The multistep spearmaking practice, documented by researchers in Senegal who spent years gaining the chimpanzees' trust, adds credence to the idea that human forebears fashioned similar tools millions of years ago.
The landmark observation also supports the long-debated proposition that females -- the main makers and users of spears among the Senegalese chimps -- tend to be the innovators and creative problem solvers in primate culture.
Using their hands and teeth, the chimpanzees were repeatedly seen tearing the side branches off long, straight sticks, peeling back the bark and sharpening one end. Then, grasping the weapons in a "power grip," they jabbed them into tree-branch hollows where bush babies -- small, monkeylike mammals -- sleep during the day.
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Hard to believe this is the first time we've seen this...
According to a story in the WaPo, chimpanzees have been found to be making sharp weapons, which they are using to hunt small animals. According to the story,
Sorry about the light posting
I have been fighting an infection in the back of my neck for the last week and it seems to have reared its ugly head once again. This stems from the golf ball they pulled out two weeks ago. I will try to do better.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Kansas...again
ABC news reports that Kansas has rewritten their education guidelines to reflect the changing demographics of the school board, which is largely evolution-friendly right now. The key paragraph is:
Some scientists and science groups believed the board's latest action was significant because it turned back a subtle attack on evolution that encouraged schools to teach about an evolution "controversy," rather than mandating that creationism or intelligent design be taught. Intelligent design says an intelligent cause is the best way to explain some complex and orderly features of the universe.
The catch is that there is no controversy. From a scientific perspective, there are mountains of evidence supporting both microevolution and macroevolution and no evidence supporting any other model. The ball is in ID's court. If there is a mechanism that can be postulated that would explain current and past biotic diversity, why have they not presented it? You cannot teach a controversy in a vacuum. Teaching the "controversy" is a smokescreen and most scientists can see through it.
Some scientists and science groups believed the board's latest action was significant because it turned back a subtle attack on evolution that encouraged schools to teach about an evolution "controversy," rather than mandating that creationism or intelligent design be taught. Intelligent design says an intelligent cause is the best way to explain some complex and orderly features of the universe.
The catch is that there is no controversy. From a scientific perspective, there are mountains of evidence supporting both microevolution and macroevolution and no evidence supporting any other model. The ball is in ID's court. If there is a mechanism that can be postulated that would explain current and past biotic diversity, why have they not presented it? You cannot teach a controversy in a vacuum. Teaching the "controversy" is a smokescreen and most scientists can see through it.
The marvels of Modern Medicine
Well, after quite a bit of pain over the weekend and a very fat neck, i went back to the surgeon yesterday, who confirmed my fears that an infection had set in at the incision site. Without going into a lot of detail, when the surgeon removed the top stitch, the wound "popped." Think: adolescence and you will get the idea. I was sent home with some very high-powered antibiotics and pain killers. It feels better now but is still draining...
Monday, February 12, 2007
Good ol' Genetics
I just had a benign tumor removed from the back of my neck the size of a golf ball! How did this happen? I am not a tree and it is not a burl. Nor am I an oyster and it a pearl. It is just simply a tumor that my body thought to grow at that location. Nice. I'd forgotten what surgical pain was like.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Didn't See This Coming
Foxnews reports that Kenyan Christians are complaining and organizing against the Kenya National Museum's public display of the Turkana Boy (known to the palaeoanthropological community as KNM WT15000) and its evolutionary conclusions.
"I did not evolve from Turkana Boy or anything like it," says Bishop Boniface Adoyo, head of Kenya's 35 evangelical denominations, which he claims have 10 million followers. "These sorts of silly views are killing our faith."
Richard Leakey is just as adamant:
"Whether the bishop likes it or not, Turkana Boy is a distant relation of his," Leakey, who founded the museum's prehistory department, told The Associated Press. "The bishop is descended from the apes and these fossils tell how he evolved."
A more conciliatory approach is taken by head of palaeontology at the museum, Emma Mbua:
"I did not evolve from Turkana Boy or anything like it," says Bishop Boniface Adoyo, head of Kenya's 35 evangelical denominations, which he claims have 10 million followers. "These sorts of silly views are killing our faith."
Richard Leakey is just as adamant:
"Whether the bishop likes it or not, Turkana Boy is a distant relation of his," Leakey, who founded the museum's prehistory department, told The Associated Press. "The bishop is descended from the apes and these fossils tell how he evolved."
