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Researchers report that they've found the missing link between an ancient aquatic predator and its ancestors on land. Ichthyosaurs, the dolphin-like reptiles that lived in the sea during the time of the dinosaurs, evolved from terrestrial creatures that made their way back into the water over time. But the fossil record for the lineage has been spotty, without a clear link between land-based reptiles and the aquatic ichthyosaurs scientists know came after. Now, researchers report in Nature that they've found that link — an amphibious ancestor of the swimming ichthyosaurs named Cartorhynchus lenticarpus. "Many creationists have tried to portray ichthyosaurs...

Why did complex life evolve precisely when it did? According to a new study, simpler life forms may have been waiting on a proper oxygen supply -- for as long as a billion years.

More reasons to doubt Darwin A review of: Darwin‘s Doubt, the explosive origin of animal life and the case for intelligent design by Stephen C. Meyer HarperOne, Nashville TN, USA 2013 Reviewed by Philip Bell Published: 6 November 2014 (GMT+10) Stephen Meyer has an impressive pedigree in the philosophy of science and geophysics but is better known as a prominent spokesperson for the ID movement in the USA. Darwin’s Doubt3 is, in many ways, a sequel to his Signature in the Cell (2009)4, both of them impressive in length, scope and incisive analysis. In both, he explicitly distances ID from...

The genetic ancestry of the earliest Europeans survived the ferocious Ice Age that took hold after the continent was initially settled by modern people. That is the suggestion of a study of DNA from a male hunter who lived in western Russia 36,000 years ago. His genome is not exactly like those of people who lived in Europe just after the ice sheets melted 10,000 years ago. But the study suggests the earliest Europeans did contribute their genes to later populations.

By analysing DNA extracted from the petrous bones of skulls of ancient Europeans, scientists have identified that these peoples remained intolerant to lactose (natural sugar in the milk of mammals) for 5,000 years after they adopted agricultural practices and 4,000 years after the onset of cheese-making among Central European Neolithic farmers. The findings published in the scientific journal Nature Communications (21 Oct) also suggest that major technological transitions in Central Europe between the Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age were also associated with major changes in the genetics of these populations. For the study, the international team of scientists examined...

Have you heard about Pope Francis’ recent comments about God, evolution, and Creation? If so, chances are you’ve heard wrong. Here are four things you should know:

The theories of evolution and the Big Bang are real and God is not “a magician with a magic wand”, Pope Francis has declared. Speaking at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Pope made comments which experts said put an end to the “pseudo theories” of creationism and intelligent design that some argue were encouraged by his predecessor, Benedict XVI. Francis explained that both scientific theories were not incompatible with the existence of a creator – arguing instead that they “require it”. “When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with...

The 'Pope Francis supports evolution' story is just the latest example of the press getting the Catholic church completely wrong It is official: the media has gone bananas in its coverage of Pope Francis.The OMG-Pope-Francis-Supports-Evolution story of the past two days is just the latest example. Almost every news outlet, major and minor, has plastered Pope Francis’ name across the interwebs and proclaimed he has finally planted the Catholic Church in the evolution camp of the creation-evolution debate. The only problem? Almost every outlet has got the story wrong, proving once again that the mainstream media has nearly no understanding...

Nate Anderson at ars Technica science site reported on Pope Francis' words on creation, the Big Bang, and evolution theory. Though only a few paragraphs long (and currently available only in Italian; the translation below is unofficial), Francis's remarks focused largely on evolution—still a controversial doctrine in parts of the worldwide Christian church. "When we read in Genesis the account of Creation, we are in danger of imagining that God was a magician, complete with a magic wand capable of doing anything," Francis said. "But he was not. He created beings and let them develop in accordance with the internal...

.“When we read about Creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician, with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so,” Francis said.

Sure, Atheism Is a Religion, to which Neil deGrasse Tyson and Cosmos Seek Converts David Klinghoffer October 28, 2014 1:46 PM | Permalink Some Twitter correspondents objected to my comment, in connection with our new book The Unofficial Guide to Cosmos, that "Cosmos is not appropriate for public schools, where you're not supposed to advocate any religion, including atheism." But of course Tyson-style atheism counts as a religion. As I'm hardly the first to say, it has almost all the trimmings that religions commonly do: An account of origins (panspermia and Darwinian evolution), a philosophical commitment to a certain way...

