Cross sections of tusks provide evidence of periods of growth, stress, and activity.
stasis
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.
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.”
Tuatara genome sequenced; some surprising findings
At Nature: The genome produced by Gemmell and co-workers is one of the largest vertebrate genomes published so far. At more than 5 gigabases, it is about 50% larger than the human genome… Tuatara have a close resemblance to their forebears from the early Mesozoic era, between 240 million and 230 million years ago…
Claim: Microbes that are – individually – 100 million years old come out of hibernation…
ScienceDaily: Morono was initially taken aback by the results. “At first I was skeptical, but we found that up to 99.1% of the microbes in sediment deposited 101.5 million years ago were still alive and were ready to eat,” he said.
Oldest “bug” is 425 million years old, 75 million years earlier than expected
Will we all meet up at the Big Bang? Don’t rule it out.
Billion-year-old algae (“leaves, … branches …”) raise some interesting questions
Like any real history, evolution is not driven by a single force or idea. Horizontal gene transfer from bacteria obviates the quest for an “ancestor” seaweed. Maybe there isn’t one.
Tiny 99 mya bird (?) skull trapped in amber raises many questions
But get this: Benson goes on to explain that one of the “bizarre” features of Oculudentavis is qualities present in lizards but neither in birds nor in dinosaurs. It is smaller than most hummingbirds but had over a hundred teeth… The more research we do, one suspects, the more of this type of thing we’ll find and the harder it would all be to explain to our old Darwinian schoolteacher.
Green plants discovered in China dated at a billion years ago
It’s not “land” vs. “sea” that’s really significant here. It’s how much time was available for the development of photosynthesis. If the claim is that photosynthesis developed via natural selection acting on random mutations (Darwinism), then it must have somehow randomly happened in that billion years. Was there enough time? becomes an unavoidable question.
World’s oldest scorpions show no change from 437 million years ago
It doesn’t sound as though they bothered with much evolution. How would we distinguish their origin from creation? At a certain point, does evolution become creation? Just wondering.
Ghost worms unchanged in form for 275 million years but show “highly distinct” genetics?
One wants to ask, how distinct ARE the genomes of these species that all look the same?
Would it be like mapping a cat’s genome and finding a German Shepherd’s GATTACA in there? What that level of distinction really tells us goes well beyond cats and German Shepherds. Or do the researchers really mean something less highly distinct? What? We search for analogies here.
Is this lizard fossil evidence of animal parental care over 300 mya?
“Even back then … these animals were probably doing a lot of the things that animals still do today.” Right. So when did Big Evolution happen?
Fossil forest update: “Pretty sophisticated” for nearly 400 million years ago
Researcher: “Based on what we know from the body fossil evidence of Archaeopteris prior to this, and now from the rooting evidence that we’ve added at Cairo, these plants are very modern compared to other Devonian plants.
Researcher: Horseshoe crab vision 400 mya was same as today
University of Cologne: “The eyes of the extinct sea scorpion Jaekelopterus rhenaniae have the same structure as the eyes of modern horseshoe crabs (Limulidae).” Sudden appearance. Long time. No big changes?