Daily Archives: December 17, 2007

Anthro Notes

The new Anthronotes is available, hereThis is a Smithsonian publication. This issue has, among other things, a very nice article on the Flores Hobbits and a piece on teaching Human Evolution. Teachers should take special note of this, the material in this publication is usually perfect for 10th through 12th grade Life Sciences.[Hat Tip: Ed Hessler].

Two New Species of Mammal Discovered

The Foja Mountains have been the subject of investigation for a couple of years now, and new species are being found there on a regular basis. The lastest, from last June, is the discovery of a possum and a rat.The Foja Mountains are in Paupa, Indonesia, and form part of the norther ridge of the central mountain range on this large island. There are no records of visitors to this remote area prior to the late 1970s. In december, 2005, a joint international team of scientists bean documenting plants and animals in the area, and subsequently there have been reports of at lease one new bird species, twenty frogs, four butterflies, and a range of plants.

“During the June expedition, the team documented two mammals, a Cercartetus pygmy possum, one of the world’s smallest marsupials, and a Mallomys giant rat, both currently under study and apparently new to science,” CI said.The giant rat is about five times the size of a typical city rat and visited the scientists’ camp several times, lacking any fear of humans.

It’s nice when your data just shows up…sources: This news report and this wikipedia piece.

Discovery Institute Discovers Irony

But fails to recognize it. Again.Just moments ago, the Discovery Institute posted a commentary on a paper that came out some time ago on dog evolution. I wrote about that paper because it made me laugh out loud (LOL). Indeed, I wanted to share this again, so I reposted my earlier post just moments ago.The new DI post is by Casey Luskin. I’ve misplaced the URL, sorry. Anyway, it turns out that the Discovery Institute is pretty sure that Artificial Selection is Intelligent Design, with the breeders being the Intelligent Agent. Of course, they are correct. Intelligent Design is real. If you make it up.(LOL)

Creationism Doubtful? What a surprise!

I woke up this morning to see headlines such as the following in my newsreader:Study Casts Doubt on Creationism … and St. Bernard Study Casts Doubt on Creationism….It turns out that the shape of the dog’s head has evolved over time, and that this can only be explained by evolution.The study looked at 47 St Bernard skulls over a 120 year period, and analyzed these in the context of ancient written specifications for the breed.

“We discovered that features stipulated in the breed standard of the St Bernard became more exaggerated over time as breeders selected dogs that had the desired physical attributes,” said Dr Klingenberg.”In effect they have applied selection to move the evolutionary process a considerable way forward, providing a unique opportunity to observe sustained evolutionary change under known selective pressures.”The findings, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences tomorrow (Wednesday), are based on studies of St Bernard skulls donated by Swiss breeders to the Natural History Museum in Berne.[source]

Well, I must say that is very cool, but it is about as intensive and insightful as the average undergraduate thesis that I’ve supervised, and much less impressive than the best, especially the most recent one done by Betsy Burr, which examines selected variation across a sample of several thousand rodents.What is nice about this study is the way it is reported. It is utterly obvious that this study defies the tenets of creationism, as does every single study involving evolutionary biology. I’d love to see this become the standard for science reporting in the future. For example, here is my version, using this new standard, of several other headlines that are sitting in my newsreader from the last 24 yours or so: Continue reading Creationism Doubtful? What a surprise!