A 15-foot-wide metal grate covers a hole in a bare rock outcrop in the high desert of the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming. Beneath the grate lies a 80 foot vertical drop to into a cavern with no other exit. At the base of cavern situated below the hole in the ceiling are up to 30... Continue Reading →
Are plants alive? Ken Ham seems to think so since he refers to “animal or plant life in outer space.” But what does he mean by alive? I think he has only a secular scientific definition of life in mind when he makes these statements. I wonder if he even knows that his own website... Continue Reading →
Is a "kind" defined by a common gene pool? Is a "behemoth" a reference to a dinosaur? You might think so based on a very popular Bible study aide. I was looking up the etymology and usage of some Hebrew words at the Blue Letter Bible a few days ago and noticed some interesting notes... Continue Reading →
Ken Ham recently proclaimed that he thought it was highly unlikely that “plant life” would be found on other planets. I wonder what he thinks the word “life” means in this context? For example, does living mean that plants also experience death? If so, how can he say that animals and man were allowed to... 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 →
The road cut through Sideling Hill in Maryland on I-68 is one of the best displays of roadside geology east of the Mississippi River. Having spent considerable time in the western US it doesn't seem that impressive to me but since I've been deprived of seeing geological strata for the past year I took a... 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 →
Most of us remember our first life-like encounter with dinosaurs sitting in a theater watching Jurassic Park (1993). Although dinosaurs had been very popular in picture books for many years the vivid recreation of them on the screen rekindled a sense of awe of these amazing creatures of a past age. Today, movies with depictions... Continue Reading →
Ken Ham would have us believe that the modern creationist movement, which apparently began only 53 years ago, is the real deal this time. Unlike all the other attempts to create a history of the Earth with a recent global flood as a centerpiece, this time it apparently is going to usher in a real reformation in both science and an appreciation for biblical authority.
There is a very recent form of fossil hunting that I have gotten to partake in to some small extent, and I can do it while sitting in front of a computer screen! With some computer skills and some knowledge of animal genomes it isn't difficult to join this hunt for fossils inside the genome of living organisms.
A small chamber in a deep, dark cave. Tens of thousands of bones. Animal bones and human bones. Buried under dust and dirt and bat dung. Welcome to an ancient chamber of horrors. This is the Pit of Bones (aka Sima de los Huesos). In 1997, scientists discovered this small chamber within a much larger... Continue Reading →
I recently took a hike at Currituck Banks Reserve on the outer bank of North Carolina. My daughter was fascinated by the hundreds of dragonflies buzzing around. We spent more than an hour watching them interact with their environment and each other in the dry woods and near the bay waters. There are a million... Continue Reading →
Following up on a new Ichythosaur discovery last week (When Marine Reptiles Ruled the Sea) the fossilized footsteps of a Nothosaur have been unveiled. This time we go to China where a geological surveyor stumbled onto a few fossil tracks on a small ledge. Cutting back into the side of the mountain, paleontologists exposed 350 prints as part of... 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.
I have one plant in my office that I have managed to keep alive for 5 years but mostly I keep organisms in my office that can't be killed because they are already dead. I'm a bit more extreme in my lab where I keep thousands of samples of DNA in freezers. In my office I... Continue Reading →
Naturalis Historia 