Oh let's see, who could it be ... SATAN!?
The trickster god has been busy of late, fabricating and planting a new fossil for Jesus-hating physical anthropologists to crow about. This one from a rare and incredibly useful diagnostic region of the body for scientists studying human/primate origins: [Read more…]
Result on a recent poll asking conservative Illinois voters about the President’s citizenship and evolutionary biology tail with the same questions a week ago about Mississippi and Alabama voters. Although the results are slightly less depressing in Illinois: [Read more…]
It’s not exactly a surprise that on the right, in the two states holding primaries tomorrow, Mississippi and Alabama, the anti-science Teaparty ignoramuses run the show. But data from the PPP poll on voter preferences below also held some interesting data about evolution and Obama that really drive home just how out of touch these voters are. [Read more…]
Microraptor gui holotype fossil with white arrows pointing out feather impressions, click image for background info. New colored reconstruction below the fold
Fossils are rare, fossils which preserve feathers and other soft tissue are extraordinarily rare. But scientists re-examining a fossil of a feathered, flying dinosaur unearthed in China’s rich Yixian and Jiufotang formations have found a specimen so well preserved, despite spending more than 130 million years in the ground, that they are able to determine the actual color and tone of the little dino: [Read more…]
Scientists have succeeded in sequencing the genome of gorillas and the results show humans are more closely related to the threatened primates than previously thought: [Read more…]
Phasmida dryococelus, among the heaviest living insects known to science, shown here roughly to scale if you're using a standard sized computer monitor. Image courtesy of NPR
It’s been quite a week for giant insects. First we hear of extinct monster fleas with a hankering for Jurassic blood. Now an unexpected find; once thought to be extinct “tree lobsters” have been successfully collected and bred in captivity, giving them a chance to beat nature’s wholesale grim reaper. [Read more…]
The old saying goes “”Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ’em, And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.” But a new fossil from China’s rich Jurassic deposits has turned up fleas that go the other way, gigantum: [Read more…]
New genetic analysis of Neandertal populations over the last 100 thousands years shows an interesting dynamic: the variability is high until about 50 KYA years and then suddenly contracts, sharply: [Read more…]
A hypothetical water world orbiting a nearby red dwarf. This planet would be much cooler than GJ 1214B. Click image for more on the latest find.
The Hubble Space Telescope pulled off an interesting feat this month. A super earth designated GJ 1214B orbiting tightly around a red dwarf 40 light years away may be loaded with water: [Read more…]
An artist's impression of a 300-million-year-old peat forest in northern China, based on plant fossils preserved in a huge volcanic ash-fall. PNAS
Paleobiologists of all kinds are used to dealing with frustrating scraps. Occasionally they get entire bones and once in a blue moon a nearly complete skeleton or fossil of an extinct plant or animal. But scientists working with remains below a Mongolian coal mine have done one better, they found a 300 million year old forest preserved in volcanic ash and have brought it to virtual life in what is being called the Permian Pompeii: