the objects according to those characters, and not, I conceive,…
laelaps | March 13, 2009I am no fan of the "March of Progress", but I know it isn't going anywhere. It is too readily recognizable as an evolutionary image for its use to be discontinued. That is why I wasn't surprised to see it in a new commercial for Extra spearmint gum. What I was surprised by, however, was that the creators of the commercial think that sloths figured in our evolution somewhere between tarsiers and chimpanzees;
[facepalm]
Creationists don't like the commercial either, but for entirely different reasons. This chap, for instance, is so fervent in his belief in creationism that he feels deeply…