A more conciliatory approach is taken by head of palaeontology at the museum, Emma Mbua:
Mbua, a Protestant, is a little taken aback at the controversy but has no problems reconciling her own faith to the scientific evidence. "Evolution is a fact," adds Mbua, who has run the department for the last five years. "Turkana Boy is our jewel," she said. "For the first time, we will be taking him out of the strong room and showing our heritage to the world."
I am still waiting for a creationist to come along and explain just what, exactly, KNM WT15000 is, since it obviously ain't modern human and just as obviously ain't an ape.Monday, February 05, 2007
First its microcephalic, now its not! Or is it?
A new article on the H. floresiensis remains by Dean Falk and colleagues indicates that the remains that the press have dubbed "Hobbits" from the island of Flores in Indonesia are actually not microcephalic, after all. It is just plain strange:
While the new technique suggests LB1 was not a microcephalic, it does not rule out that it was not a Homo sapiens.
As evidence of that, Falk points to what she says are several advanced features of LB1's brain that are unlike those of modern humans or any other known hominid species.
"What we have is a little tiny brain that has four features that you can see with your eyes that are advanced and distributed from front to middle to back," Falk said. "In other words, this thing appears to be globally rewired. Those are really advanced features. They're not like humans, they're not like anything.
Some are not convinced:Robert Martin, curator of biological anthropology at the Field Museum in Chicago, is not convinced by the new evidence.
One of his major criticisms has to do with the sample of microcephalic skulls the team used. "They're being a bit naughty about this," Martin said in a telephone interview. "Four of the nine microcephalics were not adults."
Falk's team maintains its inclusion of young skulls is justified because microcephalics are generally believed to achieve maximum cranial capacity by around four years of age. Martin, who criticized a similar comparison done by Falk's team in 2005 as flawed, again disagrees. "What we're saying is LB1 was definitely an adult. If LB1 was a microcephalic, he was one with a mild condition who managed to survive into adulthood," he said. "So the proper comparison is with microcephalics with a mild condition who were adults."
"I don't have any problems with having new hominid species," Martin added. "I just don't think this is one of them."
I am looking forward to how this plays out. We have not seen the last of this controversy, given the significance of the H. floresiensis remains.
Forward into the Palaeocene!
New primate fossils have been found pushing the existence of these critters back to the Palaeocene. In an article in Foxnews, two new skeletons of plesiadapiforms have been found. These forms were originally thought to be primates but then reclassified as primate-like mammals. Now it seems, that designation may have been wrong.
[Jonathan] Bloch recently caught a lucky break when he made the rare discovery of nearly complete skeletons of two plesiadapiform species, now named Ignacius clarkforkensis and Dryomomys szalayi, embedded in limestone outside Yellowstone National Park.
By analyzing the skeletons and comparing them to more than 85 modern and extinct primate species, the researchers showed that plesiadapiforms look a lot more like primates than paleoanthropologists had imagined — and look nothing like flying lemurs, Bloch said.
This is exciting because it addresses the origin of our first precursors at a time when the dinosaurs had finally given way to the mammals. The article goes on to say:
Primates must have acquired their traits gradually, because plesiadapiforms have some, but not all, of the characteristics of later primates, Bloch and Sargis said.
"In the past, people had hypothesized that all of these kinds of primate features evolved as a single complex of features at one time, whereas what we're finding is throughout those first 10 million years of primate evolution, these features were evolving piecemeal, kind of one-by-one, accruing through time," Sargis said.
Bloch and Sargis's skeletal analysis shows that flying lemurs and another modern, non-primate mammal, the tree shrew, are primates' closest living relatives.
DNA studies of all three types of mammals — primates, flying lemurs, and tree shrews — confirm Bloch and Sargis's finding.
"So all three of those groups," Sargis said, "you can trace back to a single common ancestor.
[Jonathan] Bloch recently caught a lucky break when he made the rare discovery of nearly complete skeletons of two plesiadapiform species, now named Ignacius clarkforkensis and Dryomomys szalayi, embedded in limestone outside Yellowstone National Park.
By analyzing the skeletons and comparing them to more than 85 modern and extinct primate species, the researchers showed that plesiadapiforms look a lot more like primates than paleoanthropologists had imagined — and look nothing like flying lemurs, Bloch said.
This is exciting because it addresses the origin of our first precursors at a time when the dinosaurs had finally given way to the mammals. The article goes on to say:
Primates must have acquired their traits gradually, because plesiadapiforms have some, but not all, of the characteristics of later primates, Bloch and Sargis said.
"In the past, people had hypothesized that all of these kinds of primate features evolved as a single complex of features at one time, whereas what we're finding is throughout those first 10 million years of primate evolution, these features were evolving piecemeal, kind of one-by-one, accruing through time," Sargis said.
