Wallace, as Darwin’s co-theorist, disappeared because he was not useful to the cause of naturalism. We’ll try to help make sure he doesn’t disappear again.
Evolution
Insects were mimicking lichens 165 million years ago
Whoever wrote the media release was very, very light on the Darwinblather. Mind you, claiming that it all happened via endless iterations of natural selection acting on random mutations wears a bit thin when the time Darwinians thought they had has been sharply reduced.
Mike Behe’s Darwin Devolves thesis aired at Quanta?
The thesis of Darwin Devolves is that most adaptation/evolution is due to loss of genes (devolution). The Quanta article seems to agree that loss of genes is a major means of the development of life.
A new theory about how ancient life forms crossed the sea on rafts
Driftwood rafts can apparently last as long as 20 years.
Huge lizard found in ichthyosaur’s stomach establishes that the latter was a big time predator
Blunt teeth were no deterrent, as it turns out. Of course, for the ichthyosaur, unlike the paleontologist, eating wasn’t a theory. The more we learn, the more many of our assumptions will be challenged.
New paper: Multicellularity did not follow a simple straight path
From the paper: “For example, do all lineages and clades share an ancestral developmental predisposition for multicellularity emerging from genomic and biophysical motifs shared from a last common ancestor, or are the multiple origins of multicellularity truly independent evolutionary events?” Stuart Newman is one of those The Third Way scientists seeking an alternative to sterile Darwinism.
A University of Arizona prof works hard to make Darwinism coincide with the history of life
She does a good job of pointing out how much of the history of life is really stasis. But then what about Darwin’s claim about nature daily, hourly adding stuff up, subtracting the bad, retaining the good… Apparently not.
Trilobites at 429 mya had eyes like bees
Note that we are told that the find “helps track the evolution of eyes and vision in arthropods over time” but in this case, it appears that their wasn’t much evolution: They “developed apposition compound eyes during the earliest evolutionary stages of the group and stuck with this design throughout their history.” No matter the history, Darwin must be placated.
Rob Sheldon offers some thoughts on the recent challenge to Darwin’s sexual selection
Sheldon: Finally, somebody is saying what ID has claimed for decades–Darwin has no clothes. It’s just-so stories stacked on just-so stories with the very thinnest of experimental evidence. And that’s the only thing I admire about post-modernists.
It turns out that we all need those zombie microbes that live indefinitely and don’t really evolve
In the words of one researcher, “Our concept of how cells evolve goes out the window for this incredibly large biosphere.” And yet, we are told, “these almost-but-not-quite-dead cells play an important role in the production of methane, the degradation of the planet’s largest pool of organic carbon, and other processes.”
Ants from hell
Smithsonian Magazine: Paleontologists have long suspected that unique mouthparts of the 16 known species of hell ant hinged shut vertically, rather than horizontally as is the case in all living ant species. But the newly described specimen is the first hard evidence that this is indeed how these early ants sharp jaws functioned
A new challenge from an anthropologist to cozy Darwin tales about men vs. women
Holly Dunsworth seems to have actually researched the literature rather than signing on to the narrative.
That “smallest dino” paper has been retracted
Apparently another team found a similar fossil which it thinks is a lizard.
The “sturdlefish” is the offspring of sturgeon and paddlefish—separated by 184 million years’ evolution
We are also informed that both fish are “living fossils,” which is supposed to settle the matter. The main strength of the explanations is that they uphold Darwinian thinking.
Biosignatures: New data from old fossils (and the Tully Monster)
The big question is, will biosignatures just confirm the fossil record or bring Darwin’s house crashing down on his followers’ heads. The structure’s already wobbly.