Free Republic

The next time you feel like taking the path of least resistance, consider the fate of humankind's ancestral predecessor, Homo erectus: According to the authors of a new study published in PloS One, laziness may have precipitated the early humans' extinction, leaving them unable -- and unwilling -- to adapt to changing environments... The team found that H. erectus tended to pursue "least-effort strategies" when crafting tools and collecting resources, even sticking to one generic tool for most activities. In a statement, lead author Ceri Shipton, an archaeologist at ANU, notes that the primitive peoples "really don't seem to have...

A construction crew in Cape Coral, Fla., in June discovered what is believed to be a bone fragment from a mastodon or mammoth, a report released Friday said.  The fragment was discovered underground by  crews working on the city’s utilities expansion project, The Fort Myers News-Press reported. It is believed to be a part of the animal’s humerus bone, according to The Cape Coral Daily Breeze.  It is not entirely clear how old the find is; The News-Press reported it could be more than two million years old, while NBC2 put it at somewhere between 12,000 and 250,000 years. What’s more, archaeologists think there could...

Inexplicable Species and the Theory of Evolution Editor’s note: We were delighted recently to introduce a new series, “Modernizing Darwin,” cross-posted at Shabbat.com, by Geoffrey Simmons, MD. The first post is here. Dr. Simmons is the author of What Darwin Didn’t Know and Billions of Missing Links. He is a Fellow with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture.Man has been searching for fossils, or stumbling upon them, for millennia. The ancient Greeks and Romans saw the fossilized bones of giant creatures as proof that horrible monsters once walked the land or swam in the seas. Darwin utilized fossils to...

Worms frozen in permafrost for 42,000 years have come back to life and are eating Shane McGlaun - Jul 27, 2018 Scientists have made a discovery that is quite mind-blowing. Roundworms found in the permafrost in two areas of Siberia have come back to life in Petri dishes. These worms had been frozen in the permafrost for tens of thousands of years, since the Pleistocene age. Scientists working on the research say that 300 prehistoric worms were analyzed and that these two were shown to contain viable nematodes.The nematodes showed signs of life after being defrosted. Scientists say the worms...

Jellyfish and their kin have no brains and make do with rudimentary nervous systems. But an analysis now shows that these simple sea creatures evolved eyes multiple times, transforming basic precursor cells into a wide range of useful visual systems. Using DNA sequences, Natasha Picciani and Todd Oakley at the University of California, Santa Barbara, created an evolutionary tree of Cnidaria, the large grouping — or phylum — that includes jellyfish, sea anemones and corals. They then incorporated information about the species’ light-sensing abilities. The team found that the common ancestor of today’s cnidarians could probably detect light and dark,...

Is Darwin Still Relevant? Geoffrey Simmons Editor’s note: We are delighted to introduce a new series, “Modernizing Darwin,” cross-posted at Shabbat.com, by Geoffrey Simmons, MD. Dr. Simmons is the author of What Darwin Didn’t Know and Billions of Missing Links. He is a Fellow with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture.During Charles Darwin’s time, many educated people still believed in spontaneous generation, meaning that living beings can emerge from non-living things. Maggots arose from rotting meat, amphibians grew from flooded soils, and rats were created by decomposing garbage. In addition, birds were thought to fly to the moon for...

PETERSBURG, KY – As part of a fundraiser for his Creation Museum and Ark Encounter theme park, Answers in Genesis CEO Ken Ham is auctioning an original photograph of his great-great-grandfather riding atop a live dinosaur, sources confirmed.

(CAMPUS REFORM) — A feminist professor at Virginia Tech University is warning that fossil fuels are contributing to a warped sense of “masculine identity” and “authoritarianism” among men. Cara Daggett, who teaches classes on politics and global security at Virginia Tech, penned her criticism of petro-masculinity in an essay “Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire” for the most recent issue of Millennium: Journal of International Studies. Writing in response to the 2016 election, Daggett coins the term “petro-masculinity” to describe what she sees as a convergence of “climate change, a threatened fossil fuel system, and an increasingly fragile Western hypermasculinity.”

More than 3 million years ago, our adult human ancestors were walking on two feet and didn't have the option of a fashionable baby sling to carry their kids around in. Instead, Australopithecus afarensis toddlers had a special grasping toe that helped them hold on to their mothers and escape into the trees, reports a study published July 4 in Science Advances. The evidence comes from DIK-1-1 — a relatively complete 3.3 million-year-old skeleton of a 2.5- to 3-year-old female Australopithecus afarensisdiscovered in Dikika, Ethiopia. The skeleton, nicknamed Selam — after the word for peace in Ethiopia's official language of...

