The K-T impact site in southeast Mexico as revealed by surface features and geophysical analysis
That’s what the headline says sans the question mark I put in at the end, added because I am skeptical. And while it’s certainly interesting research, it’s fair to say that header looks a teensy-tiny bit over the top, perhaps intended to grab pageviews. Which in all fairness seems to have worked! [Read more…]
This is Don McElroy, the guy who used to run the Texas Schoolboard, stating he believes dinosaurs and humans walked side by side. Technically, he might be right — if one accepts that modern birds evolved from raptorial dinosaurs. A view McElroy would have a hard time accomodating. But what’s more interesting are McElroy’s reasons for believing this. Intelligent design creationists make a big dog and pony show about how empirical evidence is the sole crtieria in their rejection of evolutionary biology, or the age of the earth. But so many of them, like McElroy, just can’t keep their yaps shut about the real reason: his specific, narrow religious beliefs.
There was a time when scientists thought polar bears were a simple offshoot of brown bears. But the family tree has been tweaked by DNA analysis to reveal … [Read more…]
Homo sapiens have a few anatomical features that make them easily distinguishable from other hominids. Perhaps the easiest for a non expert to spot is in the jaw, specifically, the chin. Which might explain this: [Read more…]
Even as a young skeptic Easter Sunday was exciting for me. As children, my sisters and I could always count on finding a basket full of yummy chocolate treats waiting for us on Easter morning. How exactly the most important date in the Christian calendar came to be associated with an anthropomorphic pagan rabbit hiding colored candy eggs is a story for another day. But real rabbits also have a story. One nearly as mysterious, every bit as interesting, and as fun for the whole family, as Peter Cottontail’s. [Read more…]
Most feathered dinos have been small, little meat eating raptors and bird-like flyers and gliders. But these guys are freaking huge: [Read more…]
When I was a kid, fire was one of my favorite things, I loved starting them and feeding them, I still do. Maybe there’s a reason for that: A million years of hominid evo could make a pyro out of anyone. [Read more…]
PZ may have his colorful mollusca, aka cephalopods, but here at the Zingularity we’re talking giant prehistoric snake evolution like something right out of a b-movie! Meet Titanoboa, 50 feet long and weighing over a ton. It could have gulped down an adult with room left over for the rest of the family and its close cousins were even larger and more bizarre! [Read more…]
Given the current anti-science jubilee going on among wingnut foot soldiers on the orders of their ignorant field commanders, you wouldn’t think they’d make a fuss about science. But you’d be wrong. One bold, fearless, anonymous member of the Keyboard Komanndos is mad as hell and they’re not gonna take it anymore! [Read more…]
A new study links the rejection of science with political party, and the correlation that turned up should surprise no one. Chris Mooney writing at DeSmogBlog looks at the results: [Read more…]