Category: Tree of life
Life should be classified not as a tree but as a dependency graph, says researcher
| July 19, 2018 | Posted by News under Evolution, Intelligent Design, Tree of life |
Winston Ewert, one of the authors of Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics has a new paper at BIO-Complexity: Abstract: The hierarchical classification of life has been claimed as compelling evidence for universal common ancestry. However, research has uncovered much data which is not congruent with the hierarchical pattern. Nevertheless, biological data resembles a nested hierarchy sufficiently […]
Molecular biologist: Speculation re the last universal common ancestor is not helping science
| June 22, 2018 | Posted by Denyse OLeary under Cell biology, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Origin Of Life, Tree of life |
From molecular biologist Mike Klymkowsky at The Scientist There is a pernicious temptation in science to speak authoritatively about topics that are beyond scientific exploration and certainty. This has led some theoretical physicists to advocate for a “post-empirical” form of science. That is the idea that theories need not be judged on their ability to […]
Startling Result–90% of Animals Less than 200 kya
| May 28, 2018 | Posted by PaV under Darwinism, Evolutionary biology, extinction, Intelligent Design, Tree of life |
From PhysOrg this morning, in a study using “DNA bar-codes” (mitochondrial DNA, using a specific gene COI) and conducted around the world, here’s the verdict: The study’s most startling result, perhaps, is that nine out of 10 species on Earth today, including humans, came into being 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. “This conclusion is very […]
Phylogenetics of plants is a mess
| May 12, 2018 | Posted by News under Genomics, Intelligent Design, Plants, Tree of life |
From Douglas E. Soltis, Michael J. Moore, Emily B. Sessa, Stephen A. Smith, and Pamela S. Soltis, Using and navigating the plant tree of life, at Amerian Journal of Botany 7 April 2018 https://doi.org/10.1002/ajb2.1071 (open access) : The “tree of life” has become a metaphor for the interconnectivity and breadth of all life on Earth. […]
Giant virus shares genes (core histones) with complex life forms. But what exactly does that imply?
| February 15, 2018 | Posted by News under Evolution, horizontal gene transfer, Tree of life |
From ScienceDaily: “It’s exciting and significant to find a living family of giant viruses with eukaryote-specific genes in a form that predates the latest common ancestor of all eukaryotes,” says Albert Erives, associate professor in the Department of Biology. “These viruses are like time machines that tell us more about how life on our planet […]
Grand evolution theory for complex animals in ruins; fossil is, in fact, a jellyfish
| December 27, 2017 | Posted by News under Evolution, Intelligent Design, Tree of life |
From ScienceDaily: Pseudooides fossils have a segmented middle like the embryos of segmented animals, such as insects, inspiring grand theories on how complex segmented animals may have evolved. A team of paleontologists from the University of Bristol’s School of Earth Sciences and Peking University have now peered inside the Pseudooides embryos using X-rays and found […]
Another axe lying at the root of the Tree of Life
| November 22, 2017 | Posted by News under Intelligent Design, Irreducible Complexity, Tree of life |
A brand new early eukaryote (“its own eukaryotic lineage”) From Katarina Zimmer at The Scientist: From an aquarium at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California, scientists have identified a unicellular species that could shed light on how eukaryotes evolved, they report in Current Biology this week (November 22). The tiny organism—named Ancoracysta […]
Dinosaurs are tearing paleontology apart?
| November 3, 2017 | Posted by News under Evolution, Evolutionary biology, Intelligent Design, Tree of life |
Should we call on 9-11, the Humane Society, or the vegans… or on soft dino tissue, to restore order? From Matthew Reynolds at Wired: The [March 2017] paper overturned one of the most fundamental things that we thought we knew about dinosaurs – that they split neatly into two groups. This is dinosaur 101. The […]
Rob Sheldon challenges zoo-ocentric thinking in evolution
| October 17, 2017 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Evolution, Genomics, Tree of life |
In response to Jumpin’ Genes!: A quarter of cow DNA came from reptiles, our physics color commentator writes, This whole business of parasites transmitting retrotransposons from reptiles to cows is just so zoo-centric. What about plants? What about viruses? Don’t they get to originate DNA too? When are they going to admit that this whole […]
Jumping’ Genes!: A quarter of cow DNA came from reptiles?
