In November of 2013, over 600 miles south of Tokyo, a volcanic eruption formed a new island. That new island continued to grow for over a year, eventually joining itself to the neighboring island of Nishino-shima, a volcanic island formed long ago. Today, volcanic activity continues to cause this new ocean-island to expand bringing it... Continue Reading →
Diatoms with their symmetrical highly-photogenic glass houses may get most of the attention but the foraminiferans (forams) present some formidable competition. In my recent article (Life in a Glass House) I revealed that the glass-house remains of diatoms are conspicuously absent from the bottom two-thirds of the geological column. This raised a rather uncomfortable question... Continue Reading →
Diatoms are single-celled organisms that live in almost any moist environment. They are found by the millions in a cup of sea water or a puddle in your back yard. They play a critical role in the environment as oxygen producers. But they are best known for their visually stunning homes constructed of glass. I... Continue Reading →
While writing about the origins of the Dead Sea and Jordan Valley I was confronted once again with one of the most striking pieces of evidence for an ancient earth that I am aware of. Take a look at the figure below. This figure shows the smoking gun. Smoking gun evidence of what? That the earth's plates... Continue Reading →
Does fossilization require rapid burial as the result of catastrophic global flooding? Literalist creationists would have us believe so for they point to the fossil record as being proof of a cataclysmic global flood. Look a bit deeper though and you will find that creationists frequently concede there are thousands of exceptions to this general... Continue Reading →
In my recent comments about Ken Ham’s view of modern creationism I stated that flood geology was nothing more than a recapitulation of many previous attempts to construct a naturalistic theory of the earth while maintaining a young earth presupposition. These prior attempts to conform geological data to such youthful constraints have not stood the... Continue Reading →
Thousands of dinosaur footprints have been found on a steep mountain slope in Denali National Park in Alaska. These are not the first dinosaur tracks to be found in Denali but the size of the tracksite - at least 500 by 150 feet - and the exceptional preservation of the tracks makes this a notable... Continue Reading →
Can you imagine the world’s oceans filled with carnivorous reptiles? Dinosaurs are the most famous members of the age of the reptiles. However, many of the original reptilian fossil discoveries that initiated the idea of the age of reptiles were not dinosaurs. They were instead reptiles that lived in the sea.
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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
A mummified fossil of common species of hadrosaur was found recently in South Dakota that showed that this particular hadrosaur had a rooster-like fleshy comb on its head. Many hadrosaurs have exotic extensions of their cranial bones but this evidence that even the “boring” hadrosaurs had fleshy projections suggests that the hadrosaurs were an even... Continue Reading →
One headline reads “Giant Prehistoric Toilet Found” another refers to the discovery of an ancient latrine. Don’t know how I missed those a few weeks ago. Surely had I seen that headline I would have had to clicked on it to find out what that was all about. The actual title, The oldest known communal latrines... Continue Reading →
Naturalis Historia 