In Case You Had Any Doubts About What the Freedom From Religion Foundation Really Is Michael Egnor October 29, 2014 4:35 AM | Permalink The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) is planning to distribute some... literature... to public high school students in Florida: An atheist group is planning to distribute a pamphlet in several Florida public high schools that depicts an illustration of a cartoon Bible sexually assaulting a young woman.According to a report by Brittany Hughes at CNSNews.com, the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) plans to hand out a pamphlet entitled "An X-Rated Book: Sex and Obscenity in the...

Oct 23, 2014Bob Yirka Homo floresiensis adult female - model of head. (Phys.org) —It's been ten years since the bones of Homo floresiensis, aka, the "hobbit" were uncovered in Liang Bua, a cave, on the island of Flores in Indonesia, and scientists still can't agree on the diminutive hominin's origins. This month, the journal Nature has printed a comment piece by Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London and two pieces by Ewen Callaway, one a retrospective with interviews with the central players, and the other a podcast with the four principle scientists involved in the find—Bert Roberts,...

Evolution is not inconsistent with God, said Pope Francis during an unveiling of a bust of his predecessor, Pope-emeritus Benedict XVI, at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on Monday. "Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation," Francis said. "The scientist," he continued, "must [nevertheless] be moved by a trust in the idea that nature hides, within her evolutionary mechanisms, potentialities that it is the task of intellect and freedom to discover and actuate, in order to achieve the [kind of] development that is in the design of the Creator." The pope, who backed the Roman Catholic...

The Big Bang “doesn’t contradict the intervention of a divine Creator, but demands it,” Pope Francis said Monday morning, because the beginning of the world “is not the work of chaos.” The Pope was addressing the plenary assembly of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, gathered in the Vatican to discuss “Evolving Concepts of Nature.” God is not some sort of wizard, said Francis, but rather “the Creator who brought all things into being.” The origin of the world derives directly “from a supreme Principle of creative love,” he added. “Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation,...

Original soft-tissue fossils continue to challenge mainstream understanding of how and when fossils formed. Secular researchers described dozens of them over the years, from mummified skin and dried red blood to still-purple retinas, and they assign them ages of tens of millions of years. However, the science of tissue decay clearly does not permit these long ages. For example, lab bench tests that accelerate tissue decay under high temperatures place a maximum age of fewer than one million years on some of the most resilient proteins, assuming the fossil proteins were kept cold and sterile during the entire process. These...

Michael Gungor, of the Christian worship band Gungor, stepped into a wasp’s nest of criticism and controversy by his comments a few months ago that he doesn’t believe in a literal creation, or in the great flood, or Noah.  In fact, he believes that God-directed evolution is the means our Creator used to bring forth species upon the earth. Meh.  By itself, such a comment is disagreeable to my own beliefs, but not on its face heretical or worthy of disfellowship.  The fact that Gungor has a hit band in the Christian world has no bearing on my opinion. Michael...

A Fuss Over Dust: Planck Satellite Fails to Confirm Big Bang 'Proof' by Jake Hebert, Ph.D. * During a high profile news conference in March 2014, the BICEP2 radio astronomy team announced purported direct evidence for inflation— an important part of the modern Big Bang model.1 In Big Bang cosmology, inflation is a hypothesized "growth spurt" in which the universe enormously increased in size. Inflation was an ad hoc addition to the Big Bang model intended to solve some very serious theoretical difficulties, including the Big Bang's own version of the seeing-distant-starlight-in-a-young- universe problem.2 Inflation was originally thought to have...

Oxford Journals, Genome Biology and EvolutionBurial site and skeletal remains of the St. Helena marine forager, who was at least 50 years old when he died DNA from a 2,300-year-old skeleton suggests that the earliest known group of modern humans to branch off from the wider genetic population survived until astonishingly recently. The finding supports the case that southern, rather than eastern, Africa is humanity's ancestral home.Mitochondrial DNA, passed on only from the mother, demonstrates that all humanity is descended from a single ancestor around 200,000 years ago. Archaeological evidence points to the Omo Valley, where fossil evidence suggests that Homo sapiens roamed Africa 195,000...

Scientists have found the beginnings of life-bearing chemistry at the centre of the galaxy. Iso-propyl cyanide has been detected in a star-forming cloud 27,000 light-years from Earth. Its branched carbon structure is closer to the complex organic molecules of life than any previous finding from interstellar space.