| October 16, 2017 | Posted by News under Darwinism, Evolution, Genomics, Intelligent Design, Tree of life |
From Ed Yong at The Atlantic: This jumping gene seems to have entered the cow genome from the unlikeliest of sources: snakes and lizards. Retrotransposons typically jump around within a single genome, but sometimes they can travel further afield. Through means that scientists still don’t fully understand, they can leave the DNA of one species […]
Some dinosaur parents warmed eggs with their bodies
| July 12, 2017 | Posted by News under Animal minds, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Tree of life |
From Joel Shurkin at InsideScience: It’s hard to think of dinosaurs as being loving, caring parents, but scientists have found some of them may have been just that. Take the oviraptorosaurs, a group of feathered creatures that look as if they were constructed by a malignant committee from spare bird parts. By studying fossilized oviraptorosaur […]
Phylogenetic coding: “Up to now, there is no common agreement to either code characters as complex or simple.” – researchers
| July 5, 2017 | Posted by News under Evolution, Tree of life |
A friend calls attention to this interesting new paper: When Homoplasy is not Homoplasy: Dissecting Trait Evolution by Contrasting Composite and Reductive Coding Alejandro Torres-Montúfar Thomas Borsch Helga Ochoterena Syst Biol syx053. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/syx053 Published: 22 June 2017 Article history Received: 03 February 2017 Revision Received: 13 April 2017 Revision Received: 18 May 2017 Accepted: 24 May […]
Cutting down Darwin’s Tree of Life
| June 10, 2017 | Posted by News under Tree of life |
Oh wait, wait, stop wait, the correct word is “reshaping” the Tree of Life. It still smells like fresh lumber to us. From ScienceDaily: A new era in science has emerged without a clear path to portraying the impacts of microbes across the tree of life. What’s needed is an interdisciplinary approach to classifying life […]
Naked mole rats closer in some ways to humans than they are to mice?
| May 23, 2017 | Posted by News under Evolution, Mind, Neuroscience, News, Tree of life |
From Suzan Mazur, author of Paradigm Shifters, at Huffington Post: Suzan Mazur: Philipp Khaitovich et al. think neoteny affects the grey matter of the human brain but not the white matter. I gather you agree, but you see the issue as one of bioenergetics, involving mitochondria. You say neoteny is inherent in development of human […]
Great news for fabled Tree of Life: Human and pufferfish have same tooth-making gene program. Except …
| May 18, 2017 | Posted by News under News, Tree of life |
From ScienceDaily: Human teeth evolved from the same genes that make the bizarre beaked teeth of the pufferfish, according to new research by an international team of scientists. The study, led by Dr Gareth Fraser from the University of Sheffield’s Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, has revealed that the pufferfish has a remarkably similar […]
Giant shipworm found alive is example of devolution
| April 24, 2017 | Posted by News under Evolution, Intelligent Design, News, Tree of life |
The recent capture of a live giant shipworm highlights devolution. One form of devolution is allowing complex body systems to become vestigial, relying on microorganisms instead. From BBC: The giant shipworm is unique not just for its size, but also for feeding on nutrients in mud and marine sediment instead, using a type of bacteria. […]
Taxonomically-Restricted Essential Genes
| April 21, 2017 | Posted by johnnyb under Evolutionary biology, Genetics, Tree of life |
Here is the next video from the AM-Nat conference. In this video, Paul Nelson talks about genes that are both taxonomically-restricted (ORFan genes) and essential to the function of organisms. Then he describes the impact of these findings on common descent.
When genome mapper Craig Venter made clear he doubted universal common descent…
| February 13, 2017 | Posted by News under Evolution, Genomics, Origin Of Life, Tree of life |
We’d heard about Craig Venter’s dissent before but you should read the whole story: From Tom Bethell in Darwin’s House of Cards: A Journalist’s Odyssey Through the Darwin Debates, This was publicized in a science forum held at Arizona State University in February 2011, a little over a year after Dawkins’s Greatest Show was published. […]
Cartilaginous skeleton not necessarily more “primitive”
| December 24, 2016 | Posted by News under Design inference, Evolution, News, Tree of life |
A friend writes to tell us of an insightful article in Nature: It emerges that a dogfish shark’s spine becomes stiffer as the fish swims faster, enabling the animal to swim efficiently at different speeds. The finding could also provide inspiration for the design of robotic biomaterials. (paywall) – Biomaterials: Sharks shift their spine into […]
New “tree of life” challenges vertebrate evolution
| December 7, 2016 | Posted by News under News, Tree of life |
From The Conversation: If all jawed vertebrates, including humans, are nothing more than highly evolved placoderms, then key features of ourselves should be traceable to structures that first appeared in our fishy placoderm ancestors. This would include particular jaw and skull bones and the proportions of our face and brain. But our new evolutionary tree […]
