Posts Tagged ‘theory of evolution’

In the sedimentary Golden Gate Highlands National Park rocks of South Africa in 1976 during road construction uncovered a paleontologist’s goldmine−a dinosaur nesting site.

The discovery eventually launched an international exploration the area the South African hills that started in 2006. This week, the results of the explorations were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).  Robert Reisz of the University of Toronto was the lead author. Continue Reading

Since the publication of The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin in 1859, not only is the theory continually challenged by the evidence, confusion rages over the actual theory. The confusion extends into the classroom; the teaching evolution has been a verified failure.

These are my top 10 highlights in 2011 presented on Darwin, Then and Now during the year with links to the original article. Continue Reading

“If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ exists which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications,” Charles Darwin wrote in The Origin of Species, “my theory would absolutely break down”.

This week a team of scientists from Australia and Spain lead by John R. Paterson, a paleontologist at the University of New England in Australia, extended even further Darwin’s dilemma. Continue Reading

In 1996, President Bill Clinton awarded evolution theorist Lynn Margulis the National Medal of Science Award. Amazingly, in 2008, Margulis was awarded the Darwin-Wallace Medal by the Linnean Society of London.  Margulis, who died on Tuesday in Amherst, Massachusetts, however, was no friend of the Darwinian theory evolution.

At the center of the raging theory of evolution debates, Margulis emerged as a strong critic of Darwin during the late twentieth century. In the words of Margulis, “Darwin’s claim of ‘descent with modification’ as caused by natural selection is a linguistic fallacy”. Continue Reading

“[E]mbryology is to me is by far the strongest single class of facts in favor” of my theory of evolution, was the claim of Charles Darwin. The nineteenth century embryological evidence was pivotal for the development of Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Just two months before the release of the first edition of The Origin of Species in September 1859, Darwin wrote to Charles Lyell, “Embryology in Chapter VIII is one of my strongest points I think.”

Founded as a field of science by German biologist Karl Ernst von Baer (1792–1876), embryology was just an emerging science in the nineteenth century. As the first to discover the mammalian ovum, Baer is now recognized as the founder of modern embryology. Continue Reading

Charles Darwin proposed a theory that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry in The Origin of Species through a process he coined natural selection. Since its publication in 1859, this theory of evolution has been one of the most hotly contested theories in the history of science. A recent ancient eel discovery is the latest example of why.

In February of 2009, research diver Jiro Sakaue, descending into a dark fringing reef cave in the Pacific Ocean Republic of Palau, discovered a small unusual eel-like fish. The species of the fish has since been named Protaguillae palau. Prot(o) means prototype, first, or original, guilla means eel (a shortened form of Anguilliformes - an order of fish) with palau referring to the discovery location. Continue Reading

Anti-Science, evolution and climate change are now at the center of the 2012 Presidential campaign. The answers to the head-turning question, “Do you believe in evolution?” gets top media attention even though few politicians have biology training beyond Biology 101. Of course, “does life have meaning and purpose?” is the real core of the question.

The use of the term Anti-Science today has evolved to mean anti-evolution and anti-climate change. How candidates manage the “evolution” question will likely leverage an effect on the final vote next year.” Question like “Do you believe in evolution” are now one of the most dreaded types of questions on the political campaign trail. But, what is Anti-Science? As we will see, the history of the Anti-Science is an amazing saga of irony.

At the core of the Anti-Science debate is the definition of Science. The Oxford English Dictionary says that science is “a method of procedures that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.” Continue Reading

In The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin proposed that evolution proceeds by “slight, successive changes”. Although molecular biology was largely unknown by Darwin during the nineteenth century, “slight, successive” molecular changes have become a cornerstone in the study of biological evolution.

Since steroid hormones are known to perform sophisticated regulatory functions in microbes to man, the path of steroid evolution has entered center stage in the realm of investigative molecular biology.

Steroids hormones were first discovered in the mid-twentieth century by American chemist Edward Calvin Kendall while working at the Mayo Clinic. In 1950, Kendall and colleague Philip Hench, along with Swiss chemist Tadeus Reichstein were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for “their discoveries relating to the hormones of the adrenal cortex, their structure and biological effects.” Continue Reading

In the same way Isaac Newton discovered the physical laws of motion and gravity, Charles Darwin attempted to discover the natural laws of evolution in The Origin of Species. Natural selection became Darwin’s proposed natural law, as expressed in the title−The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.

Today, Darwin’s theory of evolution is promoted as a “fact” that accepted by “all scientists”. Evolution as a “fact”, not theory, is center stage in the realm of politics. The media hammered presidential candidate Rick Perry for stating that evolution is “just a theory”. Ironically, though, the facts of evolution continue to elude even the vast majority of the most educated in Western society.

In an article published in BioEssays (2011) entitled “Why is it so difficult to accept Darwin’s theory of evolution?” Jacques Dubochet, professor of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, was amazed to discover that less than 20% of attendees to a celebration of Darwin’s 200th birthday could “[w]rite down in a few words, the essential elements of Darwin’s theory of evolution”. Continue Reading

In The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin agonized over the gaps in the fossil record. “Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps,” Darwin pined, “is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against my theory.”

To address and justify the “serious objection,” Darwin reasoned that “only a small portion of the surface of the Earth has been geologically explored.” However, in the wake of 150 years of unprecedented paleontological research since the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859, the gaps are even more glaring. Continue Reading