Inquiry into Nature in the Spirit of John Ray
I thought the moas from New Zealand (see Consider the Moa) would be my last word on flightless birds. But as I was reading about the moa I ran across literature about the “terror birds” that really captivated me because I couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard that much about them before. The so-called terror birds (the Phorusrhacidae) consist of […]
I am going to wrap up my miniseries on the ostrich (see Consider the Ostrich Part I, II and III) by examining some of the questions about origins that other flightless bird raise. The ostrich is a flightless bird that has large wings though they are inadequate for flight because they lack the bone and […]
Where did domesticated dogs come from? That dogs are wolves has been known for some time but which wolves and when did domestication occur has been a more difficult question to answer. Thousands of dog breeds and wolves have been genotyped to explore this question and that evidence suggests four and possibly more, separate wolf […]
A few days ago I shared some thoughts about the significance of genetic differences that are observed between humans and primates (How Similar is Similar, Part I). I said that it was important that genetic similarity numbers that are frequently used to make a case for genetic uniqueness need to be assessed in the context of […]
A recent paper published by the Answers Research Journal, the research publication of Answers in Genesis, reported a comparison of human and chimpanzee genomes and found that they have, on average, a DNA similarity of only 70%. This is a very striking number since the usual numbers you hear thrown about as representing the similarity […]
As a follow-up to a class discussion of the nature and validity of historical and experimental science, I came into class yesterday and posed three questions to my students: Why were T. rex’s arms so short? Does repeated head trauma on the football field cause chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE)?, and Why do our fingers wrinkle […]
After the Mars Science Laboratory, otherwise known as the Curiosity rover, dropped down the rabbit hole and safely landed on the surface of Mars there was much ado about the first images and hints at a watery past. Since then the rover has left the public eye but the rover has been no slouch, […]
Last year I wrote about the strange rubbing boulders of the Atacama desert. In that post I relayed the story of these strange large boulders that are found scattered in a high valley in the Atacama desert. That desert is one of the driest places on earth with the area that these particular boulders lie […]
To say that the Universe is a big place would be a huge understatement. It is difficult to fathom just how big it is. When we hear that there are an estimated 10 sextillion to 1 septillion stars in the Universe we have few reference points to compare to those numbers. A number followed by […]
Layers of sediment underlying some lakes can be read like rings in a tree. These layers called varves (alternating layers of sediments and/or organic material) and the precise counting of one that represent annual layers have been used to test and calibrate radiocarbon dating methods. A few weeks ago there was a report on additional […]
