Category: stasis

A handy guide to the evolution that never happened much

Some people wonder why life forms just appear and then nothing much happens for hundreds of millions of years. That’s a key reason there is a controversy around evolution. more

300 mya Harvester: “The fossil record is proving to be less and less Darwinian as we examine the details.”

800px-Harvestmen_Close_Macro

Most significant is the pattern of animal and plant radiation that we find in the fossil record. Darwin predicted a branching bush or tree – but this is not what we find! more

For daddy longlegs, evolution never happened, it seems

Evolutionary biologists have been engaged in defending Darwin for so long that most of the picture of evolution is missing – because most of evolution isn’t really about Darwin or his theory. more

800 million year old shelled fossil found in Yukon, Canada

In “Yukon fossils reveal oldest armoured organism” (CBC News, Jun 13, 2011), we learn, … 800 million-year-old fossilized evidence that organisms were trying to protect themselves by forming their own shield-like plates.It is the oldest evidence ever of biomineralization, the use of minerals by a living thing to form a hard shell, similar to the… more

Remember those primitive people who had no words for numbers?

Which shows how number sense evolved? Forget them. In “Geometry skills are innate, Amazon tribe study suggests,” (BBC News , 24 May 2011), Jason Palmer reports , Tests given to an Amazonian tribe called the Mundurucu suggest that our intuitions about geometry are innate.Researchers examined how the Mundurucu think about lines, points and angles, comparing… more

Three foot killer shrimp of the Cambrian surprise scientists

At MSNBC (5/25/20), Charles Q. Choi tells us “Bizarre shrimp-like predators grew larger and survived longer than thought”: The creatures, known as anomalocaridids, were giant predators (ranging from 2 to possibly 6 feet in length) with soft-jointed bodies and toothy maws with spiny limbs in front to snag worms and other prey. [ ... ]… more

Living fossil birch mouse

In “Birch Mouse Ancestor Discovered in Inner Mongolia Is New Species of Rare ‘Living Fossil’”, we learn that tiny fossil teeth (ScienceDaily May 25, 2011)” found in Inner Mongolia are “a new species of birch mouse, indicating that ancestors of the small rodent are much older than previously reported”:17 million years old as opposed to the previous… more

Spider in amber is 49 million-year-old member of living genus

Further to “Recent Uncommon Descent posts reveal starkly different standards of evidence out there” (Uncommon Descent, 18 May 2011), this ScienceDaily story (May 18, 2011) about a trapped spider is instructive: Imaging Technology Reveals Intricate Details of 49-Million-Year-Old SpiderScientists have used the latest computer-imaging technology to produce stunning three-dimensional pictures of a 49 million-year-old spider… more

If it ain’t broke: Lamprey unchanged after 360 million years

This blast from the past is still a source of ruinous commercial fish losses. Because lampreys do not have bone or any substantial cartilage, they are extremely rare as fossils. This fossil not only reveals a nearly complete soft tissue impression, but it also pushes back their fossil record another 35 million years. File under: Someone… more

New book: Evolution has to happen!

This point is apparently made in Cameron M. Smith’s The Fact of Evolution: Walking the reader through the steps in the evolutionary process, Cameron uses plenty of real-world examples to show that not only does evolution happen, it must happen. Cameron analyzes evolution as the unintended consequence of three independent facts of the natural world… more

“Extremely ancient” genus stays put 150 million years

From ScienceDaily (May 5, 2011),we learn more about “if it ain’t broke, don’t …” Horsetail grass decidedly ain’t broke: “Horsetail Plant Developed Successful Set of Tools for Extreme Environments – For Millions of Years” The authors discovered that in many ways the morphology and anatomy of this fossilized Equisetum is indistinguishable from those of species… more

Golden spider find demonstrates how neo-Darwinism leads to “impoverished science”: Physicist

In “A golden orb-weaver spider from the Middle Jurassic” (4/21/11), David Tyler at manchester U comments on a recent find: The golden orb-weaver spider features in newly reported research and provides an exciting insight into past ecosystems. Today, these animals adorn tropical rainforests, with giant females of Nephila maculate (legs spanning up to 20 cm),… more

Life forms that never change are telling us something about evolution. Why avoid it?, David Tyler asks

Following up his comments on the stunning half billion years of changelessness (stasis) demonstrated by the pterobranch, David Tyler now addresses the unchanging cricket, one of whose fossils was found from 100 million years ago: He comments on howthe fact that many life forms seem motionless in time is handled in the science literature: It is… more

Darwinists ignoring stasis [no evolution change for eons] is “denialism”, physicist charges

David Tyler reports that “The earliest pterobranch reveals stasis”: A modern-day pterobranch genus is Rhabdopleura. An informative description is provided here. Comparing the new fossil and Rhabdopleura leads to the exclamation: “You don’t look a day over 500 million years. You and Rhabdopleura could be sisters”. The detail has led to comments such as this… more

Stasis for a half billion years …

File under this one under: If it ain’t broke … In Current Biology (Volume 21, Issue 7, 612-616, 24 March 2011), we read that A 525 million year old fossil hemichordate with preserved soft tissues is the earliest and largest fossil hemichordate zooid and offers unmatched insight into the fossil anatomy and evolution of the… more

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