laelaps | June 8, 2009 Is intelligent design science, or not? Think carefully before you answer. The modern intelligent design (ID) movement is motivated by theological concerns and trades in on religious authority to meet its aims, but stripped of this background, can ID be relegated to the "junk science" bin? While the answer to this latter question is "Yes", in a new paper ("The science question in intelligent design") Sahotra Sarkar argues that proclaiming ID to be non-science without careful consideration does little good.
As Sarkar notes, there is no easily definable demarcation criteria to deem ID science…
laelaps | June 8, 2009In case you haven't heard, the latest edition of the journal Evolution: Education and Outreach is almost entirely about transitional fossils. There's something for everyone, from synapsids to onychophorans, so make sure you check it out!
My only complaint, though, is that there is not a paper about early hominins or human evolution. Human evolution is often ignored or given short shrift when we talk about transitional fossils, yet the past several decades have seen an explosion in new types of extinct humans. I have no idea why such a paper does not appear in the collection (perhaps one was…
laelaps | June 8, 2009
In the middle of August 2008 Matt Whitton, Rick Dyer, and "professional Bigfoot hunter" Tom Biscardi claimed to have found what so many had sought after: the body of a real Bigfoot. FOX News picked up the story, DNA tests were performed, and a grand unveiling was planned, but, as ever, it all was a hoax. There was still no definitive proof that Sasquatch, Bigfoot, the Skunk Ape, Skookum, or a long lost "missing link" by any other name ever existed.
Last summer's brief frenzy over Bigfoot was hardly unique. As author Joshua Blu Buhs illustrates in his new book, Bigfoot: The Life and Times of…
laelaps | June 8, 2009
An eastern box turtle (Terrapene carolina carolina), photographed at Cape Henlopen State Park, Delaware.
laelaps | June 7, 2009
A dead summer flounder (Paralichthys dentatus), washed up at low tide at Cape Henlopen State Park, Delaware.
laelaps | June 6, 2009
A horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus), photographed at Cape Henlopen State Park, Delaware. Many of the crabs that were stranded on the beach, but still alive, dug themselves into the sand near the water to stay moist during low tide.
laelaps | June 5, 2009
A pair of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus), photographed at Cape Henlopen State Park, Delaware.
laelaps | June 4, 2009For some scientists, "blog" is one of the worst four letter words there is. Aren't science blogs pits of ill-formed opinions where the ignorant can post anything they like without fear of peer-review? Of course not, but unfortunately there are many professional scientists who consider blogging a dangerous thing. That's why I am glad to say that the National Academy of Sciences has started up a blog of their own, The X-Change Files, as part of their Science and Entertainment Exchange.
The X-Change files is a blog well-worth checking out, and they already have quite a few heavy hitters (like…
laelaps | June 4, 2009Not so long ago it seemed that the "Lucy's Legacy" exhibit, which features the world's most famous fossil hominin, was coming to an end. The exhibition failed to bring in the crowds that were expected and there were doubts as to whether it would continue. According to a story about the exceptionally-talented paleo-artist Viktor Deak that appeared in this week's New York Times, however, it looks like Lucy is coming to Manhattan;
[Deak's] 78-foot-long mural showing six million years' worth of the proto-humans whose bony bits have been found in northeast Africa is coming to Manhattan in June as…
laelaps | June 4, 2009
Two horseshoe crabs (Limulus polyphemus) making their way down the beach towards the water. Photographed at Cape Henlopen State Park, Delaware.
laelaps | June 3, 2009
The face of Anoiapithecus. From Moya-Sola et al. (2009).
One of the most controversial aspects of the whole Darwinius kerfuffle has been the primate's proposed status as "the ancestor of us all." The fossil, named "Ida", has been popularly touted as the "missing link" connecting us to all other mammals, but how can we really know if Darwinius fits this role? The truth is that we can't, and it is nearly impossible to parse direct ancestor-descendant relationships among fossil vertebrates, especially when we're talking about a fossil that lived over 40 million years before the first…
laelaps | June 3, 2009
I haven't yet looked up the identification of this species, but this crab was clearing out its burrow at sunset at Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge.
laelaps | June 2, 2009
The exceptionally preserved skeleton of Darwinius, known popularly as "Ida." From PLoS One.
Last month an international team of paleontologists lifted the veil on one of the most spectacular fossils ever discovered; a 47-million-year-old primate they named Darwinius masillae. It was a major event, but not everything went as planned. This fossil, popularly known as "Ida", immediately sparked a controversy about the relationship between science and the media, the ethics of buying fossils from private collectors, and what our distant primate ancestors were like.
Indeed, the media blitz…
laelaps | June 2, 2009
A male red-winged blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus), photographed at Cape Henlopen State Park, Delaware.
laelaps | June 1, 2009Many thanks to everyone who has sent in material for the Ida carnival. There is plenty to post, but I have decided to delay the carnival by one day. Instead it will go up tomorrow afternoon, and I will be accepting entries until 9 AM tomorrow. Why? Because today is the Silence is the Enemy blogswarm and I want to encourage readers to check it out/contribute to it rather than keep fretting over Ida. I strongly urge you to read Sheril's post and follow the links over to essays from other participants.
laelaps | June 1, 2009Voting for the new 3quarksdaily contest has recently opened up, and now you can vote for your favorite blog posts. I was glad to see that Laelaps is represented by four entries, although admittedly it was difficult for me to choose which one to vote for! If you want to give me a hand head over to this page and cast your vote. The entries that receive the most votes will then go on to a final round on June 8, 2009 when Steven Pinker will hand-pick the best of the best.
laelaps | June 1, 2009In the summer of 1833 Charles Darwin was exploring the South American landscape when he came across the army of the Argentine general Juan Manuel de Rosas. Though Darwin admired the commander's horsemanship and leadership, the general was engaged in the bloody extermination of native people from southern Argentina. As Darwin recounted in the Voyage of the Beagle;
General Rosas's plan is to kill all stragglers, and having driven the remainder to a common point, in the summer, with the assistance of the Chilenos, to attack them in a body. This operation is to be repeated for three successive…
laelaps | June 1, 2009
A horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus) sculling about in the shallows at Cape Henlopen State Park, Delaware.
laelaps | May 31, 2009I just watched the BBC's documentary on "Ida" (Darwinius masillae), "Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor", and to be honest I was not very impressed. Rather than dissect the show second-by-second, though, I will only discuss some of the main points that occurred to me while watching it. Heaven knows I have spent plenty of time on Ida already...
While I surely appreciate the show's efforts (however fleeting) to describe the paleobiology of Ida, the show's real hook is the conclusion that Darwinius is one of our earliest primate ancestors. This is a tantalizing hypothesis, but is it true? The…
laelaps | May 31, 2009Just a quick reminder: Tomorrow I will be posting a collection of links all about "Ida", from the hype surrounding her announcement to the actual science of the PLoS One paper describing her, sometime in the early afternoon. If you are interested in contributing please e-mail me at evogeek AT gmail DOT com by 9AM tomorrow morning. I'm looking forward to what comes in.