New dinosaurs found in Australia
|
Three new dinosaur species are found in Queensland, Australia, and named after the Outback song Waltzing Matilda. BBC News Full Story |
|
Three new dinosaur species are found in Queensland, Australia, and named after the Outback song Waltzing Matilda. BBC News Full Story |


Studies of ferrets reveal details of disease.
Nature
Full Story
Robert Wright’s new book, “The Evolution of God,” has a provocative title. But it’s a disappointment from the Darwinian perspective. He doesn’t mean real evolution, just the development of ideas about God.
He argues that our morality has improved over the centuries and that maybe the hand of the deity can be discerned in that progression, if one looks hard enough. But he leaves fuzzy the matter of whether he thinks a deity is there for real. There’s a moral order in history, he says, which “makes it reasonable to suspect that humankind in some sense has a ‘higher purpose.’” And maybe the source of that higher purpose, he writes, “is something that qualifies for the label ‘god’ in at least some sense of the word.”
This is not a terrible idea. Darwin himself had similar thoughts, but he later dropped the view that evolution had a higher moral purpose. New research on the biological roots of morality has drawn attention to another of Darwin’s ideas, that there is an innate disposition to moral behavior.
New York Times
Full Story
Dinosaur mummy yields its secrets |
|
A metre-long section of the fossil shows the size of the hadrosaur's scales A remarkably well-preserved fossil of a dinosaur has been analysed by scientists writing in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. They describe how the fossil's soft tissues were spared from decay by fine sediments that formed a mineral cast. Tests have shown that the fossil still holds cell-like structures - but their constituent proteins have decayed. The team says the cellular structure of the dinosaur's skin was similar to that of dinosaurs' modern-day descendants. |
|
One of my all-time favorite movies is the 1981 Paramount feature, Raiders of the Lost Ark. The hero of the film, Indiana Jones, is an adventurer and professor of archaeology. While lecturing, he quips to his students, “Archaeology is about facts, not truth. If it’s truth you’re interested in, Dr. Tyree’s philosophy class is down the hall.” There exists a contemporary myth which asserts scientists are concerned only with facts while philosophers and theologians are preoccupied with meaning. As a theologian, I am obviously a theist – one who believes in the existence of a transcendent, eternal divine being who is the ultimate origin of the universe. As such, I am decidedly not a naturalist – one who believes that blind chance and natural causes alone are sufficient to explain everything that exists. Theism and naturalism are competing worldviews which are unable to concede any ground to the other. As science historian William B. Provine of Cornell University, an avowed atheist and staunch evolutionist, has rightly observed, if naturalism (e.g., Darwinism) is true as he contends, then there is absolutely no ground for theism,...
Blog
Full Story
The homeboy won, but what do you expect when the homeboy isStephen Hawking, world-renowned cosmologist and black hole expert at the University of Cambridge, best-selling author, “Simpsons” and “Star Trek” guest star, and aspiring astronaut?
Kimberly White/ReutersStephen Hawking discussing theories on the origin of the universe in Berkeley, Calif., in 2007.In anonline poll of Cambridge University staff members and students, Dr. Hawking’s book, “A Brief History of Time,” has been voted the scientific publication from the last half-century that is most deserving to be remembered 150 years from now. The poll was done as a run-up to theDarwin Anniversary Festival, celebrating the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s“On the Origin of Species”. The festival will take place in Cambridge, where Darwin spent much of his life, from July 6 to 10.
New Yory Times
Full Story
HILTON HEAD — An archaeologist who’s been digging at the Topper Site in Allendale County for 11 years is uncovering new evidence that could rewrite America’s history.
University of South Carolina archaeologist Albert Goodyear found artifacts at this rock quarry site near the Savannah River that indicate humans lived here 37,000 years before the Clovis people. History books say the Clovis were the first Americans and arrived here 13,000 years ago by walking across a land bridge from Asia.
Goodyear’s discovery could prove otherwise.
|