During the last ice age some 12 to 13 thousands years ago a young girl found herself wandering in caves of the Yucatan Peninsula likely looking for water. Hundreds of feet into a cave something happened and she fell in a deep pit breaking her pelvis. With no escape 100 feet down she died a lonely death. She... Continue Reading →
You might think of the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars as a assortment of space junk floating randomly in space. There are millions of asteroids of which more than 100,000 have been measured and mapped by astronomers. But analysis of those asteroids has shown that there are groups of asteroids that are related to one another and are referred to family members
Imagine you live in northern England and you are out exploring and come upon a hidden cave entrance. Upon climbing down into the cave you discover hundreds of bones belonging to large mammals. At first you think the bones represent local animals since there are some deer, rabbits, weasels and wolves but soon it becomes clear... Continue Reading →
The Reverend William Buckland (1784-1856) was one of the last in a line of influential natural theologians following in the footsteps of John Ray (late 1600s) and William Paley (late 1700s). I recently gave a seminar in which I explored a number of significant turning points (figure below) in the history of discovery of deep time and the awareness... Continue Reading →
Yesterday I introduced the main character to this drama of the hunt for the elusive bird leptin. Now its time to introduce the other players and get on with recounting how the discovery of the bird leptin gene was made. Several years ago I began collaborating with Dr. Rich Londraville (UA Biology) on a project involving the... Continue Reading →
Last week the headlines read “elusive bird hormone found” and “discovery of the elusive leptin in birds.” It has been great to see so much interest in research I have been involved with for several years, but our paper (Reference 1) and the press blurbs associated with it only tell a small part of the... Continue Reading →
Everyone has encountered a T. rex in books, movies or museums. Besides its size and menacing jaws one of the most striking features of a T. rex is its diminutive arms. So why were the arms of T. rex so short? There have been many hypotheses including: 1) they had no use and... Continue Reading →
Just how long can DNA survive after the death of a cell or without cellular activity to maintain itself? I addressed this question a few months ago (Young Earth Creationism and Ancient DNA) and suggested that we would learn much more in the coming year. Already we have seen multiple complete genomes from fossil bones... Continue Reading →
Our perceptions of the age of an object are frequently based on our common experience but I have found that for many people those common experiences are of little help when it comes to examining objects for which a person has no experience at all. A couple of years ago this really hit me as... Continue Reading →
Last week I pointed out that the Bible provides no support for Ken Ham's contention that massive numbers of species have formed following their departure from Noah's ark 4500 years ago (YEC Biblical Evolution: I Have A Book That Says Otherwise). Now I'm following up with "observational" evidence from DNA sequences to test whether the... Continue Reading →
A story is breaking today of a significant fossil find made almost a year ago but kept under wraps until the data could be properly evaluated. What has now been revealed is that over 100 footprints were found in newly uncovered rocks along a shoreline of England. Study of these footprints has led to... Continue Reading →
Imagine trawling for fish and when you pull up your nets you find a massive bone or a huge tooth along with your catch. For over 100 years fishermen in the North Sea between Britain and Denmark have found such items in their nets but it wasn’t until the 1980s that their value, monetarily and... Continue Reading →
When I last updated you on the excursion that the Curiosity rover has been making across the floor of Gale Crater on Mars I noted that the images it has been beaming back had been getting rather routine. But the rover has slowly been moving downhill toward what seems more and more likely to have... Continue Reading →
We live in a new golden age of fossil discoveries. It seems that every week a new and dramatic fossil find is revealed. This fossil renaissance can be attributed to the opening up of new fossil sources, particularly China and Mongolia but also South America and to improved technology for retrieving and analyzing fossil remains.... Continue Reading →
One of the great privileges of my job is that I get to participate on committees of graduate students. This allows me to get up close and personal with data from sub-disciplines of biology that often extend far from those of my particular expertise. You know by now that I carry a particular fondness for... Continue Reading →
Naturalis Historia 