Butterfly Nightmare

 

Jerry Coyne, in his new book entitled Why Evolution is True, conveniently overlooks any reference to the butterfly, as does Darwin-Discovering the Tree of Life by Niles Eldridge. Even the California-sponsored website, “Understanding Evolution,” sneaks around the mysterious transformation of the butterfly known as metamorphosis – a butterfly nightmare.

Depictions of mystical butterfly symbols embellished Egyptian, Chinese, and Greeks cultural expressions for over 3,500 years. Why is the evolution industry silent on butterfly metamorphosis?

The answer is simple. Identifying a natural selection process for metamorphosis escapes a logical or, more importantly, a scientific explanation. The same DNA is in all four life cycles; the egg, the caterpillar (larva), the cocoon (pupa), and the adult butterfly (pictured right). Metamorphosis, to the theory of Evolution, is a spectacular scientific enigma.
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Ardipithecus ramidus Saga

 

The October 2009 special edition of the journal Science (cover pictured right below) entitled Ardipithecus ramidus, kindly known as “Ardi,” featured a series of 11 papers by 47 authors from 10 countries – launching the Ardipithecus ramidus (pictured left) saga. With an estimated age of 4.4 million years, Ardi is considered the oldest hominid skeleton ever discovered, predating Lucy and casting unexpected clues into the increasingly complex human evolution jigsaw puzzle.

The saga, however, actually began nearly 15 years ago. In 1994, American anthropologist Tim D. White of the University of California, Berkeley, along with Japanese paleoanthropologist Gen Suwa, and Ethiopian paleontologist Berhane Asfaw, unearthed the first two pieces of fossilized bone of a hominid hand near the Awash River region of Ethiopia.

Within just a few weeks, with more than 100 additional bone fragments discovered, White and the team began directing one of the most promising searches to unravel the now entangled and long-beleaguered theory of human evolution.

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Fruit Fly Genetics Research, 100 Years Later

 

Fruit FlyThe evolution industry is celebrating 100 years of fruit fly genetic research. Charles W. Woodworth, at the University of California, Berkeley, at the turn of the twentieth century, was the first to use the fruit fly as a model in the study of genetics. During the twentieth century, Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruit fly, was one of the most studied organisms in biological research, particularly in the field of genetics.

In 1910, following Woodworth’s footsteps, Thomas Hunt Morgan at Columbia University extended Gregor Mendel’s fundamental principles of genetics. Morgan’s laboratory in Schermerhorn Hall is now known as the Fly Room. The following year, Morgan published his findings in Science, establishing the foundation for the emerging neo-Darwinism movement.

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