Interesting Evolution News
Category: Biology
There are a number of interesting pieces of evolutionary research in the news. Some are a little on the old side......
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 12:01 AM • •
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Anthropology, Evolution and Science
Afarensis is a 3.5-2.8 million year old hominin from the Kada Hadar member of the Hadar formation in the Middle Awash, Ethiopia. He is approximately 41 inches tall, weighs approximately 60 pounds and has a cranial capacity of a whopping 410 cc (approximately). Afarensis is currently considered to be transitional between apes and humans and displays some traits of both. Since he spends a lot of time on the couch watching monster movies, some observers question whether he is an obligate biped (although no one has observed him climbing a tree). He also has a blog called Transitions:The Evolution of Life His previous blog can be found here.
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"Loyalty to petrified opinion never broke a chain or freed a human soul..."
Mark Twain
"Ideology is a poor substitute for rational thought..."
Afarensis
"It isn't faith that makes good science...it's curiosity"
Prof. Jacob Barnhardt, The Day the Earth Stood Still
"This man wishes to be accorded the same privilege as a sponge. He wishes to think!"
Clarence Darrow, Inherit the Wind
"...I become fearful when I see people substituting fear for reason..."
Klaatu, The Day the Earth Stood Still
"I want you to grab life by its little bunny ears and get in its face..."
The Simpsons
"This is between me and the vegetable..."
Seymour Krelborn, The Little Shop of Horrors
"There are bad laws and cruel laws and the people who enforce them are both bad and cruel..."
Thea, Isle of the Dead
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." Jean- Luc Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation
"But the limit of tolerance for these human foibles is obtained when the proponent of a questionable scientific doctrine endeavors to maintain it against all possible odds by misrepresentation, misinformation and suppression of contradictory data, and by insinuating unfairness in opponents of his views."
Franz Weidenreich, Morphology of Solo Man
"Man stands alone in the universe, a unique product of a long, unconcious, impersonal material process with unique understanding and potentialities. These he owes to no one but himself, and it is to himself that he is responsible. He is not the creature of uncontrollable and undeterminable forces, but his own master. He can and must decide and manage his own destiny."
George Gaylord Simpson, Life of the Past
Yeah he's the Dick to the Dawk to the phd,
he's smarter than you he's got a science degree!
Yeah he's the Dick to the Dawk to the phd,
he's smarter than you he's got a science degree!
Unknown
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
Frederich Nietzsche
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
The Declaration of Independence
Category: Biology
There are a number of interesting pieces of evolutionary research in the news. Some are a little on the old side......
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 12:01 AM • •
Category: Evolution
There are are couple of interesting pieces of research in the news. The first concerns tail shedding in island lizards. PhysOrg has the story:...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 8:45 PM • 13 Comments •
Category: Biology
Shame on the Cincinnati Zoo. You can find out why here. The short version is that they have teamed up with the the Creation Museum to create a combo ticket for the holidays. Update 1: The misguided effort to pair...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 8:27 AM • 9 Comments •
Category: Biology
I haven't mentioned those adorable and beautiful creatures called naked mole rats lately. So to make up for it there are a few videos below the fold....
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 7:25 PM • 5 Comments •
Category: Biology
Is this something we should be worried about? I understand that foot-and-mouth disease is nothing to mess around with, but I find this story somewhat perplexing. For example, the caption to the photo says, in part: The Bush administration relied...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 11:20 AM • 3 Comments •
Category: Biology
Dear Florida, Between 1996 and 2006 an estimated 99,000 Burmese pythons were imported into the US, of these an estimated 30,000 now live in the Everglades. Worse yet, they, along with released Boas, are now breeding....
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 12:34 PM • 20 Comments •
Category: Sticklebacks
A number of people have emailed me a link to this story about "reverse evolution" in sticklebacks residing in Lake Washington. The basic story is that as Lake Washington was cleaned of its pollution sticklebacks went from being low plated...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 12:09 AM • 9 Comments •
Category: Interesting Science News
Some interesting science stories for you....
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 1:15 PM • •
Category: Octopi
National Geographic has an interesting video on the sex lives of octopi - apparently there is a certain amount of mimicry and guile involved.... The video is based on this article:...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 11:41 AM • •
Category: Biology
A missing comma changes the taxonomy of primates: Just like penguins and other primates, people trade sex for resources Strangely enough, humans are the only primate mentioned in the article. Otherwise the article is about humans being hard wired (feh)...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 8:26 AM • 3 Comments •
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Orac 01.26.2012