The trouble is, the COVID-19 stuff is enough sermonizing for now. We bet the dinosaur debate continues and so does humanity. Also, Millennials eventually grow up.
extinction
Is the planet really running out of frogs?
That seems to depend on who you read: Last year in the journal Science, a research review concluded that the chytrid fungus caused the decline of at least 501 amphibian species, of which 90 have gone extinct. That paper suggested that species losses due to the chytrid fungus are “orders of magnitude greater than for Read More…
Could we bring back extinct plants?
So far a Siberian flower and a date palm have been brought back. The idea is that restoring n extinct animal like the woolly mammoth would just be a curiosity but some of these plants may be staple foods or useful medicines.
Only FIVE Neanderthal extinction theories? But wait, one actually makes sense
We’ve certainly heard more than five around here. But one of them sounds like something that could really happen. For one thing, it has happened in historical time.
Two mysterious blobs of hot rock at the edge of Earth’s core are “massive anomalies”
At Quanta, it’s suggested they might be linked to extinction events.
At The Scientist: No, we did not kill off the Neanderthals but maybe we helped
If the Neanderthal woman was living and having kids with a non-Neanderthal man, she wasn’t living and having kids with a Neanderthal man. Perhaps, if non-Neanderthal men were more numerous, it was only a matter of time and only the usual amount of violence, rather than a big massacre.
In this version, we did NOT kill off the Neanderthals
There just weren’t very many Neanderthals to begin with so they were subject to a number of factors that diminished their numbers even further, say researchers.
Some dinos replaced their teeth multiple times a year
What’s interesting here is that even though just regrowing teeth through life would seem like an advantage, for mammals, more complex teeth turned out to be a bigger advantage.
Claim: Many types of human were kayoed in the Sixth Great Extinction
The trouble with these kinds of stories is, they write themselves. We don;t need data. If we like our history without much data, we should read epics instead of this stuff.
The mammals who crawled out after the dinosaurs died, 66 mya
Now, will those remains bolster textbook Darwinism or help sink it? Or in-between? We shall see.
New evidence found for the asteroid that deep-sixed the dinosaurs
It’s certainly valuable new information. The outstanding puzzle has always been, why were all dinosaurs killed off but not all mammals or reptiles?
Lovelock (now 100 years old): Cyborgs will replace us and treat us like houseplants
Like Darwin’s Ascent of Man, Lovelock’s Ascent of the Cyborgs has no ladder and he doesn’t sense the need for one.
At The Atlantic: Dinosaurs might have had whole civilizations; how would you know?
Actually, the Anthropocene is mainly a testament to the enormous power of immaterial ideas to shape things, for good or ill. It is the best argument against materialism and it is right under our noses.
Philosopher puts a positive spin on contemplating human extinction
So many scandals and impasses that science faces today stem in large part from the problem Moynihan avoids. Facts don’t validate themselves outside a structure that posits meaning from beyond the system. The system does not validate itself.
Researchers: 50 million years needed to recover extinct NZ birds! No, alas,, it’s impossible
Apart from cloning, to get the exact same birds, we’d have to rent the multiverse (if it existed). And then we would have an infinite number of planets with islands like New Zealand, including these birds. Never mind one…