Tag: fossils
Smithsonian’s New Human Origins Exhibit Targets Students Who Doubt Darwinism
The Smithsonian has a new human origins exhibit, “What does it mean to be human?” specially targeted at swaying student visitors who might doubt Darwinian evolution. The most amusing part of the exhibit proudly explains that evolution predicted we’d lack evidence for evolution; that’s how we know it’s true! That’s right, this is how the nation’s most prestigious natural history museum presents evolution: evolution predicts that evolution is supported both when we do and when we don’t find confirming fossil evidence. Consider the following from the educator’s guide: Misconception: Gaps in the fossil record disprove evolution. Response: Science actually predicts gaps in the fossil record. Many species leave no fossils at all, and the environmental conditions for forming good fossils Read More ›
Tiktaalik Blown “Out of the Water” by Earlier Tetrapod Fossil Footprints
[Editor’s Note: Further commentary on this fossil discovery, including responses to criticisms, can be found here.] When Tiktaalik was reported in 2006, the media went Darwin-happy over the discovery of an alleged transitional fossil. BBC News announced, “Fossil animals found in Arctic Canada provide a snapshot of fish evolving into land animals.” At MSNBC, Tiktaalik co-discoverer Ted Daeschler was quoted boasting that, “If one considers adaptation as a process of collecting tools to live in a new environment, the new finding offers ‘a snapshot of the toolkit at this particular point in this evolutionary transition.” The article even postured Tiktaalik as an actual ancestor of tetrapods, stating: “Scientists have caught a fossil fish in the act of adapting toward a Read More ›
The Name-Dropping Approach to Transitional Fossils
Download the Complete “Truth or Dare” with Dr. Ken Miller Lecture Guide Permission Granted to Copy and Distribute for Educational Use. Links to our 7-Part Series Responding to Ken Miller: • Part 1: Science and Religion: Is Evolution “Random and Undirected”? • Part 2: Misrepresenting the Definition of Intelligent Design • Part 3: Confusing Evidence for Common Ancestry With Evidence for Darwinian Evolution • Part 4 (This Article): The Name-Dropping Approach to Transitional Fossils • Part 5: Spinning Tales About the Bacterial Flagellum • Part 6: Misrepresenting Michael Behe’s Arguments for Irreducible Complexity of the Blood Clotting Cascade • Part 7: Ken Miller and the Evolution of the Immune System: “Not Good Enough”? Dr. Ken Miller not only conflates evidence Read More ›
The Demise of Another Evolutionary Link: Archaeopteryx Falls From Its Perch
A few days ago we saw Ida fall from her overhyped status as an ancestor of humans. Now some scientists are claiming that Archaeopteryx should lose its status as an ancestor of modern birds. Calling Archaeopteryx an “icon of evolution,” the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) borrows a term from Jonathan Wells while reporting that “[t]he feathered creature called archaeopteryx, easily the world’s most famous fossil remains, had been considered the first bird since Charles Darwin’s day. When researchers put its celebrity bones under the microscope recently, though, they discovered that this icon of evolution might not have been a bird at all.” According to the new research, inferences about growth rates made from studies of Archaeopteryx‘s ancient fossilized bones show Read More ›
“Old Theories Die Hard”: Birds-Evolved-From-Dinosaurs Hypothesis Takes Big Hits With Two Recent Papers
Two recent papers, one in the Journal of Morphology and another in Ornithological Monographs, as well as a ScienceDaily news release titled “Discovery Raises New Doubts About Dinosaur-bird Links,” contain criticisms by evolutionists of the dino-to-bird hypothesis that you would normally expect to hear only from skeptics of neo-Darwinism. Their remarks not only cover problems facing the dino-to-birds hypothesis, but also lament the politically motivated drive to push that hypothesis and ignore scientific dissent. The ScienceDaily article observes that some aspects of bird morphology are simply incompatible with the standard hypothesis that birds evolved from maniraptoran theropod dinosaurs: It’s been known for decades that the femur, or thigh bone in birds is largely fixed and makes birds into “knee runners,” Read More ›