Bloch and Sargis's skeletal analysis shows that flying lemurs and another modern, non-primate mammal, the tree shrew, are primates' closest living relatives.
DNA studies of all three types of mammals — primates, flying lemurs, and tree shrews — confirm Bloch and Sargis's finding.
"So all three of those groups," Sargis said, "you can trace back to a single common ancestor.
Islamic Creationism
Apparently, there is a new movement afoot in France, Islamic creationism. According to a story in Direland, a gentleman by the name of Harun Yahya has written a book on the evils of Darwinism:
The book's pseudonymous author, a Turk named Harun Yahya ( photo left -- real name: Adnan Oktar), makes a number of astonishing claims -- including that Charles Darwin is "the real source of terrorism." For example, a photo of the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers carries a caption reading, "Those who perpetuate terror in the world are in reality the Darwinists. Darwinism is the only philosophy which validates and encourages conflict." Yahya also pretends to portray "the secret links between Darwinism and the bloody ideologies of fascism and communism."
It is creationism with a twist, however:
Contrary to the fundamentalist Christian Creationists in the U.S. who have been attacking the teaching of Darwin's theory of evolution in local school boards and many state legislatures, and demanding with an alarming degree of success that Creationism be taught in the public schools, Yahya's Qur'an-based attack on Darwinism does not claim that the world and those who inhabit it were created only 6,000 years ago. Instead, Yahya admits that Earth is really 4.6 billion years old, but his "Atlas" uses hundreds of photos of fossils found over several centuries to "prove" that "the species have never changed" [sic]. This pseudo-scientific clap-trap, says noted French biologist Hervé Le Guyeder, makes this "new form of creationism even more insidious than the Christian-inspired one wreaking havoc in North America."
One wonders how the mainstream media, which typically handles anything Islamic with kid gloves, will handle this.
The book's pseudonymous author, a Turk named Harun Yahya ( photo left -- real name: Adnan Oktar), makes a number of astonishing claims -- including that Charles Darwin is "the real source of terrorism." For example, a photo of the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers carries a caption reading, "Those who perpetuate terror in the world are in reality the Darwinists. Darwinism is the only philosophy which validates and encourages conflict." Yahya also pretends to portray "the secret links between Darwinism and the bloody ideologies of fascism and communism."
It is creationism with a twist, however:
Contrary to the fundamentalist Christian Creationists in the U.S. who have been attacking the teaching of Darwin's theory of evolution in local school boards and many state legislatures, and demanding with an alarming degree of success that Creationism be taught in the public schools, Yahya's Qur'an-based attack on Darwinism does not claim that the world and those who inhabit it were created only 6,000 years ago. Instead, Yahya admits that Earth is really 4.6 billion years old, but his "Atlas" uses hundreds of photos of fossils found over several centuries to "prove" that "the species have never changed" [sic]. This pseudo-scientific clap-trap, says noted French biologist Hervé Le Guyeder, makes this "new form of creationism even more insidious than the Christian-inspired one wreaking havoc in North America."
One wonders how the mainstream media, which typically handles anything Islamic with kid gloves, will handle this.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Islamic Devolution
Glenn Reynolds reports on British Muslims not inoculating their children against childhood illnesses because they contain substances that Muslims should not ingest.
Dr Abdul Majid Katme, head of the Islamic Medical Association, says almost all vaccines contain un-Islamic "haram" derivatives of animal or human tissue, and that Muslim parents are better off letting childrens' immune systems develop on their own.
Dr. Reynolds calls it "Evolution in action."
It is worth noting that this will likely not have much effect one way or another. I didn't get any of the childhood disease inoculations and neither did my wife. In fact, the population of the earth reached 4 billion people just fine without them. Having said that, the purity issue is a bit rigid and cult-ish. The story relates that some other Muslim groups think it is ridiculous as well.
Dr Abdul Majid Katme, head of the Islamic Medical Association, says almost all vaccines contain un-Islamic "haram" derivatives of animal or human tissue, and that Muslim parents are better off letting childrens' immune systems develop on their own.
Dr. Reynolds calls it "Evolution in action."
It is worth noting that this will likely not have much effect one way or another. I didn't get any of the childhood disease inoculations and neither did my wife. In fact, the population of the earth reached 4 billion people just fine without them. Having said that, the purity issue is a bit rigid and cult-ish. The story relates that some other Muslim groups think it is ridiculous as well.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
The Neandertal/Modern Human confluence, Part ?