Astronomers have found that the majority of meteorites that regularly fall into Earth's atmosphere today are the result of an asteroid collision that took place 466 million years ago. Using chemical analysis from rock samples around the world, the team discovered that before that colossal collision, Earth experienced impacts from many different types of meteorite, meaning that our planet's history with meteorites is far more complex than we thought. After examining the chemical makeup of these chrome-spinels, the team found that 34 percent of the pre-collision micrometeorites were primitive achondrites, a type of meteorite that only makes up 0.45 percent...

The 150 million-year-old, largely-intact skeleton of a still-unknown species of dinosaur went to auction today in Paris and sold for more than two million dollars - and if paleontologists’ hunches prove true, the mystery winning bidder may get a chance to bestow a name on a previously undiscovered species. The remains of the prehistoric predator – which is 30 feet long and 9 feet high - were discovered at Morrison Formation site in Wyoming in 2013.

Red Double THERE COMES TO US today the fourth of our Wise Virgins, the valiant Martyr Lucy. Her glorious name shines on the sacred Dyptich of the Canon of the Mass together with those of Agatha, Agnes, and Cecily; and as often as we hear it pronounced during these days of Advent, it reminds us (for Lucy signifies Light) that He who consoles the Church, by enlightening her children, is soon to be with us. Lucy is one of the three glories of the Church of Sicily; as Catania is immortalized by Agatha, and Palermo by Rosaly, so is...

Lucy Languishes as a Human-Ape Link by Frank Sherwin, M.A. * Evidence for Creation Human evolution has consistently been shown to be without scientific or biblical merit. Although a parade of supposed transitions are displayed in every conceivable outlet, non-Darwinists maintain that the links between people and our alleged ape-like ancestors are—missing.

Back in 1933, a 22-year-old Lucille Ball had just landed her first movie role in Roman Scandals and signed a contract with RKO. What's a soon-to-be movie star to do? Buy a house, of course. Which is why she snatched up this bungalow on the border of West Hollywood so she could be close to all the action.

The researchers trace the fossil record, which illustrates a timeline placing multiple species overlapping in time and geographic space. Their insights spur further questions about how these early human ancestors were related and shared resources... The 1974 discovery of Australopithecus afarensis, which lived from 3.8 to 2.9 million years ago, was a major milestone in paleoanthropology that pushed the record of hominins earlier than 3 million years ago and demonstrated the antiquity of human-like walking. Scientists have long argued that there was only one pre-human species at any given time before 3 million years ago that gave rise to another...

Scientists from the University of Oxford and the University of Manchester have used a new technique, "Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry," or ZooMS, to identify more than 2,000 bone fragments recovered from Russia's Denisova Cave. ZooMS analyzes the collagen peptide sequences in bone, which can then be used to identify its species. Among the remains of mammoths, woolly rhino, wolf, and reindeer, the researchers found one Neanderthal bone. "When the ZooMS results showed that there was a human fingerprint among the bones I was extremely excited. ...The bone itself is not exceptional in any way and would otherwise be missed by...

The folks at the shelter said Lucy The Dog was a terrier/hound mix, but I figured that was just a guess. I thought she resembled a moose, with her long skinny legs and barrel-shaped chest, so I added “The Dog” to her name – you know, to clear up any confusion. A technician at the veterinarian’s office called her an LBD, short for “little brown dog.” I later started dating a man (he’s now my husband) who presented a new theory: Lucy is a Carolina Dog – a free-spirited mascot of the Southeast, a gentle but suspicious soul with kibble...

Earlier this week Google's logo mutated (if you will) from its usual form into a Google Doodle adorned with a series of images depicting an ape evolving into a human. Clicking the Doodle led to information about "AL 288-1," less esoterically known as "Lucy the Australopithecus," or simply "Lucy." Many scientists regard the fossil as an intermediary link between apes and humans.The same day, Googling "lucy australopithecus controversy" turned up a different interpretation of the fossil, including several from Answers in Genesis. The apologetics ministry, which focuses primarily on whether evolution or biblical creation provides the most accurate interpretation...

The reviews aren't yet in for Scarlett Johansson's new movie Lucy, but a single viewing of the trailer is enough to give the film a resounding "two thumbs down" on science... The idea that humans only use 10% of their brains is a complete, utter, and total myth. Lucy is entirely premised on neuroscientific BS...

A dog helped save her owner who was badly injured in a car crash just days before Thanksgiving. John Miles was walking his dog Lucy on Neponset Street in Dorchester, as he does every day, when both of them were hit by a car. Lucy saved her owner after they were hit by a car in Dorchester. (WBZ-TV photo) Lucy saved her owner after they were hit by a car in Dorchester. (WBZ-TV photo) John blacked out and doesn’t remember what happened. Lucy, a husky-beagle mix, who was also injured, limped to a nearby dentist’s office and barked until help...