Now on ScienceBlogs: The Galaxy's Biggest Valentine
PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
…and this is a pharyngula stage embryo.
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Nearly 25 percent of the nation's 1,411 television stations now have full- time religious programming, according to the 1989 Directory of Religious Broadcasting. That reflects a 30 percent jump over 1988. This doesn't count the three religious television networks, including Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, or the hundreds of stations that carry some religious programming. Of the nation's 10,546 radio stations, 1,485 or 14 percent, are Christian stations — a 7 percent increase over 1988. Dwarfing the impact of U.S. radio stations is the worldwide network of evangelical ministries that preaches to Third World countries via shortwave radio. From high in the Andes mountains in Quito, Ecuador, HCJB World Radio — which stands for Heralding Christ Jesus' Blessings — uses its combined 1-million-watt shortwave power of several transmitter stations to broadcast 24 hours a day to 80 percent of the globe.
[Annie Nakao, San Francisco Examiner, 23 July 1989]
Category: Evolution
I've written about the spectacular phospatized embryos of the Doushantuo formation before. It's a collection of exceptionally well preserved small multicellular organisms, so well preserved that we can even look at cellular organelles. And they're pre-Cambrian, as much as 630...
Posted by PZ Myers at 3:09 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Fossils
Look with your puny camera eyes! Some new specimens of Anomalocaris, the spectacular Cambrian predator, have been discovered in South Australia. These fossils exhibit well-preserved eyes, allowing us to see that the bulbous stalked balls on their heads were actually...
Posted by PZ Myers at 12:26 PM • 17 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Creationism
A few weeks ago, PLoS One published a paper on the observation of preserved chitin in 34 million year old cuttlebones. Now the Institute for Creation Research has twisted the science to support their belief that the earth is less...
Posted by PZ Myers at 6:03 PM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Bad science
At first I thought this discovery was really cool, because I love the idea of ancient giant cephalopods creating art and us finding the works now. But then, reality sinks in: that's a genuinely, flamboyantly extravagant claim, and the...
Posted by PZ Myers at 1:17 PM • 17 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Cephalopods
Emily Baldry is six years old. Emily has a little plastic shovel. Emily dug up a 160 million year old cephalopod. I'm 54, I have a little plastic spoon, and I'm eyeing the backyard. There used to be cephalopods swimming...
Posted by PZ Myers at 3:46 PM • 14 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Creationism
Ann Coulter is back to whining about evolution again, and this week she focuses on fossils. It's boring predictable stuff: there are no transitional fossils, she says. We also ought to find a colossal number of transitional organisms in the...
Posted by PZ Myers at 1:52 PM • 45 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Fossils
I raised a few questions about those 3.4 billion year old bacterial fossils, primarily that I was bugged by the large size and that they cited a discredited source to say that they were in the appropriate range of diameters...
Posted by PZ Myers at 11:17 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Organisms
Both Jerry Coyne and Larry Moran have good write-ups on the recent discovery of what are purportedly the oldest fossil cells, at 3.4 billion years old. I just have to add one little comment: a small, niggling doubt and something...
Posted by PZ Myers at 5:16 PM • 14 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Science
This is one beautiful plesiosaur, Polycotylus latippinus. (Click for larger image) (A) Photograph and (B) interpretive drawing of LACM 129639, as mounted. Adult elements are light brown, embryonic material is dark brown, and reconstructed bones are white. lc indicates left...
Posted by PZ Myers at 10:08 AM • 21 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Fossils
A lovely new dinosaur fossil from China is described in Nature today: it's named Xiaotingia zhengi, and it was a small chicken-sized, feathered, Archaeopteryx-like beast that lived about 155 million years ago. It shares some features with Archaeopteryx, and...
Posted by PZ Myers at 2:10 PM • 62 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Orac 02.13.2012
Tim Lambert 02.01.2012
PZ Myers 02.02.2012
Orac 01.26.2012
ERV 11.26.2011