In an article entitled "Skull shows possible human/Neanderthal breeding," Al-Reuters reports that a skull found in a Romanian cave shows exactly that. It reads in part:
DNA samples taken from Neanderthal bones suggest there was no mixing, or at least that any Neanderthal genetic contribution did not make it to the modern DNA pool.
But Erik Trinkaus of Washington University in St. Louis has in the past found bones that he believes show both modern human and Neanderthal traits, and now he and colleagues have found a skull.
What the article does not recound is the eruption that occurred the last time there was a "hybrid" discovery, which occurred at a cave at Lagar Velho, Portugal. Trinkaus demonstrated what he thought were hybrid characteristics, while Ian Tattersall viewed it as nothing more than a chunky Gravettian kid. Trinkaus' response was nothing short of apalling, calling into question Tattersall's scientific abilities, his upbringing and his ancestry. Tattersall's original article on the Lagar Velho child is here and his response to Trinkaus' screed is here. I have been unable to find Trinkaus' vitriolic response to the article anywhere on the net. That is, perhaps, just as well.
Glenn Morton, writing for the ASA, commented on the Lagar Velho remains at the time. Lets hope this new find does not generate the kind of responses that the Lagar Velho child did.
DNA samples taken from Neanderthal bones suggest there was no mixing, or at least that any Neanderthal genetic contribution did not make it to the modern DNA pool.
But Erik Trinkaus of Washington University in St. Louis has in the past found bones that he believes show both modern human and Neanderthal traits, and now he and colleagues have found a skull.
What the article does not recound is the eruption that occurred the last time there was a "hybrid" discovery, which occurred at a cave at Lagar Velho, Portugal. Trinkaus demonstrated what he thought were hybrid characteristics, while Ian Tattersall viewed it as nothing more than a chunky Gravettian kid. Trinkaus' response was nothing short of apalling, calling into question Tattersall's scientific abilities, his upbringing and his ancestry. Tattersall's original article on the Lagar Velho child is here and his response to Trinkaus' screed is here. I have been unable to find Trinkaus' vitriolic response to the article anywhere on the net. That is, perhaps, just as well.
Glenn Morton, writing for the ASA, commented on the Lagar Velho remains at the time. Lets hope this new find does not generate the kind of responses that the Lagar Velho child did.
Monday, January 08, 2007
Well, this is depressing...
According to a CNN story, the Viking explorer may have found life--and killed it.
Saturday, January 06, 2007
Flock of Dodos
Hard to tell exactly what the point is here but, in honor of the new decisions of the Kansas school board, A National Dodos Darwin Day event is being organized to coincide with Darwin Day in various parts of the country this year. A contest of sorts, contestants are to show up dressed as Charles Darwin, a Dodo bird or Muffy Moose. Knoxville's contest is at McClung Museum on February 12, 2007. Time to think up a costume, I guess.
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
The Biologic Institute
Celeste Biever of the New Scientist went to the Biologic Institute in Seattle, Washington and was not welcomed with open arms. Here is her account. If this link does not work or is behind a subscription wall, try the NCSE review. As Ms. Biever notes:
The message is clear. If ID supporters can bolster their case by citing more experimental research, another judge at some future date might conclude that ID does qualify as science, and is therefore a legitimate topic for discussion in American science classrooms. This is precisely the kind of scientific respectability that research at the Biologic Institute is attempting to provide. "We need all the input we can get in the sciences," Weber told me. "What we are doing is necessary to move ID along."
This will be ID's greatest challenge. All along, the founders and promoters of ID have resisted calls to operationalize the science behind it. For evidence of this see the post below about William Dembski. This is a problem that was examined at length by Howard van Till.
The message is clear. If ID supporters can bolster their case by citing more experimental research, another judge at some future date might conclude that ID does qualify as science, and is therefore a legitimate topic for discussion in American science classrooms. This is precisely the kind of scientific respectability that research at the Biologic Institute is attempting to provide. "We need all the input we can get in the sciences," Weber told me. "What we are doing is necessary to move ID along."
This will be ID's greatest challenge. All along, the founders and promoters of ID have resisted calls to operationalize the science behind it. For evidence of this see the post below about William Dembski. This is a problem that was examined at length by Howard van Till.
Thursday, December 28, 2006
The Atlanta Journal Constitution Weigh In
In what can only be described as a heavy-handed editorial, Maureen Downey had written a column on the recent Cobb County decision:
To see evidence of evolution, look no further than the Cobb County Board of Education. From a tax-frittering, pseudo-science muddle, the board seems to be evolving into a deliberate and engaged panel capable of putting the reputation and credibility of the district ahead of politics or personal creeds.
