Science Is Constantly Evolving

Discover the latest in climate change and evolution education news.

What You Don't Know Can Hurt You...and Your Neighbor
How much do you know about antibiotic resistance? You might want to take the Pew Charitable Trust’s online quiz to find out. I’m embarrassed to say that I scored only 60%, despite my many years hanging around microbiologists. I got the biology questions right, but I didn’t know how many more days…
Fossil Friday!
This week’s Fossil Friday comes to you straight from the middle Eocene. This is a photo of a lower jaw found in what is now Sweetwater County, Wyoming. This fellow’s family has been mistaken for the tapir’s family, and though it does share an early ancestor, I can assure you it is different.…
Top 5 Creationist Claims About Grand Canyon: #2 The Coconino Sandstone Formed During Noah’s Flood, Part 1
  "I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere." —Anakin Skywalker, Star Wars II: Attack of the Clowns Clones   There’s a big, sandy problem with Noah’s Flood. Some people say the world was once submerged in a universal deluge.…
The Dating of the Cherry, Part 2
I’m working my way, slowly, toward talking about a particularly strange argument that appears in David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779), which bears on the age of the world. In part 1, I explained that the argument occurs in the course of a response in part VI of the…
A Horse is a Horse, Of Course Of Course…As Long As You Know What A Horse Is: Part 2
In Part 1 of this blog, I explained the origin of a modern textbook taboo: diagrams that suggest a unidirectional and linear evolution of horses. These justly criticized illustrations give the impression that through a series of progressive changes, horses evolved to their current, perfected form…
All Along the (Climate) Watchtower
The Jehovah's Witnesses visit me once a year. They politely try to convert me; I politely turn down the offer. They leave me a colorful pamphlet which I never read and that's that. Until today. As I thumbed through the latest issue of The Watchtower, I was struck dumb. (I'm…
The Dating of the Cherry, Part 1
Recently, a creationist blog attributed a particular argument against design to David Hume, so I took a copy of his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779) from the shelf to check. Surprise, surprise: it wasn’t there. But I’m not going to bother to debunk the misattribution; it’s…
Answer Monday!
Photo Credit: RobW_ via Compfight cc Last week I told you to take it slow on identifying this fossil. As we all know, slow and steady wins the race, or in our case, comes up with the right answer!  So what was it?  Well, it wasn’t a prehistoric jack rabbit, that is for sure. It was an…
A Horse is a Horse, Of Course, Of Course…As Long As You Know What a Horse Is: Part 1
Next week, I’m going to get back to actual misconceptions for Misconception Monday posts, I promise—but I am a “completer-finisher,” according to some workplace personality test I once took, so I need to round out this trio. Last stop on my mini-tour of you-can’t-show-that-in-textbooks-anymore…

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