Timothy Standish: I couldn’t help but notice that the time photosynthesis is supposed to have evolved doesn’t line up with either the time when oxygen is supposed to have become an important element in the atmosphere, half a billion years later, or the time that fixed carbon begins showing up in the fossil record, which is much earlier, possibly over half a billion years.
Plants
Researchers say they have a “precise estimate” for the time of origin of photosynthesis
Botanist Margaret Helder writes to comment “The point to reflect on is what all those heterotrophs did for food prior to the appearance of the autotrophs. Any organic molecules in the environment would be quickly digested if there were only organisms around with no capacity to reduce carbon.”
Stanford: Plants evolved complexity in two rapid bursts — 250 million years apart
Researcher: “The most surprising thing is this kind of stasis, this plateau in complexity after the initial evolution of seeds and then the total change that happened when flowering plants started diversifying,” said lead study author Andrew Leslie, an assistant professor of geological sciences at Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (Stanford Earth). “The reproductive structures look different in all these plants, but they all have about the same number of parts during that stasis.”
Plant roots from 400 million years ago used a method that is now extinct
If Asteroxylon’s system is extinct, there was less time for the current systems to develop.
Fossil spores on land pushed back 20 million years
The big story here isn’t about the disconnect between molecular and fossil data; it’s about how early on more complex life forms got started (all that complexity in such a short time isn’t looking good for random mutations).
The textbooks are wrong: Birds CAN smell
At Science: “Other bird species may also respond to “calls” from injured plants, recent evidence shows. Two European birds, the great tit and the blue tit, locate insects that are attacking pine trees by detecting the volatile chemicals the stressed trees release … “
Yes, plants remember things – they seem more like animals the more we learn
People are becoming, more and more obviously outliers all the time. The pop science prediction had been “less and less.”
Plant communications raise the question of intelligence in nature
It’s getting harder to avoid talking about the intelligence in nature and still make sense.
Seeds like airplanes
Alsomitra vine seeds use paper-thin wings to disperse like giant gliders.
If photosynthesis could really be as old as life itself…
Well, that’s good news for the hope of finding life on other planets! But researchers hoping to rush in and save Darwinism should know that if the earliest organisms could photosynthesize, an intelligent origin of life is virtually certain.
Italian ID group interviews Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig (in English)
“Secretary and professional journalist Marco Respinti interviews well known Dr. Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig, retired head researcher at Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research on a fascinating journey through genetics of plants, cybernetics, “sacred cows” and Intelligent Design.”
Horizontal gene transfer between plants and insects acknowledged
So what becomes of all the Darwinian casuistry around “fitness” and “costly fitness” if things can happen so simply as this? The article emphasizes the benefits of studying “evolution.” Indeed, but that can’t mean fronting Darwinism 101 any more.
Tree fern, once considered “evolutionary dead-end,” turns out to have been advanced
Curiously, we keep finding that ancient life forms were more complex or advanced than thought, not that they were simpler and more primitive than thought. What does that imply about the drivers of our expectations?
Caterpillars stifle plants’ chemical warning cries
Findings: “We have discovered a new strategy whereby an insect uses saliva to inhibit the release of airborne plant defenses through direct manipulation of plant stomata,” said Gary Felton, professor and head of the Department of Entomology at Penn State, noting that stomata are tiny pores on plant leaves that regulate gas exchange”
Why did Darwin consider flowers an “abominable mystery”?
He was referring to their abrupt and unaccounted for appearance.