While it is probably true that the decision was correct, the evolution sticker side acted in good faith and with good motives. Ms. Downey makes no attempt to hide her contempt for them. Not professional.
To see evidence of evolution, look no further than the Cobb County Board of Education. From a tax-frittering, pseudo-science muddle, the board seems to be evolving into a deliberate and engaged panel capable of putting the reputation and credibility of the district ahead of politics or personal creeds.
While it is probably true that the decision was correct, the evolution sticker side acted in good faith and with good motives. Ms. Downey makes no attempt to hide her contempt for them. Not professional.
Man the Hunter
A new report in Foxnews indicates that humans may have wiped out the megafauna in Australia some 10k years ago. This is what is also been suggested to have happened in the New World around the same time period.
We like to romaticize the Native Americans and Native Australians and think that they were "close to the land." The fact of the matter is that, as humans, we haven't changed much over time.
We like to romaticize the Native Americans and Native Australians and think that they were "close to the land." The fact of the matter is that, as humans, we haven't changed much over time.
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
YouTube
Getting onto the bandwagon a bit slowly. I discovered that if you type in "Intelligent Design" into the search engine at YouTube, you get a bunch of videos, including some lectures. Nifty.
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Daphne Michelle Kidder
Another reason that I have posted lightly is that our fourth child, Daphne Michelle Kidder, was born on Wednesday, December 20, at 2:23. Everybody is doing very well.
Sorry for the light posting
I have torn some muscles in my back and have not been able to sit for any period of time for about two weeks. Sorry for the light posting.
One thing did cross my path in the last week. In a press release by the organization Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (an organization I can throw a little bit further than I can the ACLU, but not much), the Cobb County Georgia sticker brouhaha seems to have been settled. Part of the release states,
In an agreement announced today, Cobb County school officials state that they will not order the placement of “any stickers, labels, stamps, inscriptions, or other warnings or disclaimers bearing language substantially similar to that used on the sticker that is the subject of this action.” School officials also agreed not to take other actions that would undermine the teaching of evolution in biology classes.
Sounds like unilateral surrender to me.
One thing did cross my path in the last week. In a press release by the organization Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (an organization I can throw a little bit further than I can the ACLU, but not much), the Cobb County Georgia sticker brouhaha seems to have been settled. Part of the release states,
In an agreement announced today, Cobb County school officials state that they will not order the placement of “any stickers, labels, stamps, inscriptions, or other warnings or disclaimers bearing language substantially similar to that used on the sticker that is the subject of this action.” School officials also agreed not to take other actions that would undermine the teaching of evolution in biology classes.
Sounds like unilateral surrender to me.
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
ID on a Grand Scale
For years, ID folks like Hugh Ross have been championing the "Anthropic Principle," which states, in somewhat simplified terms, that the universe is tweaked in such a way to make life possible and that if certain parameters (such as the age of the universe, the electromagnetic and gravitational forces) were a hair off, life would not exist. The Constant is the force that drives the universal expansion. As the story notes:
Quantum physics predicts the cosmological constant should be far larger than what is actually seen: roughly 10 to the 120th power larger, a number represented by 1 with 120 zeroes behind it. By comparison, [Steven] Weinberg's original estimate was off just by roughly a hundredfold, and refined versions of this argument claim greater accuracy, suggesting anthropic reasoning could provide answers quantum physics currently cannot.
Others are not convinced.
However, theoretical physicist Glenn Starkman of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and cosmologist Roberto Trotta at Oxford University in England take issue with how anthropic reasoning predicts the cosmological constant.
"The specifications used to allow life are rather arbitrary and can lead to very different expected values for fundamental constants," Starkman told SPACE.com.
Seems to me that you still have the other 28 dimensionless variables to deal with, though.
Quantum physics predicts the cosmological constant should be far larger than what is actually seen: roughly 10 to the 120th power larger, a number represented by 1 with 120 zeroes behind it. By comparison, [Steven] Weinberg's original estimate was off just by roughly a hundredfold, and refined versions of this argument claim greater accuracy, suggesting anthropic reasoning could provide answers quantum physics currently cannot.
Others are not convinced.
However, theoretical physicist Glenn Starkman of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and cosmologist Roberto Trotta at Oxford University in England take issue with how anthropic reasoning predicts the cosmological constant.
"The specifications used to allow life are rather arbitrary and can lead to very different expected values for fundamental constants," Starkman told SPACE.com.
Seems to me that you still have the other 28 dimensionless variables to deal with, though.
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