evolutiongeek's blog

This past weekend, I finally got the chance to see the BBC's Walking With Prehistoric Beasts and it was about on-par with what I expected. The mix of cgi and puppetry often looked silly, but at least it was a step above the stop-motion animation dinosaurs I so often saw growing up. I even got reacquainted with one of my most favorite post-dinosaur beasties, Andrewsarchus mongoliensis. This was the largest terrestrial mammalian carnivore ever to exist, with a skull over a 3 feet long and standing approximately 6 feet at the shoulder. The reconstruction on the show was truly amazing, with a pattern of black stripes and spots over an orange-hued coat, and was one of the few on the show I didn't cringe at when seeing it move. In fact I was so inspired by the show I decided to look up the fiesty killer online, and found that it is only known from a single skull (minus the mandibular though) and a few bits of bone. It was discovered in paleontologist hero Roy Chapman Andrews (hence it's name, "Andrews Beast") in Mongolia around 1924 (the date of the AMNH description of the fossil). How did the show get a muscular, hoofed carnivore from just one massive skull, of which no other has been found?  Read More »

In my discussions with people of various viewpoints about evolution, one of the most common claims is that evolution does not "increase" genetic information. The claim that evolution is causing us to "devolve" from some Platonic idea prior to the Noachian Flood is discussed in my other post "Is evolution genetically impossible?" and although this claim is related (if you can have new genetic information, you can correct for deterioration caused by mutations) it has different implications. In a way, it mirrors the creationist claim that the 2nd law of thermodynamics refutes evolution, which is not at all true. The thing that creationists often forget is that the 2nd law is not applicable to open systems (essentially where there is new input of energy into the system), and the earth most certainly is an open system. They seem to hold a similar idea about mutations and genetic information, in that the original created "kinds" in the Bible had the all the genetic information that would every be needed to cause all the variations that we see today. It is known that a creature doesn't need brand new information to be different (often mutations cause changes of what already exists) but creationists have offered up no explanation as to how an animal could have all the information needed for all the future generations of that "kind" and not be some unlikely monster exhibiting all kinds of odd traits in its phenotype (physical appearance). Even beyond this, the creationist claim is vauge and easily shifted around to mean just about anything, but perhaps that's why it's so succesful with some people.  Read More »

While feeding my OCD-like habit of checking my e-mail, I noticed an article about California's newly proposed network of marine reserves to protect marine-life off their coast. In these areas, reaching from Santa Barbara to Half Moon Bay (near San Francisco), fishing would be banned or heavily restricted, and some of them overlap very productive fishing areas. Of course, the fishermen (both commercial and recreational) aren't happy about his and on the other side scientists are saying we need to take action now to preserve what we have left. But who is right? It's a difficult issue, as it nearly always is, but I think it's a step in the right direction while not being enough.  Read More »

I really did my best to put it off until after the holidays, but alas, it appears I could not escape Michael Behe's book Darwin's Black Box. As can plainly be seen through my posts and comments, I'm not one to shy away from throwing my hat into the ring in the creationism/intelligent design vs. evolution debate, and every once in a while it comes up in the church small group that I lead. In any case, this past Saturday one of the regular attenders kindly handed me Behe's book (along with Reason in the Balance: The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law, and Education by Phillip E. Johnson, a book that made my brain want to escape through my nose and find an owner that would not torture it with such drek) and thus far, I have found it ill-founded and even silly. The book is now 10 years old, and in the time since it's first publication Intelligent Design has done nothing to support the philosophical argument of ID other than to try to attack anyone who doubts that ID is science. In fact, the absurdity of the Discovery Institute reached a new high when Casey Luskin (referred to as the Discovery Institute's "Attack Mouse" by some) tried to attack last month's National Geographic article on evolution by Carl Zimmer. Luskin's arguments are terrible, and ends it all by shooting himself in the foot with the statement "Was the Ford Pinto, with all its imperfections revealed in crash tests, not designed?" Silly as it is, Behe's arguments for design do not fare much better.  Read More »

As I was watching the "Beasts Within" feature of the Walking With Prehistoric Beasts DVD (I'll have a little review on the "Walking With" programs later, also inspired by Gould's essay on Dinomania), it struck me how much primate facial physiology may have changed brain size. It was suggested by the documentary to an extent, so I can't take all the credit, but it appears that what set primates apart from the rest of mammals all started with our facial physiology. Indeed, in the fossil record there seems to be a marked increase in brain size associated with change in facial features and primate society structure, that is until the time of the Australopithecenes where our brains needed a bit more in order to increase in complexity. Still, the beginnings of our intelligence seem to lie in all the different faces we can make. Try this out- go in front of a mirror and make different expressions for anger, puzzlement, love, embarassment, etc. Our faces give away a lot, and primates often use facial language to communicate. This has not always been possible, as our earliest antecdents were more like bush babies and lemurs; animals with binocular vision but don't have a "face" the same way that chimps, baboons, orangutans, gorillas, and we humans do. But how does the ability to make a face lead to an increase in brain size?  Read More »

Apparently a young woman and her husband are claiming their cat Mimi gave birth to three kittens (all of which died) and three puppies. This really is an odd sort of a story, and the details are scant. I have no idea if they witnessed the birth or not, but it seems like it's a hoax. Oftentimes animals will adopt babies (or even adults- there was a case of a lion that befriended a chicken at a zoo) of other species and raise them as their own, especially if they lose their own natural offspring. The puppies in the photos (http://news.yahoo.com/photos/ss/events/sc/111606catbirthdogs/im:/061117/ids_photos_wl/r3413684871.jpg) look like exactly that- puppies. There doesn't appear to be anything cat-like about them suggesting hybridization. Furthermore, cats and dogs have widely different genomes, varying even in the number of chromasomes (dogs have nearly double the # of chromasomes as cats) which essentially assures that viable offspring would not be produced from a mating between the species. Sure, they both belong to the Order Carnivora and most likely shared a common ancestor similar to a weasel at some point in their past, but it's not like you're hybridizing a lion and tiger (which has been done).  Read More »

I really do not understand what the proposed burqa ban in the Netherlands is suppossed to accomplish. Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk was noted as saying (via Yahoo!News) "The Cabinet finds it undesirable that face-covering clothing — including the burqa — is worn in public places for reasons of public order, security and protection of citizens." I really don't see how banning an item of clothing mandated by a religion causes problems to order, security, and protection of citizens. The only reasonable complain tied in with the proposal seems to be that some women refuse to take off the burqa during job interviews, and so do not get hired and ask for welfare assistance. What's next, banning Jews from wearing traditional kippot? This most certainly is a violation of religious freedom, and I don't see much of a reason for it.  Read More »

I heard something of the "gay" penguin couple Roy and Silo last year, and of course the ill-founded controversy has raised its ugly head. It seems that homosexual animals are in the news a lot lately, especially with the overseas exhibit specifically dealing with the behavior in other animals. The controversey this time revolves around the book And Tango Makes Three, the true story of Roy and Silo trying to raise a penguin chick. I have yet to read the book myself (I'll try to remember to comment on it when I do), but the real-life story goes like this. Roy and Silo were two males penguins that were attempting to hatch a rock together after failed attempts to procreate one of their own. Keepers, noticing this behavior, decided to give the pair an abandoned egg that initially belonged to a heterosexual penguin pair, and Roy and Silo were able to raise a healthy female penguin named Tango. Since the time Tango was born, Roy and Silo split it, with Roy being single and Silo pairing with a female.  Read More »